The Lockdown Years

[GTee]

I think Jason Leitch was discussing how the virus could maybe be more prevalent on shiny Christmas wrapping paper as opposed to the basic Christmas wrapping paper. Definitely wash your hands if is shiny paper. Discussions around whether a pie and a packet of crisps was a main meal. Splitting the country into zones. Not being able to fish in a river where the nearest person was probably ten miles away. Not being able to play golf and remove the pin. Without doubt making this up as they went along, but it was the science. One thing that does stick in my mind. Having to arrange to my son and his girlfriend at the top of the garden as they went out for a one hour walk, and they couldn't come into the house. Also, my mum and dad driving in for a visit and standing in the garden in the pissing rain. Not 'allowed' in for the toilet maybe that's not true . Never again 

 

 

[velo army]

22 minutes ago, Inanimate Carbon Rod said:

Memories of everyone grassing their neighbours in for going two walks. 
Having to wear all the PPE gear was fun. 
Worked shifts so remember the whole first summer not being able to sleep after nights cos everyone was doing DIY, it really must have been fun for some tbf. 
Events of the last 6 months with my dads cancer diagnosis has made me realise just how much time I was robbed of and that his cancer or the pre-condition that caused it might have been caught sooner if the hospitals/health service werent so overwhelmed. 

Someone referring to you as "Inanimate Carbon Plod" in the ACAB thread was a particular highlight of mine .

[GTee]

I've just looked at the BBC news website. No mention of the NHS. Is it still under enormous pressure with flu, Covid and strikes? Jason Leitch needs more adverts

 

 

 

 

 

 

[HeWhoWalksBehindTheRows]

Dinner at 8am and a couple of beers? Aye why not.

Pyjama bottoms on for most of the day? Wire on.

Drive from Fochabers to Nairn on the wrong side of the road for pretty much the whole way cause there's not a soul at all out? You betcha.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[RH33]

Trying to home school three children who were fed up and bored missing their friends. There was some very tense times.

The guy on here who complained he couldn't get as wide a range of food for his dietary needs.......he was a vegetarian.......

My 98 year.old Granny, in a care home.......got COVID.........she was asymptomatic The home managed to stay COVID free for 18months which was remarkable.

 

[keptie]

Main memory is getting snowed under at work being in the food industry while the vast majority were lounging about at home doing eff all and getting paid for it.

[Honest_Man#1]

The pros:

• Work went significantly less stressful for a fairly lengthy period
• Commute was utterly glorious with no traffic at all, managed to drive to work a few times without seeing a single other car in the early days which is mental really 
• A lot of “working” from home 
• The first few weeks of doing absolutely nothing at weekends but ordering a takeaway, having a few beers and doing the odd quiz
• Getting back into actively enjoying walking in the glorious weather at the time

Cons:

• Not being able to travel between fucking counties and then even when allowed to, not being able to go inside or stay overnight etc so not visiting family for huge amount of time. Missed a fairly significant period of my niece growing which hurt
• The extreme boredom after the initial few weeks of doing endless quizzes and no proper socialising 
• Not being able to go out and eat in a restaurant/drink in a pub for what felt like a year
• Masks everywhere was a pain in the arse

Probably more cons I’ve forgotten about, but definitely wasn’t all bad for me. I do remember after the second lockdown and the seemingly never ending doom and gloom with a lot of people (in positions of authority) pushing the ‘life will never be the same’ argument starting to get worryingly angry/frustrated/sad about the whole thing. Especially when it became clear that the rules were huge overkill and no longer necessary but were being kept on anyway for no apparent reason.

Edited February 7, 2023 by Honest_Man#1
Copying from a note has went mental with the text, can’t seem to edit text size on mobile.

[The Moonster]

Shaved my head, best mate died, got depressed, ate the worst diet known to man, had a baby, mrs got depressed, quit my job. It registers pretty low on the "best times of your life" scale. 

Edited February 7, 2023 by The Moonster

[djchapsticks]

My take away from it really:

Since covid and WFH initiative, I work for a company based in Edinburgh and previously worked for one based in London. I'd have never commuted that far to either job without the possibility of WFH and I (thankfully) now do so full time with only infrequent office visits needed. I would never have commuted through to Edinburgh 5 days a week.

Also the big difference in our life, my partner sitting out the back around the June of 2020 and lamenting the fact that she didn't want to go back to the shop as it had been an utter shambles for years. She had to go for a couple of operations prior to covid and each time was more of a struggle for her to face going back once her recovery was up.

