My son thinks that children were evacuated during the pandemic

[Jourdain11]

Today my DS7 was learning about World War 2 in 'topic' and they covered evacuees. Apparently he stuck his hand up, "Oh, so they were sent away from London to the country to keep them safe? Just like we were in the lockdown?"

The teacher said that, no, children were not evacuated during lockdown. And he was quite incredulous that neither his teacher, nor any of his classmates, could remember this mass evacuation.

I have explained that he was not evacuated - he stayed with his grandparents for around a month (not in the country). But he is sure in his own mind that he was in fact evacuated for the duration. "Maybe for about a year."

I suppose he was only 4 at the time. But it got me to thinking that a lot of youngish children must have some fairly weird memories of Lockdown Britain!

I’ve loved reading this thread (thanks @Jourdain11 for starting it). Perhaps we need to talk about it more in RL it feels odd that we don’t discuss it more.

I don't mention lockdown in RL because for me it was bloody brilliant. I probably long for a return to the first lockdown on a daily basis. DH has said a few times that it "saved" DD, and he has a point. I know so many people struggled though, and I completely understand why, so I don't talk about it. But I do want to put it out there that it wasn't hellish for everyone and I realise I was very lucky.

@memorial different industry, but similar experience. My husband was running project put-lane and over saw 10,000 adult 'chap' style units made in 4 weeks. As I vet I went to work everyday leaving our 16 year old DD whose whole world (GCSEs) was in turmoil.
A trip to vets was a family outing literally a pack car would pull up in the car park all wanting to spill out to tell be excited about the new puppy they had rushed out and bought. What PPE we could get we were passing on to the GPs as we could access more than them.
Trying to facilitate owners to be with their pets at the end of their life.
As a business owner the worry of not knowing what risks I was asking my staff to take.
Then remembering that DD was home alone for long hours.
A year of counselling help me put most of it into context.

Oh my, for me that program is very triggering. My DH was diagnosed with terminal cancer in March 2020. Sadly access to the Royal Marsden and hospice support was denied due to the pandemic. He died alone, confused and in pain.
At the same time my DM was in hospital after a fall resulting in broken bones. We weren't allowed to visit, she was then forced in to a council care home for 'rehab' where she was confined to a room with no TV or company. It took me six months to gather discharged and not until I'd paid for a private capacity assessment and legal advice.
The damage to her cognitive situation was beyond salvaging.

Oh and now Jeremy Hunt wants me to care for DM, my DC and get job so I can pull my weight.

I’ve noticed (here and on Twitter) that there is an underlying bitterness towards/about those who were furloughed. It might just be my own perception but is this feeling growing the further we move away from it? Maybe now we are paying for it…

Paying for what way?

That's just a stupid viewpoint though. Why be pissed off at those who were furloughed? They did not choose it. The government ordered businesses to close. So if people want someone to blame, blame the government for making those decisions.

You could live that way if you wanted, that's the difference. If you really wanted to be isolated in that way, do a job where you can fully work from home, home ed your kids, do all your shopping online, don't visit anyone or have visitors.

I understand this. Those who enjoyed it can strive to replicate lockdown in many ways.

Those who loathed it had no choice, especially if it cost them in any way

I agree. I think there's a tendency to get annoyed with furlough but not examine the underlying reasons for it.

Part of this is people who think furloughed people were paid too much as well. The scheme could've been better refined with time, but there's no getting round the fact that if a government wants to pursue a lockdown, millions of people had to be paid enough to stay at home and go along with it. I'm not saying no savings could've been made but fundamentally it was impossible to do it on the cheap.

It's fine if people who criticise furlough were also critical or at least agnostic on lockdown, but there's a logic fail involved to slagging it off whilst also thinking lockdown was necessary. I've seen this quite a few times. Can't have lockdown without the costs.

Yes, it was good for us too. I never say anything in real life either as there were people who struggled so much.

I had my third baby July 2020 and it was actually the best pregnancy and birth/post birth experience I’ve had. Empty hospitals, appointments that ran on time, staff were able to deal with patients rather than family members. I was on my own for my section and post birth but would have been anyway as dh had to look after the other two. But I am mindful never to say that as I know other women didn’t have a good experience.

My ds wouldn’t have been doing what he’s doing now. We moved just before lockdown and he hated his college. Being able to do the bulk of the course at home is what got him though and onto his degree.

My dd was 6/7 she only remembers it as fun.

None of us were affected badly by it.

Absolutely this. If people wanted a lockdown and all non key workers to stay home, then they needed to be subsidised for it. To tell everyone to stay home and not be paid is just ludicrous.

Think trying to work ft and home school a six year old as a single parent was properly traumatic. I wish I could have taken away one of those elements- either be furloughed ( couldn’t be as public sector), not have to home school (( wasn’t counted as key worker in lockdown one, and Ds not yet thought to have ADHD), or have someone to share the load with.

