Which specific moment from this will stay with you forever?

[RosieLemonade]

Positive or negative.

Walking into COVID ICU glad that my colleagues couldn’t see the tears rolling down my face (due to the horrendous level 3 PPE)

Taking a phone call from a ventilated patients wife. She thanked all the staff profusely for looking after him and stoically accepted she could not visit. I barely held it together as I talked to her. He died a few days later.

This last year has changed me profoundly both physically and emotionally.

For me, it’s the people who turned nasty. Spying on their friends, family, neighbours, wanting to report, abusing people in thr street. That’s what will stay with me. The deeply unpleasant under belly of society that came to the fore.

Oh god, this too. I never truly realised how horrible people can be. So much vitriol from so many.

Shodan this is what I find crazy, cos maybe 99% of people in towns must be complying tonnes (and having weird snitch neighbours). Then out here in the countryside we get the 1% who go wild camping, fireworks that scare all the animals to death (literally), just trash everywhere and leave their tents and go home. They’re in big groups, all mixing. If people in towns say it they’d be pissed and wouldn’t be that arsed about if you’ve been to the supermarket twice in a day (shock!)

AnyFucker I’m so sorry :(

I live right on the edge of Melbourne and driving past the police checkpoint between metro Melbourne and regional Victoria every day was surreal. Something that belonged in war time not in my life. Then a bit further down the road was a massive sign warning that permits were needed to enter NSW. Again something that had never been part of my world before and felt like the world was falling apart.

Negative: Feeling horrified when I realised that herd immunity was being considered as a plan near the beginning by UK Government. I felt trapped in the wrong country.

Positive: My child running around a playground when they first reopened.

Negative - Seeing people lose their jobs and loved ones.

Positive - Spending more time with my children and still working at school.

for me it'll be the lost respect I have for colleagues

Grown women too scared to leave their house expecting colleagues to do their work (not at risk groups)
People in their 40s who literally think they re going to die if they get covid despite their real risk being like 99.9% survival

Its embarrassing and i'll never look at them the same again.

As teachers/educators, I thought they at least had the ability to see data for what it is.

@Shodan

For me, it’s the people who turned nasty. Spying on their friends, family, neighbours, wanting to report, abusing people in thr street. That’s what will stay with me. The deeply unpleasant under belly of society that came to the fore.

Oh god, this too. I never truly realised how horrible people can be. So much vitriol from so many.

On the grim plus side, at least now we know who the informers will be if we ever end up in a dictatorship.

@BlowDryRat Silver lining to every cloud...

Dh and I cycled into the centre of Cambridge last April. It was completely deserted. It's usually full of tourists. I found that really unsettling

Lost respect, yes.

Looking at friends in a different light. Many of my friends are teachers, I’ve been really shocked by their attitude to children.

I work with children, I’m also a parent. I think I understand their needs. A lot of my friends who are teachers have talked about the children in their care with real contempt. I’ve heard them referred to as ‘fucking kids’ (y1 teacher) and They’ve seemed happy to stay at home indefinitely and turn a blind eye.

I’ve reevaluated some friendships based on this and other things.

Not just teachers. I have NHS colleagues who think that working remotely is brilliant in the long term because it ‘works for them.’ I have one particular colleague who is leaving and going to work elsewhere because ‘elsewhere’ will allow her to run parenting groups online going forward, with no plans for face to face ever again.

No, the NHS and education system do not exist to serve the interests and convenience of its employees, it exists to provide a service to others.

• Being on the phone to DH and he said that everyone he passed was holding a massive pack of toilet roll (the great HK loo roll panic of Feb 2020 after there was fake news that the loo roll factory in China was being requisitioned for mask production )

• When the Diamond Princess had it's own line on the Worldometer coronavirus tracker and there were only 3 countries on there.

• Leaving UK to go back to HK in March 2020 and saying "see you in the summer" to my mum. Probably won't see her this summer, never mind last one!

• Not doing the homeschooling for the first 2 weeks as I was thinking "yeah, probably not worth it for a few weeks"....... 12 months later..........

I took DS to a supermarket a few weeks ago and he loved it. He's 15 months old and I could count on 1 hand the number of times he's been in a shop.

Going to a family members funeral a little while ago. There were very few people there. The entire service was graveside. There were no hymns. Afterwards we couldn't even hug, it all felt very unnatural.

Personally I'm exhausted. I've been working 7 days a week for months and every time I hear that things are going to go on for a long time still I feel like crying. I just want to sleep and cuddle my baby.

Sitting with my colleagues in the school hall to hear Boris’ announcement about school closures back in March. The initial panic when he said schools would remain open for key worker and vulnerable children and the thought of ‘how the hell do we do this?’
And then the incredible way we sorted it in 24 hours and the pride we felt at the way we dealt with it all.
My first shopping trip during lockdown at 8pm to avoid queues and arriving home to hear Boris was in hospital with covid.
Crying on the bed, cuddling my children, watching the Queen’s message.