She sat one pleasant Saturday and asked out of nowhere how I'd feel if we built a summer-house type deal and made it an independently functioning hairdressers for her to start her own wee business, she had the customer base and the knowledge to do it - I was raging that I'd never thought of it in all the years we'd been together.

2 and a half years one and she's happier than she's ever been. It's literally changed her and my life from being in a stage where everything we ever had, we really had to bean-count for it (and would have been in a dire situation over the last several months) to having a healthier household income. I still don't think she'd have ever thought about that possibility without the events of covid happening, so whilst I don't look back on that period with any fondness, there was at least a personal benefit of the situation for ourselves on a professional level at least.

Really fucked with my mental health for a long time though.

[Bert Raccoon]

I'm the kind of person who's quite content in my own company, a few of my younger mates were climbing the walls with not being able to go out and socialise but I was reasonably content just doing my own thing. 

Worked pretty much all the way through but like others, managed to put away a good bit of money due to not having anything to spend money on and glorious amounts of double time overtime which was nice.

Once it looked like we were coming to the end of it, I did find it quite disheartening the stop start nature of it all and it was dragged out for far too long. I'm not going to pretend  it was the best if times but from a personal standpoint it certainly wasn't the worst 

[Melanius Mullarkey]

14 hours ago, Molotov said:

Alternatively

“You know you’re not on mute!”

"Your camera is still on.  Is that your thumb at the bottom of your screen?"

[ICTChris]

For me the lockdown was moderately hard.  In terms of working, we switched to full time working from home a week or so before the official national lockdown.  I didn't have that much gear in my house as at that time I didn't have an office so I was just working off a laptop - I cobbled together a makeshift desk in our room and that sufficed.  We moved house in December 2020 and our new one has a room that we've made an office for me when wfh and a playroom for my son when I'm not.  I work in technology so we made the switchover pretty easily to working from home, no significant challenges.  The main thing I missed personally was going to the gym - during the first lockdown I had a crappy old barbell and about 75kg of weights and just improvised with those in the garage.  When we moved house I bought some more gym equipment and constructed a better set up in my garage - a squat rack and bench with about 150kg of weights and an air bike.  I've now started going back to the gym normally but the garage gym is there as a back up.

My wife is a teacher and in the first 'big' lockdown in 2020 she didn't have any equipment, she didn't have any facility for teaching.  She would upload assignments onto Teams and then check back in the evenings for any feedback.  it was quite hard for her as she takes a lot of pride in her work and always looks to do the best for her pupils.  In the later lockdowns they managed to arrange some online teaching and had a more organised approach.

Our son was two years old when lockdown started and while having a two year old was challanging I think it helped us, it gives your day a bit of structure having a child - you can't sit around all day in your pants watching Netflix.  We fell into a routine of me gettin gup with him, giving him his breakfast and then my wife taking over at 0830 when I began work.  My wife spent a lot of time doing activities with him, making models, making stuff in the garden for his toy dinosaurs or cars etc.  I would always take him out for a walk or a run to the park while I was on my lunch.  He didn't seem to be that affected by the whole thing - he went through a wee phase of jumping to the other side of the pavement or path if someone walked past us when we were out but that didn't last.  It was hard for him not seeing his granny in person for a few months as we see them very regularly.

I only saw my parents and other familyh once in summer 2020 and then not at all until May 2021, which was hard but my parents coped pretty well - they have an old house, a big garden and my neices would go and visit them all the time.  I feel very sorry for young people who missed out on a lot of things in the pandemic - my niece was just finishing her first year at Uni and then had two years of remote learning and missing out on being at Uni etc.  

From the point of view of health, I didn't get Covid until the end of November 2022 by which time I'd had three vaccinations and was ill for a day or so.  My wife got in in January 2022 and was ill for a cuople of days, my son got it at the same time and was absolutely fine.  the only people I know who got it in the initial lockdown period were our neighbours daughter-in-law, who went into intensive care and suffered multiple organ failure with it.  A senior executive in my work also caught it and was on a ventilator for several weeks before eventually taking early retirement.

[Hedgecutter]

Getting peace to finish my uni thesis without distractions (other than this place that I eventually had to ban myself from), which was much needed whilst juggling that and offshore work.  Because of that, day-to-day life probably wasn't too much different to what it would have been in a non-Covid world (but getting to minimise the 'antisocial' tag).  Offshore was good though as I was still able to socialise with plenty of folk, the only difference being that the mess hall tables were organised in exam hall fashion.

