What one moment will always stay with you from this?

[Ostryga]

Mine was realising panic shopping was everywhere, and that I needed to buy an entire food shop for Dd and I before lockdown.

I cried when I found a shop with chicken and milk.

The fear I felt of the virus at that time, and also not being able to make sure we had food is something I hope to never repeat.

Finding out ds2 was incredibly ill at his anomaly scan alone, the MW saying "I'm so sorry I cant give you a hug, we're not allowed".

When the medical staff at the walk in centre refused to see my very poorly, temp of 41, delirious 4 yo (he had glands the size of golf balls, he needed antibiotics) but they "couldn't look down throats" and made me take him to the hospital.

He heard this and thought he was going to die because his baby brother never came he from the hospital when he was born a few weeks prior.

His wild eyed, fear filled, poorly little face wailing "will there be a bed? Will you leave me there? Please don't leave me Mummy, I don't want to be dead" will haunt me forever. He was utterly traumatised, all because medical staff wouldn't feel his neck.

Getting in my car straight after Boris' announcement and driving to the other end of the country to collect my uni student DC. I thought if I left it until the next day police would be stopping me at the motorway junction. DH was trying to convince me there are not enough police for that ever to be a thing. I loaded all of DC things into the car and drove home through the night without stopping. Later that morning I then had a Teams meeting (my first ever) with work to make sure we all knew how to have Teams meetings. I had no idea at that point that Teams meeting were my new way of life.

Supermarkets closing off aisles (our Tesco closed the upstairs. I took a short vid on my phone because i know history will be rewritten later on) You cant see any supermarket staff in my vid. Its just a vid of the upstairs blocked by pallets of Christmas chocolate. This was last November. Yes i know this was to make it "fairer" for high street businesses who had to close but not being able to access certain goods affected poorer people the most, those who cant or dont want to shop online.

This gave out the message that some of us dont matter, then they try to say that we DO matter when they want us to follow restrictions and not see families etc.

The day my husband came home from work and said that a man in his office was in intensive care on a ventilator and everyone had been sent home until further notice. This was mid March, two weeks before the first lockdown. Suddenly it was very real.

The man concerned left hospital a few months later and my husband is still working from home.

My mild-mannered DH yelling “do something, you useless wanker!” as he listened to Boris Johnson tell the nation how serious COVID was, but that his response was going to be to do nothing.

Taking the dog for a walk and standing on a pedestrian bridge over the normally heaving dual carriageway.

Not. One. Single. Car. In. Sight.

It was so weird! Like a scene from the walking dead (without zombies).

SemiFeralDalek

I’m so sorry

@Watapalava

Not one moment but I often wandered how in nazi tea how people could snitch on their neighbours

Then covid happened and I saw how morality went out the window

I thought about this a lot. DH is Jewish, and it was chilling how many mumsnetters would have ratted us out if we'd been hidden under the floorboards or in someone's attic.

Anyway, things that stuck with me (I'm an expat in NYC):

• getting an email that DS's daycare was closing for good and just sobbing uncontrollably in the kitchen. Realizing that it was not going to be "three weeks to flatten the curve".

• taking baby DS for a walk and seeing the streets crawling with soldiers because we were right by the temp army hospital. Just standing and staring in shock.

• DH's grandparents dying of Covid within 24 hours of eachother, and then having to sit Shiva on zoom. Soul crushing.

• Forming a pod with 2 other mums and going to the park every morning through the summer. Just sitting together on the lawn at 7am with coffee and croissants desperately trying to claw together some semblance of normality for our babies.

• Having to put a mask on DS when he turned 2 and had to be masked inside and at his new daycare. I just went home and sobbed because so felt so awful for him.

Getting a letter from the government telling me not to go outside and did I want a box of basic rations was a low point. Reading on here that people who couldn’t go out and needed help with shopping should be grateful for whatever they got and were very very very unreasonable to still want nice tomatoes was profoundly depressing. On the other hand the weather and the silence was beautiful. And the first time we went for a walk all the painted stones the children had left along the trail made me very emotional.

So many heartbreaking stories. I'm so sorry for all your losses and pain.

My young cat died suddenly in November. My 15 year old son and husband drove to the vet's in vain, stood outside, cat in arms. My son didn't have time to put his shoes on and stood there on the street outside the vets in a queue of people, who ushered them to the front. The vet was so kind to them.

My son then caught Covid and we tried to protect his asthmatic brother, by isolating our teen to protect the other. I will always feel guilty about that.

Yes, I agree that some of our early behaviour wasn't stupid at all. We knew so little about it and the fact that it was a worldwide pandemic claiming so many lives was incredibly sinister. Meeting a baby through a window and wearing masks in the photos kept everyone safer with the information we had at the time.

Anyway, for me it was googling 'can humans eat grass', to arm myself with knowledge if the threatened food supplies did actually run out.