Arranging for my mum to be on the train platform so I could lean out and leave her a bag of chocolate bars and treats in 1st lockdown, when I still had to go into the office.
So glad my son flew straight home and spent 1st lockdown and summer where I could keep him safe. My pride when he started his masters at Oxford and my disappointment on his behalf when he had to come home again 8 weeks later and has never returned. My fear for his mental health as he feels robbed of this longed for experience. Robbed of the over 20,000 for the fees and not seeing his girlfriend since last summer.
Loving working at home although I know it doesn't suit everyone.
Utter contempt for the self serving Tory party who put the party, power and their self serving, opportunistic mates ahead of the lives of the people they were voted in to serve. Their inability even now to show anything but contempt for us and the behaviour of Cummings, Gove and Johnston sicken me still.
The first time I heard distant traffic from the garden since lockdown and feeling a little sad as I had never heard so many birds so clearly, feeling the same as I saw the first plane in ages overhead in a pure blue sky.
Being followed to work through empty streets in a threatening manner by a man who had been asked to stand further away in a supermarket and had cursed me and waited outside for me, knowing he might decide to cough or spit on me and the beautiful flowers the supermarket had given me as an apology although they had done nothing wrong.

@CountessFrog
That’s awful! I feel lucky to work in a school where the vast majority of us have pulled together and supported each other and our school community wholeheartedly.
It’s been hard at times. Many of my colleagues are BAME and sometimes are terrified. But we carry on.

My toddler twin granddaughters telling me on facetime that they felt sad not to be seeing me but ‘Boris says no because of the virus’. We FaceTime every night but they refuse to talk to me and are becoming more and more disengaged, (obviously furious and perplexed but can’t express it verbally). We are so very close and I am terrified we will never get that back 😢

@SandwhichGenerationGal
That is so sad. It is similar between my parents and children though they are a bit older so sort-of understand.
I think the way the pandemic has stopped grandparents maintaining a relationship with grandchildren has been criminal tbh. There is a good chance things will be significantly better later this year but you can’t get the missing year “back”

This thread needs to be in classics, we need to remember this. One of the most memorable moments for me was a photo a friend sent of her nurse DH and her DC, one of whom is CEV, touching palms on either side of a window. He shielded from them for about 3 months whilst working on the Covid ward. It still makes me teary just thinking about that picture.

@CountessFrog

Lost respect, yes.

Looking at friends in a different light. Many of my friends are teachers, I’ve been really shocked by their attitude to children.

I work with children, I’m also a parent. I think I understand their needs. A lot of my friends who are teachers have talked about the children in their care with real contempt. I’ve heard them referred to as ‘fucking kids’ (y1 teacher) and They’ve seemed happy to stay at home indefinitely and turn a blind eye.

I’ve reevaluated some friendships based on this and other things.

Not just teachers. I have NHS colleagues who think that working remotely is brilliant in the long term because it ‘works for them.’ I have one particular colleague who is leaving and going to work elsewhere because ‘elsewhere’ will allow her to run parenting groups online going forward, with no plans for face to face ever again.

No, the NHS and education system do not exist to serve the interests and convenience of its employees, it exists to provide a service to others.

Actually one of the things that will stay with is how amazing the teachers are and how many parents have appalling attitudes to their own kids, teachers and education in general.

For example, the kids still got a book from school for christmas. This was criticised by a number of the worst offenders as the books were 'inappropriate' and not for the right age group as they were about a subject too grown up (nope they weren't - its all stuff taught in school and books were for the correct age bracket). Then there's the parent who can't be fucked to get their kids dressed despite the school insisting they should be. Then they allow them to eat on morning registration annd online lessons. Nothing worse than teacher being interupted in the middle of saying something by child asking to go and get a bowl of fucking cereal. Then have competitive 'my child has done fuck all' as a badge of honour. This same parent who claimed discrimination as she didn't have enough tablets/laptops in the house and how this was grossly unfair and she couldn't get one. The school provided her with one, and her kid still didn't turn up for zoom and still hasn't been doing any work at all. Eventually he FINALLY turned up for one and started to talk about how he'd got a nintendo switch for his birthday. She has complained about the teacher repeatedly. Honestly I will be staying as far away from her as humanly possibly. And her son will not be invited here as part of that nor would I accept any kid of invitation from here in future because I don't trust myself to be civil to her. She has taken the piss to a whole new level.

Also the parent who posted photo of her kid breaking lockdown rules and complained that her son was missing other children. This child is in school most of the week, has an older brother and the mother is a bloody nurse. Absoluete disrespect to the teaching staff and completely tone deaf to the fact that lots of the kids have seen any other children at all since December or are only kids.

And just generally people who puts posts like this or have attitudes like this.

Watching Boris in March 2020 and feeling like we were in some sort of film. We talked for 10 minutes then packed bags and our 4 year old and newborn baby and went to stay with my parents for the duration of lockdown 1.

The fear coming back to our house after this and severe PND and having to negotiate a whole new Covid world with two small children.

Going away for a weeks holiday in rural Ireland over summer and feeling like Covid was a million miles away and almost forgetting.

Walking past soft play and my older child telling the baby 'thats soft play we will go there one day and have chicken nuggets it's great'.

My heart has broken 100 x over for the things my children cant do and the times they have been let down last minute due to rule changes.

@SandwhichGenerationGal you will, you'll get it back.

Empty shelves pre lockdown.

My daughter's 13th birthday was on the day lockdown restrictions were relaxed. We were allowed out as a family and I managed to snag a vintage picnic party company to cater a family picnic in a park. It was a surprise for her and the first time out of the house in 8 weeks - she was delighted - I will never forget the look on her face.

I think a lot of people have reevaluated friendships, haven’t they?

There are some people who have just really disappointed me.