Which specific moment from this will stay with you forever?

[RosieLemonade]

Positive or negative.

I certainly find going back and reading some of the early threads on the corona board interesting. I find it very odd how much stuff I’ve forgotten already.

I remember when mnhq were first asked to do a corona board they resisted for a couple of weeks saying they didn’t think it would be that big a thing! 😂😂. Same at work, I was telling colleagues and friends to stock up with food and loo roll in late Jan and people thought I was bonkers.

Hearing a plane go over in the summer and the noise being a shock with the roads quiet and flight reducing so much.

Cycling in the mornings in lockdown and the roads being safe and quiet.

We live city centre, ground floor apartment. Our front room looks out over a small stade (french for playing ground / park) which is usually heaving with teenagers from the lycée next door and dads kicking a ball to their wee ones. During the first (March) lockdown, DH and I changed our living room around so we could turn our backs on the telly, which had been commandeered by our 13yr old for his PS4, and look out the front windows instead. It was into April / May and starting to get hot outside. I remember sitting at the window, and it was so completely silent and empty outside: not a car or bus, the lycée closed, no one walking in the street, the stade locked and deserted, no children, no teens, no one. Just hot, dusty, silence in the middle of the city. It was very Walking Dead.

The reaction of my DC when they were told that schools were closing for the first lockdown. Even the youngest who usually complains about having to get up and put on uniform was shocked and then really upset.

Hearing about the experience of Scottish students who had exam results down-graded by the algorithm and trying to calm DD who was expecting CGSE results and terrified that she'd lose her place at college.

Not having my husband with me when i was induced,and then him not being able to join me and dd on the postnatal ward. I was exhausted mentally and physically, and completely bewildered as a first time mum. It was just horrendous. I know im not the only one that will have had this experience and plenty will have coped far better than i did.

The night that everyone clapped for the first time. I was putting my daughter to bed and wondered what the noise was. I remember feeling totally overwhelmed. I remember opening the window and shouting as I couldn't clap because my daughter was in my arms.

Worst GD age 4 coming to our house during the brief sumer period when it was allowed with my DD refusing to come near me as no hugs nanna.
Best DH getting cateract done in lockdown by NHS so obviously deemed necessary.
He only had one functioning eye due to childhood injury and would have been registered blind, he's deaf as well and was so isolated before couldn't go out on his own read or listen to music.

When my boys realised they would never be at their primary school or playschool ever again. I'll never forget my oldest boy breaking down and saying "I didn't even get to say goodbye" as a few of his friends were going to a different school. My youngest asking me every day if he was allowed to go and play with some children yet.

And this: My daughter developing a severe neurological condition last year and us being left to cope with extremely debilitating symptoms and total loss of quality of life alone at home because the specialists don't have the capacity to see her or even explain properly to her what's happening. Barbaric

So many.

I remember running along the Thames Path into Goring on the evening of July 4th when all the restaurants had opened back up for the first time and just standing laughing and crying listening to the chatter of people socialising whilst I just stood on the bridge over the Thames next to George Michael's old house, it was so moving and energizing. I ran back and across the river I could hear a group of teenagers belting out a Donna Summer song and I ran along singing with them. Felt so alive!

My twins starting university and then coming back, still at home now, lovely to have them here but desperately want them to start their adult lives.

Sobbing at the moment Boris announced no GCSEs. Our year 11 son had worked so hard, we’d prepared revision timetables, I’d printed practice and past exam papers, we were revising together some nights with test cards, and I felt in that moment it had all been for nothing and just burst into tears. DS was shocked but accepted it. He did fine in the end but I’ll never forget that moment.

I will remember the day I sat in Sainsburys car park and read this thread and cried and cried. I feel like I've been keeping everyone going all this time, I feel like if I stop and think about it too much I'll just crumble.
It's too sad. But it's good actually to stop and think sometimes.

Watching my kids leave for school on their last day in March, that will stay with me for a long time. I stood and watched them walk up the road till they were tiny wee specks in the distance. Then when they came home one of them dropped his schoolbag in the hall as usual and I didn't shout at him to put it away, it lay there for days. Somehow putting it away in the cupboard till August would just have been too hard.

