Almost 4 years ago, Lockdown started (23 March 2020)

[SparrowSally]

Can't believe it's almost 4 years ago. I feel so uncomfortable looking back at that time, we really had no idea what was to come.

We’ve transferred that plot losing onto the Princess of Wales though! We obviously need something to distract us.

The whole thing brought out the best and worst in people.

You had people volunteering, trying to arrange nice things etc.

And then there were the people hounding others, making up rules, bullying etc.

DS was due to have his birthday party on the Friday evening (20th) at a local trampoline park, but most parents said they'd prefer us to rearrange due to what was happening. We rescheduled it for late April (how naive!). He didn't actually get to have the planned party until 2022 (because the venue was closed again for the 2021 Lockdown too!).

I remember taking DS in to school on 20th & there was such a surreal feeling in the playground. There were so few people, children were crying, the teachers looked so stressed, any children with medical conditions were being asked to be taken home immediately etc. You could feel the tension, bewilderment and fear in the air. It was so emotionally charged!

17th March I was in hospital having a mastectomy. I flew back home 4 years ago today with chest drains in situ and in a wheel chair to a locked-down island and had to quarantine for 14 days in my room at home. I should have been in hospital for a re-construction at the same time but that was cancelled. It was eerie being on a ward and watching the world shut down around me. Totally recovered from cancer now but what a time to go through it!

Just remember some of the sheer insanity! What a surreal time that was.
I work in a funeral home so that was business as usual. Live alone with 2 cats to keep me company. Took up art again to keep occupied.
A previous poster mentioned a ‘cat cull’ - I was so worried I’d be forced to have them euthanised. Where did that even come from? Was there any proof? They literally kept me going.
Mum and Dad were due to celebrate their Diamond Anniversary with a big family gathering. That was cancelled and not rescheduled. Dad died in January 2022. Mum has been in a decline ever since.
I remember going into a Tesco’s Express about 9pm one evening. It was deserted. I was literally the only shopper in there, but I got ‘told off’ for ignoring the arrows 😤 !

A cat cull could never have happened! People would've just kept them inside.

There was quiet discussion of a cat cull - google “government considered killing pet cats”. They would have had to have killed ME first. And yes, people would have kept them indoors, but as we saw the really ugly side of people dobbing their neighbours in for having grandchildren over, or exchanging Easter eggs in car parks, or even buying Easter eggs, I think people would have been prepared to report neighbours for having cats, calling them “vectors of transmission”, like they labelled children.

I agree some people would've grassed, but we don't actually have the resources to have conducted a house to house search for cats. Which is what would've had to happen. It wasn't practical.

I remember the week leading up to lockdown as if it were yesterday. I'm an NHS clinician and manager, it was awful, policy changes day to day, no PPE, colleagues with Covid. Redeployment. DS was sent home from school on 19th and that was then end of his secondary schooling - no goodbyes, just sent home at lunchtime. Nothing in the shops. I have suffered anxiety at this time of year every year since. It all has a dreamlike quality now.

Strange times indeed
I remember visiting my parents and talking ti them through the window
Trying to get my then 13 year old to do at least a couple of hours of school work a day
Being excited at a visit to the supermarket!

I was wandering round a big busy supermarket at the weekend and remembered the big queues and arrows and people yelling to stick to the routes.
Seeing everyone dodging around each other as normal made me think just how surreal it was back then and how scared people were
I still wash my hands and shopping after a trip anywhere. The big sterilization points in most shops has either gone or now standing empty.
Seems a big old bad dream these days.

I can't believe it happened really, it seems so surreal, looking back.

How easily we all accepted such totalitarian restrictions on our lives! Such sheep!

And our poor, poor children and older people. The missed exams and graduations and proms and all that wasted life.

One of my favourite people in the world died of Covid and I am so sad that I'll never see her again.

It was a strange time
Lots of pulling together at first , then a growing realization that it wouldn't be twelve weeks but many more until things went back to normal
I did ( honestly ) believe that people would stick to the rules as much as possible( especially those in power telling us to)
I doubt they could do another one as easily since we discovered that not everyone did!
I hated how my old employer made us feel guilty for not being able to go into work. Almost as if we had ordered lockdown ourselves
It was definitely surreal times

At times, I forget about it tbh, yet only this week, I had a text off British Gas about my appt. today & mentioned something about symptoms of COVID 19 and if it was safe for the engineer to visit. Are a lot of companies still doing this?
By the way, I googled it, and there’s currently NO evidence that cats are vectors for Covid. It’s chilling really, that perhaps a lot of people would’ve had their pets euthanised for no reason at all…

The mumsnet Covid threads !
They kept me going at times , especially trying to get my head around ' bubbles ' and later on ' tiers'
Then a briefing thread and yet more rules.

