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Wildest memories from the COVID-19 pandemic period?

I worked from home through the whole thing luckily, ended up doing multiple different roles in those first few months due to my specific department having to effectively cease whilst new work plans were drawn up.

I suppose for mad things right before lockdown attending what was later deemed a super spreader event watching Liverpool vs Atletico Madrid. Bare in mind by this point Spanish football was being played behind closed doors over 3000 of their fans were allowed into the country (Madrid was already highly effected) to attend the match.

After that it was when things finally reopened in the summer and I remember having to fill in a form with my contact details at South Parade Pier at Southsea.

Something I'd have to repeat again at Dunes Leisure to the man operating the Miner Mike.
 
We were talking about this tonight and a couple of things came up:

Shops that had traffic lights on the doors. You had to wait for the green light before entering.

Secondly, how the pandemic has almost become an epoch. Memories and events are either from before the pandemic or after.
 
Alsty said:
Secondly, how the pandemic has almost become an epoch. Memories and events are either from before the pandemic or after.
Click to expand...
Yes, this is a good one! I very often refer to things as being “pre-COVID” and “post-COVID”, even though the height of the pandemic was 5 years ago now!

On a somewhat related note, is it only me who feels like the pandemic made it feel almost like 2020 and 2021… didn’t happen? Ahead of my upcoming visit to Blackpool Pleasure Beach, I was reflecting on the fact that my last visit to the park was 6 years ago in 2019… yet it does not feel like 6 years have passed since then at all. Ditto with other events of 2019 like my GCSEs and me starting sixth form… they do not feel like they happened 6 years ago!

I have a suspicion that the pandemic and 2020/21 being kind of mentally blanked out are a contributing factor in that; the pandemic years being so strange almost makes it feel like those years “didn’t happen”, for lack of a better term, which makes some of the final pre-pandemic years seem less far in the past than they actually are.

On a different note, another odd memory I have of COVID is just how paranoid I was about it. I was really quite anxious about COVID at the time… yet now, I look back and think “what on Earth was I so worried about?”.
 
Had a brilliant night out in Margate to see Blossoms at the Winter Gardens 9th March 2020. Things escalated very quickly in the following days and that turned out to be the last social event for quite a while.

I remember being in a bit of a rough patch that year and found furlough/lockdown a bit of a relief, despite all the fear and uncertainty. I guess it was a reason to be lazy and not feel guilty about it.

Had some friends in a similar situation and we played a lot of Call of Duty Warzone, which helped keep us all sane.

The first few months were pretty scary though with the constant death toll updates. Lots of people didn't take it seriously until it started to affect them personally (including that toff prime minister).

Massive respect to all the key workers during that time.
 
The Thursday clap for nhs workers seems like a really strange fever dream now. We only did it once or twice. Being honest I didn’t see the point in it and felt a bit silly doing it, but I would never have admitted it at the time because people got really weird and defensive over the weekly clap. Acting like you wanted nhs workers to drop dead from Covid or something if you didn’t do it. No it’s just that I didn’t see how clapping from my doorstep every week made any difference to the current situation and I’m not a fan of performative gestures which is exactly what this felt like to me.

Our neighbours opposite got really into it and would ramp it up every week. Started off just clapping, then the pans came out, followed by flags, music and so on. Fair enough, what ever gets you through a challenging time, but people shouldn’t have been judged negatively for not taking part. People had their reasons and it was often nothing to do with not appreciating nhs/keyworkers.

Most people I speak to now look back on the clapping as a wtf moment.
 
The whole 'Clap for Carers' thing just felt wrong from the off for me. In my mind, as others have pointed out, it seemed to quickly manifest itself into a metaphorical dick-waving contest, and I heard of numerous cases where people were shamed for not taking part. Erm, what if they're unwell? What if they have young children in bed? What if they work shifts? That just seemed so inconsiderate to me. Also, I should probably mention that I was still working during the pandemic (I'm very grateful for this, as I still credit going to work for helping me stay sane through actually seeing people who weren't my parents during the week!), and one of my shifts fell on what I call the 'Two Minutes Clap'. It was the random fireworks that set me on edge. I worked in a petrol station at the time. It's probably just me overthinking, but I was genuinely on edge whenever it was that moment each week, and I was ready to hit the emergency cut-off button and leg it out of the petrol station if a firework landed on the forecourt.

One thing the pandemic made me realise is just how little value some people put on personal space. I'd often be putting something on a low shelf, only to suddenly notice someone reaching over me to grab something off a higher shelf with zero warning. Struck me as completely disrespectful, even without the pandemic taken into account, but when we were supposed to be practising social distancing? Seriously? It really wound me up.

I remember one particular shift at work where I was on the verge of a meltdown for most of it, and I'm grateful to my colleague that night for trying his best to help calm me down. Got home, went into the garage to my wine cupboard, grabbed a bottle of Greco di Tufo, and finished the whole thing that night. Didn't even care that I was due back in work at lunchtime the following day - at that moment in time, I really needed a drink. Looking back, that point scared me, and I've tried to be more careful in how much I drink since then.
 
At one point in Berlin there was a rule that bars and restaurants and such were allowed to be at least partially open but any customers were required to have a negative Covid test from the same day. Naturally by the point this was allowed we'd been so starved for human contact by the earlier lockdown that we were taking every opportunity to go out and see friends and eat food in places other than our own dining room table. This meant getting tested more or less daily and it simply became part of our routine. Whenever we left the flat we'd take a short detour to the closest "test center" (read: a local wine bar that had been quickly reconfigured for this purpose) and get stuck up the nose by one of the two young people working there. 10 minutes later we'd receive a QR code via e-mail and that was our ticket to anything fun that evening.

Glad that's over.
 
They made Liverpool lift the Premier League trophy to Coldplay 🫠

Remember like 100 people stood in the spot the year before there had been thousands, all with football scarves wrapped around our mouths and noses 😂
 
In the very early days, when the virus wasn't properly understood so we didn't know how contagious it really was, how it was transfered, or exactly how lethal it would be, but we still had a job to do so kept doing it.

The first few sudden deaths that were suspected covid related, there was a huge amount of nervousness going in to that with just a pair of gloves and the crappy ill fitting rectangle mask. My first one was in a caravan, having to search and move the body in a tiny cramped space where the deceased had been coughing and spluttering over everything for a few days. For all we knew attending that was a suicide mission. Crazy really.

Then later, in lockdown, being out on patrol in towns and cities that always have life and movement even in the middle of the night but it being completely still. I could do a whole 8 hour shift and encounter literally noone. Earie but strangely beautiful sometimes too.
 
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