The way this country has become all about "me";
Death has become "normalised";
The way that hundreds of people dying a day means that, shockingly, some Tory politicians think it'll be "fine" to abandon all covid measures by the end of April (76 days);

The endless queues around the car park in Sainsburys, Morrisons and Tesco and the bare shelves left behind.

A few.

The time I was shopping in Tesco's and there was no toilet roll.

I asked someone how long they thought lockdown would go on for and they said months.

Crying when Boris announced the last lockdown.

Do you think many of us are suffering from collective trauma over this? It is a hard thread to read, but it feels important to acknowledge what we've been and are going through

Exactly this

I think this thread does show we must be reaching the light at the end of the tunnel as I definitely wouldn't have been able to read it a few weeks ago but now have found it really interesting and some of the happier memories have been strangely comforting - obviously some truly heart breaking posts as well. Really makes you realise what we have lived through
On a lighter note I've Just remembered I paid £7 on eBay for two sachets of yeast last spring - the tiny individual sachets that would usually be about 80p for 8!!! Madness but I had a load of flour as I ordered a load from a cotswold bakery - my one panic bulk buy that took weeks to arrive by which time flour was just back in shops but not yeast and dh thought I was totally mad as a huge catering box of flour was delivered! I think I've still got some of it left now .
Weirdly I also saw coal tar soap for crazy prices - £10 for about four bars on eBay around the same time which I resisted but I've still yet to see coal tar soap in shops since .

Thirtyrock39

Funnily enough I bought a bar of coal tar soap in my shop this very morning! Didn't realise I might have been sitting on a valuable item a few months ago!

It’s looking like my newly prescribed preventer inhaler will be here to stay after I finally rang my GP this week . I probably had Covid last March and wheezed daily ever since. Kept stupidly telling myself that the wheezing, coughing and breathlessness would go but hasn’t and got worse.

Hearing on the radio that schools were closing.
Sending my class home on the Friday not knowing when we would see them again.
The complete unreality of seeing Boris tell us we were locking down the first time.
The phone call that a close family member in hospital with covid probably wasnt going to make it and we couldn't even speak to them because of the cpap.
The first Thursday night clap when everyone was scared and lonely.

On a more positive note - bursting into tears when the gp rang to offer me my first vaccine.

How terrified I was that covid would close hospitals before DP got his Whipple's. How scary it was taking him for his first chemo session on Christmas Eve and not being able to go in with him. How much he is missing out on with this latest lockdown, he will not get the chance to enjoy travel again.

Sitting in a classroom with other members of staff listening to Boris announcing schools would close in March. We pretty much knew it was coming, but there was a moment of stillness and disbelief. The feeling we would be back in 2 weeks and then it not happening.

Saying goodbye to our Y11s on the Friday. Throwing a party in the playground for them, cobbled together in hours.

And a positive - out of the utter shit, making a really strong friendship which has positively impacted lots of my life.

I don't know how all the teachers held it together on the last day. I would have been sobbing all day long. I think you are amazing, thank you for doing your best to make that final day the best it could be for all our kids. Your stories of how you made it special especially for kids leaving school have made me cry today.

Seeing two women nearly come to blows over a pack of loo rolls in Sainsbury's the week before the first lockdown. Not seeing our daughter from February til the end of June, and her missing out on a graduation show and graduation itself. Walking through town from work to get a taxi home when we were sent home just prior to official lockdown, and the streets were eerily deserted.

Zoom funeral. For a young person. Just absolutely devastating. (They did not die of COVID).

Oh and going for a meal with some Italian friends on the weekend Italy went into lockdown - they put the Italian news on and translated what was happening. The husband is an amazing cook, he ran a restaurant for years, and we were eating his superb food as this played out, they are in their 70s, been in the UK since their early 20s, and this would be the first year they haven't travelled back to Italy.

I haven't let myself get upset once through this whole thing but, fuck me, this thread is really something.