Taking the dog out in our neighbourhood on a gorgeous spring day, just after the lockdown was put in place. Standing in my deserted neighbourhood feeling like maybe the nuclear holocaust we had been scared of as children had finally happened.

Nothing felt safe.

On my many trudges around my village during the first lockdown the roads were so quiet but I would often pass at least two homes (different ones each time) where an argument was raging. I know on here many had very peaceful and enjoyable times with their families, but i could feel that many people’s homes were simmering with tension and frustration.

Not being able to source milk for my baby.

There is a park near my house that has been shut for maintenance for about a year, then taped off for covid. Then one day last summer I was sat in my dining room WFH and realised through my open window I could hear loads of children squealing and laughing. It was such a lovely sound.

Lots of things for me.

Yes the surreal final week of school/college where we knew 20th March was the last day at school, DH and I were working at home and dc was going to college normally. Thinking he'd be back by May half term at the latest and it wasn't until September.

My mum telling me a friend of hers (elderly) left her flat to visit a deli across the road for a coffee and a police officer telling her to go home (you were allowed out for food and drink - idiot man - my mum wouldn't' have complied if it had been her).

The ridiculous "trying to make themselves relevant" of local councils, taping up playgrounds, park benches, blocking off car parks, lots of nannying on social media, but they couldn't keep the tips open of course.

All the people jumping into bushes to avoid me when I was out running and shedding my covid-fumed sweat everywhere (apparently).

Also the realisation that the some police forces will hard handed enforce guidance as law. That really has stayed with me and I do think it has eroded some trust yes fortunately people did argue and they had to back down. But of course there are a lot of people who didn't know the difference between guidance and law themselves so took the police uninformed word for it. Oh yes I also remember the person on here who worked for the police and said she had no time to check what the law actually said. Errr...that's kind of your job!

The antics of Derbyshire police. And Gloucestershire police saying they would patrol the England-Wales border when the restrictions were different in the two countries.

I think the police and local councils have come out this extremely badly.

@beentoldcomputersaysno

Not being able to source milk for my baby.

Oh gosh that must have been scary. I remember people not being able to get hold of Calpol etc but they posted in local Facebook groups and were given some.

Oh and I think quite a few of us were saved by our Brexit stockpiles. I had loads of loo roll and tins of fruit , wine and coffee.

Thank you for bellinisurge's advice!

[quote rottd]@RedToothBrush so are you saying all the covid/pandemic things like not seeing family would have been better if you had more dry goods? I guess we just have different needs & wants.

** [/quote]
I think the point was that you didn't need to worry so much. My mum had also got a Brexit stockpile so I didn't need to worry about her running out of basic food or loo roll. Others have said on here they worried because they didn't live near shielding parents.

The feeling that I would rather be dead than live like that. It hasn't entirely gone away. I'm not depressed I just know that isn't any way to live, survival at most.

I worked in ICU at the time, I remember for the first two weeks of lockdown we were all so on edge waiting for the huge influx of patients, it was so unbelievably eerie. We became a “green” hospital so we could carry out urgent and emergency surgery from our healthboard and other specialities so we didn’t have that influx of Covid. At most we had I think 5 patients. We quickly emptied the unit and repatriated patients to their base hospitals to keep the beds free, turned other units into ICU’s.

It was such an odd time coming to work, we’d get into uniform then have to go to another area and change into scrubs, then don PPE before we could get into the unit.

At home time we done it all in reverse. I had a bag for my uniform which i’d wash on its own as soon as I got in, phones were in plastic bags, I had a washable bag for my belongings which I washed every shift, showered and practically scrubbed my skin raw after every shift.

So yeah work. Working in single rooms with glass walls, doors closed, in full PPE, in the middle of Summer, on your own with the sweat lashing down you, having to phone the desk or buzz to get a runner everytime you needed a turn, or meds, or a pee, absolutely brutal.

@igelkott2021 it was scary. I had about four days worth left when originally went to restock. I remember the one in one out queues outside shops trying supermarkets, chemists, independents, refreshing internet pages for hours to try to order online, phoning shops. There was also some fake message doing the rounds saying you could contact the manufacturer who would supply a dozen boxes. Ebay were selling them for about £70 a carton but even then I was scared they were fake. A friend managed to buy a carton for me near where she lived. Feels like a million years ago.

@Watapalava

Not one moment but I often wandered how in nazi tea how people could snitch on their neighbours

Then covid happened and I saw how morality went out the window

So many moments. However this one moment, this one realisation stood out for me the most. And it shocked me to the core. I had always wondered how people could snitch on neighbours. I didn’t think it possible in western society in present times. How wrong was I.

Mine is a sad one. I'll never forget my DM in the back of an ambulance unconscious. I called her name she opened her eyes from a deep unconscious state to see her child (40 year old me). I never saw her eyes open again.
She died two days later of covid.

A colleague sadly telling me that her little boy was anxious reading a book about a teddy’s party because ‘They can’t have a party mummy!’