If any of those things were different it would have been ok

That is so tough. I hope you got a space in second one

You’re right you had very hard things to deal with

Well like I said above, for the industries who closed down completely eg hospitality, furlough was a no brainer. The issue was with industries such as mine who furloughed staff as a cost saving measure only. There was never any question of redundancies, they just didn’t want their poor performers to work from home and didn’t fancy paying for it. That to me is rewarding people for poor performance because the firm couldn’t be arsed dealing with it. The rest of us had to pick up their slack, while the CE emailed on a weekly basis to thank the furloughed for…who knows what really.

My firm’s profits in 2020-21 exceeded the profits in the previous year. There was no need for staff to be furloughed. I know my firm is not alone in taking advantage in this way.

To be honest it’s shocking that front line NHS staff had such an awful time while others were paid to stay home. I’m not saying it wasn’t necessary or that there was any other way, but the contrast is very stark.

Obviously firms took advantage. It's just that it's much easier to identify that this happened than to come up with a way of doing it better, especially at first. Lockdown was never part of the pandemic planning which meant neither was furlough, so something really did have to be cobbled together very quickly in March 2020. There was no time and no resources to design or administer anything that wasn't broad brush.

As time passed, it became more theoretically possible to narrow the parameters of the scheme and tighten things up, but the resources for close monitoring have never been there. It would also never have been possible to tie furlough solely to business need, because furlough solely for childcare purposes needed to exist. Otherwise parents start cobbling together ad hoc childcare solutions that don't actually reduce contacts that much.

Ultimately, all of these things were baked in to a significant degree because lockdown required them. At best we could've made some efficiencies.

I don't think we should be berating people for whom lockdown was a fairly positive experience. Furlough, sunshine, peace and quiet, quality time with their children etc, if that's the situation that was forced upon them then you can't blame people for taking advantage.

Lockdown was full of highs and lows for me personally. I have extremely painful memories of my cousin's screams down the phone to me minutes after she had watched my uncle, her father, on a screen. And then not being allowed to attend his funeral myself.

My own sobs down the phone when I had to call the crisis team because my DS1 who has very complex SEN just stopped being able to cope when the winter lockdown was announced.

Perhaps the memory that is most vivid and surreal in my mind was my DS2's last day at school. He was year 11 and had been studying hard for GCSEs, then suddenly everything was cancelled. That last day, the teaching staff gave the year 11s a guard of honour as they walked out the gates and I watched with tears as all these 16 year olds walked out feeling completely bewildered and confused not knowing what their future held anymore.

I also remember glorious walks with my children through the fields in beautiful weather and how they were so happy in those moments.

The gratitude of my elderly neighbours when I shopped for them, the thank you treats they posted through my letterbox everyday and my continued lovely relationships with them.

The (probably morally wrong and I was slated on here at the time) long country drives I did at sunset every evening to calm my DS1 down as that was the only way to give him structure and routine to his day and settle him for bed. We bonded so much on those drives though and I wouldn't change them for the world.

It was such a strange and confusing time. Like others have said, I wish I'd have kept a diary but I just didn't have the time.

Thanks @MarshaBradyo

Yes he went back a few weeks into the second big lockdown.

More because of the ADHD than anything, but I think we qualified on two counts.

Exh was particularly rubbish in second lockdown because he decided he would have his house completely gutted and the kids couldn’t stay there at all. So didn’t stay from the Christmas to Easter.

In the first lockdown he did precious little - only had them a few nights here and there

What a dick.

Me too. Like you I was really, really hoping that we would learn from it as a society, that we would realise the damage that rampant consumerism is doing to the planet, stop driving everywhere and taking short-haul flights etc. Most of all I hoped we'd truly value key workers and realise that the most important jobs are the ones that keep society going, even if they're perceived as menial but no. Nurses using food banks. So much for the clapping now.

Lockdown was always going to exacerbate inequalities. I really don't understand how anyone thought it wouldn't. Fair enough if people enjoyed their personal experience of it, you have as much right to speak about how you felt as anyone else does, but the structural impact of this was all baked in.

That's not the fault of the employees though, it's the fault of the employers. Employees shouldn't be punished for doing what their boss tells them.

I hate all this wishy washy crap. Most normal working class people don't have the luxury of worrying about all that. If you want to see change, you need to be badgering the people at the top, not expecting people who are struggling to get by to make all the changes.

It’s difficult to value the public sector whilst hammering the private sector as funds are needed for the former.

I see it slightly differently in that I thought people would realise this seeing the situation now, even if they didn’t at the time.

I LOVED lockdown. Not the worry about the virus but just how life slowed down so much and we could just ‘be’. The lack of traffic noise, the bird song never sounded so loud before. The beautiful weather and having time for personal projects. I never wanted it to go back to normal and I naively thought that it would teach us what life is really about.
But you get that for some people this wasn't the case? Some of us couldn't be, we barely had time to breath. Our children did the best they could by themselves. One of mine will never be the same.
What I leant is that people are selfish cunts. When they thought they needed the NHS to save them they clapped now they don't give a shit and treat us like crap on their shoe # clapstoslaps.
My family my practice my life is forever damaged. So what did it teach me?