Funerals were rubbish though.  Couldn't attend my own grandfather's (last remaining grandparent), and was sad seeing a near-empty hall for my unofficial father-in-law who would have packed the place out otherwise.  Undoubtedly made a traumatic experience worse.

Didn't catch Covid until very late on, and that was during a trip to the least densely populated area of the country.

Edited February 7, 2023 by Hedgecutter

[Honest Saints Fan]

I enjoyed lockdown. I was sent home from work just before the official lockdown due to being vulnerable/shielding. My work weren't set up with laptops so I spent the first 4 months or so spending time with the kids. The weather was fantastic and we got out in the garden every day or for a short local walk. After the previous couple years in my fucked up life it was nice to spend some quality time with the children. 

When I did get a laptop my mum stayed with us so she was able to look after the kids whilst I worked from home. Working from home has been a huge benefit of covid for me. I couldn't manage to get back to the office every day due to disability.

The Highlands, once the rules relaxed more, never really went into a full lockdown again so we were allowed to do more than most of the country so it never felt as long.

[atfccfc]

My abiding memories of COVID years?! It was s****! I'll try and forget and leave it in the past! 

[Musketeer Gripweed]

Went a drive to Barnard Castle.

[throbber]

Having a 2 year old made it much easier for me for the routine purposes and preserving my sanity, I’d have been sleeping til 11 o clock most days and would never get myself going if it wasn’t for her. I don’t know how easy I would find it nowadays with her being nearly 5 and my son being 2 though and I could imagine it being a massive struggle after a few weeks.

i went back to work late August and my company had sacked someone who did same job as me and moved things about the company so I basically took all his work load and some of my old stuff and was made to feel that I should be grateful for surviving the cull they had during lockdown and that I should be grateful to have a job. I suppose the fear and uncertainty about the place made me fall for it a bit and I ultimately had the most horrific 6 or so months working a job I absolutely hated but my head was completely buried in the sand and I saw no way out. My son was born in October when there were big lockdown restrictions and no other family could get to see him until March next year. Our daughter didn’t take to him very well at start and was incredibly unhappy when back at nursery, the day before I went back after paternity leave she fell outside nursery and banged her mouth and was absolutely hysterical, I didn’t have anything to wipe the blood away and had to throw her into her car seat and drive her home and she and the newborn screamed the house down for hours that night which will forever go down as one of my darkest few hours around the time.

Not being allowed to have family staying over at Christmas was another absolute c**t and incredibly disappointing for our sons grandparents. Then the second lockdown being announced the day before we went back to work after Christmas when they said we were going back to regulations we saw in March except for we had to go out and work was another absolute insult. Safe to say September 20 - March 21 were the most unhappy days of my life. 

[jimbaxters]

11 hours ago, GTee said:

I think Jason Leitch was discussing how the virus could maybe be more prevalent on shiny Christmas wrapping paper as opposed to the basic Christmas wrapping paper. Definitely wash your hands if is shiny paper. Discussions around whether a pie and a packet of crisps was a main meal. Splitting the country into zones. Not being able to fish in a river where the nearest person was probably ten miles away. Not being able to play golf and remove the pin. Without doubt making this up as they went along, but it was the science. One thing that does stick in my mind. Having to arrange to my son and his girlfriend at the top of the garden as they went out for a one hour walk, and they couldn't come into the house. Also, my mum and dad driving in for a visit and standing in the garden in the pissing rain. Not 'allowed' in for the toilet maybe that's not true . Never again 

 

 

I remember Neil Kinnock's son getting pelters for sitting at the end of his faither's front path talking to the auld yin, who was in his doorway. It was Neil's 80th birthday and people were ready to kill him for going to see his dad.

Also, Wee Nicola on the telly towards the end of the first lockdown saying, "I'm not going to tell you who in your family you can hug...". Too right you're no, Mrs. Who did they think they were? Honestly, none of them have fully answered for what they did to us.

[ICTChris]

Someone who might know this sort of thing told me that when the Scottish Government introduced the different Zones for local authorities they initially went to the police and asked them to plan for enforcing travel bans between local authority areas - ie having cops standing guard, pulling people over etc.  They were quickly told that you'd need to recruit several thousand officers to do this and that even if you could, should you?  You drive across a couple of council areas if you go all the way round the Edinburgh bypass.

[Molotov]

If we think the lockdown restrictions were bad let’s just think about what countries like China did to their population. 

It was a horrific time. I don’t ever want to go back to that situation ever again but I’m concerned and convinced that governments around the world will redeploy similar or worse sanctions at the drop of a hat at the next “event”.