This time last year...

[SkepticalCat]

Is anyone else thinking back to this time last year when things were still (relatively) normal?

According to my Facebook memories, a year ago I was at an art exhibition, in an indoor space with possbly hundreds of other people, none of us wearing masks or socially distancing.

A week or so later I travelled into London on train/tube (again, no mask wearing) for a work meeting, then met a friend for lunch where we hugged each other hello and goodbye.

Looking back it seems crazy to have been able to have done all those things when we were only a few weeks away from school closures and national lockdown.

What were you doing this time last year?

Details of my life 1 yr ago today are too specific outing stuff, so sorry no details, but basically completely ordinary. work, shopping, kids, home... We were wondering when covid would get bad & what would that mean was going to happen. We started to realise some events would need cancelling, but not sure which ones. Don't think the decisions to cancel began to happen before about 10 March.

Cheltenham Festival was the last BIG organised crowd event in Britain, 16-19 March 2020.

We went to a baby show at the London Excel. Quite surreal when it was turned into the nightingale hospital not that long after.

Exactly one year ago today I was staying with family in Sydney. We had a gorgeous day at the beach and then in the evening I went to a show at the opera house.

Should have bloody stayed there 😭

Went clubbing in London on the leap year day weekend, then to a packed theatre (also London) during the following week. Was travelling on London public transport to and from work still at that point.

Final prep topups for lockdown, work, preparing a home workspace, and touching nothing

It was in Italy, exponentially growing and hotfooting its way here on the heels of holiday makers. It was mathematically inevitable.

In retrospect, I should have just gone skiing.
Won't make that mistake again.

on 7th March we had a family day out in London. By then it was clear that lockdown was coming. London was surprisingly busy but there was a bit of a worried air about.

That's the last proper 'day out' we had, although we were very lucky in getting a cottage near the beach at Whitby in August which is pretty much the only fun thing we've managed since 7th March.

I attended a rock concert in a large stadium. Was bloody brilliant.

We went away in our caravan the last week of February. DH was really poorly and we spent most of the time in our warm van watching telly. We saw the virus was in China and Italy. DH had a terrible cough, aches and the sweats. We also joked saying he had the virus already.....
When he was rushed into A&e with a burst bowel at this past new year he had a chest X-ray and we were told he had Covid lung.... but he hadn't been ill since that week ....

I was in bed with a horrible virus, having just travelled through Heathrow the weekend before 😬. Nobody, including the eleventy million docs in my family believe I had covid though 🤷‍♀️

I was in bed with a temperature, slightly delirious and aching. I slept all of 28th last year. Had been in USA the week previously.

I was feeling really ill, spent all weekend in bed with a temperature. I’d had a slightly upset stomach a week earlier....

On this day last year my parents were visiting. Just looked back in my calendar and can see that Mum stayed for a whole week and we went out and did something with DD nearly every day. Little did we know it would be such a long time before being allowed to do that again

I was in Mexico drinking apple martinis sigh

@ChameleonClara - I was paraphrasing on here for comedy value. Don't waste anger on a throwaway comment.

I kept a diary last year. On this Sunday, me and my child went swimming with my brother and his kids. A friend of ours was stuck in Milan with work. 'Next Sunday' we went to a different pool and talked about how that friend was coming home - it was the day N Italy had locked down. He got back and went to his second home to isolate with his work colleagues for 2 weeks - their company had left a hire car with 2 weeks worth of food in a carpark at Heathrow. Me and my brother decided at that point we should stop the kids seeing our parents. I still went on to do a school performance with a parent audience in those last few days before school closure was announced. My partner had stopped going to the office 2 weeks beforehand.

[quote RuleWithAWoodenFoot]@ChameleonClara - I was paraphrasing on here for comedy value. Don't waste anger on a throwaway comment.[/quote]
Ah I see, I took it seriously. Some teachers at my child's school did talk utter bollocks which probably clouds my judgement.

Don't worry about my anger, I'll manage!

I was in Churchill War rooms, shoulder to shoulder with hundreds of others, no ventilation or hand gel in sight. Followed by the pub and the tube home!

Soft play! And had a friend actually stay over INSIDE MY HOUSE for a whole weekend. I've seen him twice in a park since then.

We had just come back from 2.5 weeks in florida. Covid19 didn't seem a threat here. It all snowballed pretty fast.

We were beginning to get twitchy about it and had pulled back a little . Shopping trips were done first thing and we stopped going to busy places at weekends .

I was just recovering from Covid, caught in the UK, and debating with dd on when they should take dgd out of school. We held out till 14 March, dgd was taken out of school, I moved to their house to sit with her for homeschooling while parents worked from home. Life, and relationships changed completely.

Went into town with my DC and we went shopping and had a Nandos and went to lush and smelled everything in the shop. The next eve my DP and I made mojitos and jumped on a bus into the city centre for drinks for a friend's leaving do. Got a bus home. Brilliant evening. Then next eve another friend's epic birthday houseparty! So so much fun. I'm so glad I had this busy weekend of treats and parties as I've been clinging onto the memories of them all year! I was so busy with kids and parties and sports and work that I'd sort of neglected the news so at this point, although I was aware of the virus I really don't think the seriousness of it had set in at all. It was only later that week that I read properly about it and went ohhhh fuck.

I was at a three day work conference with over 100 people in Birmingham. I remember it being talked about at the conference but only in passing.

I can’t remember exact dates but I am pretty sure we were being very careful. To be honest doctor friends of mine had contacted me to say they had put their families on ‘lockdown’ and certainly all my elderly relatives were effectively on it at least 2 or 3 weeks before it came into force. The govt were very slow acting, and it was pretty obviously not right to wait for them to do so.

We put off going out for a family evening meal. Wish we hadn't now. It's been over a year since I didn't cook an evening meal .... every damn night