To look back on the things we did in lockdown and cringe?

[Applescruffle]

Isn't it all just really cringeworthy when we look back?

The clapping on our doorsteps, all that false commradarie and "we're all in this together" and the drawings of rainbows in people's windows?
Condemning our neighbours for buying Easter Eggs because they weren't "essential" and wondering whether we would get arrested for sitting on a park bench?

At the time I, and probably loads of us, thought we were doing the right things but doesn't it all just look so false and hollow now when we look back and see that number 10 were having parties and Dominic Cummings was running around the country testing his eyesight? My kids missed out on so much while this was going on, my mental and physical health has still not recovered from the effects of lockdown, and for what?

Know what I mean?

It was mostly all pointless but some of us were saying that at the time and we were made to feel like pariahs.

If more people had realised this and not dismissed 'conspiracy theorists' during lockdown we would be in a better state now.
So many people warned of the harm and we were shut down

I lost precious time with a very much loved dying parent.
I will never forget

Not to be that person.... but I never did any of this stuff so I wouldn't know! I was as aghast at the cringing then as you are now, and my posts on here from the time bear that out.

Yes the nation did collectively lose its mind.

The clapping and pan-bashing were a new nadir for British culture.

I certainly didn't clap or judge what anyone else wanted to buy! I also didn't rush to get back out when lockdown was eased nor use that Eat Out scheme. If more people had just used common sense and not dismissed it as conspiracy theories things might have been better.

PLEASE remember this if they ever try and do it again.

I think it's easy to forget what it was like at the time. Covid was new and really scary. Lockdown was boring so the clap was as much about going outside and seeing people as much as anything else. It is a bit cringey but it's of its time.

My neighbour still has a Love NHS rainbow sticker on their window

I didn’t do any of those things 🤷🏻‍♀️

I did cringe at others doing it at the time though (not that I’d have dared saying it out loud).

And I kept seeing my mum because I considered her extremely fragile mental health to be more important than following the rules.

So, no, I don’t regret anything about lockdown!

It was collective madness and nowhere was more mad than Mumsnet.

I never did any of that. Never did the stupid clapping or the window drawings, went out as many walks as I wanted and pic nics down the burn in the middle of nowhere (we live rurally). People went to Tesco for whatever; big shop or a bar of chocolate. I mean, we all stuck to social distancing, didn’t meet up with anyone outside of our home or anything. But didn’t join in with any of the hysterical nonsense.

It's easy to look back with hindsight and question what happened, but at the time it was completely uncharted territory for all of us.

That said, the clapping etc was complete fucking nonsense and we all knew it.

Can honestly say I didn't do any of this 🤷‍♀️

I can remember going for 2 runs in one day. When I came back the police were on my street and I was worried that my neighbours had reported me! Madness!

We did the right things. The death toll would have been higher if we hadn't both from covid, and from the swamping of the NHS by covid

I never did any of that stuff. I watched people appear to lose their minds in absolute amazement to be honest. I was genuinely appalled at those spying on their neighbours and publicly calling them out.
Tried to say all this on here at the time and was basically abused and harassed of the site. I didn’t come back for a couple of years.

Clapping on doorsteps and banging pan lids was surely the height of idiocy. I don’t imagine it made a single NHS worker feel happier.
I didn’t clap on my doorstep because I worked evening shifts on a Waitrose checkout. We were expected to stand up and clap in store, as did our socially-distanced customers.

It is likely to happen again when children who were school age then are in their late 40s onwards.

Unless we get better politicians, who will be from their age group, then they will remember and ignore it.

Oh, come on. The standing on the doorstep clapping every week. People out banging pots and pans and cheering? Then going onto Facebook and announcing all the doors who hadn’t been out to clap. “Oh, we saw number 57 and 62 didn’t come out to clap.” And then loads of follow up comments from people on other streets listing those who didn’t coming out to clap and saying how shameful it was. Half of them worked as nurses and doctors and were on shift or sleeping after a shift!! And everyone on Facebook lambasting them. It was insane. Not the right thing.

I was chastised for not standing on my bloody doorstep to clap on a Thursday evening! Yes, it was cringy. I thought so at the time, hence not joining in.

You have no evidence of that whatsoever.

This forum went insane. I really think that middle class mumsnetters were absolutely the worst and most hysterical.

Exactly. It was new and scary and uncertain and we were being given daily updates on how many people had died and we truly wanted to do the right thing.
But it was all just such a mess and so incredibly inconsistent.
At one point, I could go on a bus full of unmasked people to a doctors surgery where a fully masked woman would peer out of a tiny window to talk to me, to a park where 50 snotty children were running around together to a tesco where I still had to queue outside 6 feet apart.

It was the parties at number 10 thing that really sent me though. Until then I was truly doing what I thought was right. After that, I no longer cared.

Really the only thing I would cringe about (if I'd done it, which I didn't) was the clapping.

Other stuff such as worrying about easter eggs and park benches were done to us so not a surprise people were worried. I mean it was bonkers but it wasn't our choice.

Locally the police on day 1 or 2 of lockdown were really looking in peoples bags as they came out of sainsburys and telling people off for having chocolate. Never heard of it happening again so guess they were told to rein it in.

I was cringing at the time saying a lot of it was bullshit.
We list our minds with a lot if stuff. Many people suffered needlessly.