I liked the "lockdown".
Nobody expected me to give my time and energy, waste my life around them.
Talking about "duty" visits to relatives in (mostly) another country.
They all survived.

I remember popping in to visit my Mum in her care home on the 22nd March 2020 - Mothers Day.
I wasn't allowed to go inside so one of the carers brought her out of the building in her wheelchair.
We spent a lovely afternoon in the home's grounds then I returned her to the carers
.
Then it was Skype-ing for months progressing into pre-booked visits when I was supervised testing for Covid & accompanied by a carer outside.
Supervised testing & outside visits continued until December 2020 when I could go into her room & give her a big hug!
Then we went into lockdown again...

Absolutely. I don't think or worry about Covid itself at all (I had it, it's a bad cold) but I do worry about more mass hysteria and policing.

During lockdown I read " A Journal of the Plague Year" by Daniel Defoe writing about an outbreak of The Black Death plague in 1665.

It was incredible how little people's beliefs and attitudes has changed in 350 years.

There was a rush to leave London and live rurally which Defoe thought was illogical because the plague was also rampant in the countryside and all people were doing spreading it. There was talk of killing cats as it was thought they were spreading it. There were people making fortunes from selling so called cures or means of preventing you catching it. The poor were affected more than the rich etc.

It really was quite depressing how little society, knowledge or attitudes have advanced in 350 years.

@Cuckoochanel80
@LovelyTheresa

"The lockdowns did more harm than any virus ever did"

I actually think most people would agree, which raises the point that why isn't this being examined or even discussed in the Covid enquiry?

We're going out this evening for beers and a curry for our friend's birthday. I reminded DH that we did the same 4 years ago and then we locked down. Remember feeling really teary when we said goodbye to the nice guy who runs our local Indian.

our firm were still expecting us to go into the office right up until Boris made his announcement. Many of us had taken the precaution of ensuring we had any necessary and relevant paperwork at home already so we were ready to hit the ground running (unlike my boss who went into a screaming panic and was on the phone every 2 minutes with increasingly hysterical demands). It was a very trying time workwise. Thankfully it enabled me and DH to save a healthy amount so both of us were able to give up work 18 months ago to give us a buffer to live on before we start taking pensions later this year.

It really affected my elderly mum who has become more insular as a result, although she is only now starting to feel a bit better about going out.

It was a very surreal time and not one that I'd care to repeat.

Yes, I did too. It's incredible.
What got me was the equivalent of 'the figures' - tacked onto church doors each week in each London parish at that time, and showing that it was spreading through to the east end, if I remember (so people also went east and out to Essex, camping if they were considered 'fugitives' from the hotspots); and also some kind of regulations imposed on people who drove cabs there. The list included rules for use and ventilating the cab for X hours between passengers. It genuinely could have been a measure characteristic of 2020 with hardly a word changed.

I loved that book. Still haunted by the seagulls though!

I can't look back at those times without wanting to vomit. Cannot believe 4 years have flown by.

@scalt

This sums it up for me

It was a dark day. I will never see government, or many of my fellow citizens in the same way again. The government destroyed the future of our children, threw democracy under the bus, gaslighted and lied to the public, played divide and conquer, toyed with the public’s mental health, deliberately stirred up fear and panic… and the public fought over toilet paper, and whether people went for more than one walk a day (that was never a rule). I will also never believe in any government “emergency” again

There was absolutely nothing redeeming about it for me at all.

My mum died a few months into lockdown (a sudden death, not Covid related) and the fucking rules meant we (dad and 4 adult siblings) couldn't be together after our beloved wife / mum had literally dropped dead. There were restrictions on the funeral, no wake, delays with the autopsy and a whole myriad of rules to keep us apart. We didn't abide by them all [we made sure my dad was never alone] but we spent far too much time apart and not able to grieve together.

It makes me angry and sad and mad and bitter to think how fucking horrible the whole situation was. Death of my mum aside I hated it. Hated what it did to my mental health, my children, my relationship, my family, my weight, my confidence, my security, my friendships, my ambition, my physical health. And this is just on a personal level. I still can barely comprehend what it has done to society as a whole.

I try not to think about it too deeply as it still hurt and evokes a lot of negative feelings for me.