When did you realise it was gonna be bad?

[Emma Raducanu]

Really late on. I was in the shower about to have a post shift wank when I was rudely interrupted by my boss telling me the country was in lock down and not to come to work tomorrow. Properly shit myself that I'd lost my job.

Over the following days, I was glued to world of measures watching the deaths rise and I genuinely briefly felt like we were heading for apocalypse.

[non capisco]

Yeah, it probably was the first time I went into a supermarket and saw that the shelves had been virtually stripped bare. Although the shock was almost immediately undercut by the sight of a bloke sprinting past me pushing a trolley filled with literally nothing but Nutella, which made me burst out laughing in disbelief.

[flotemysost]

My flatmate at the time used to get Tesco shops online already as she hated going to the supermarket anyway, so she already had a delivery slot, but it was pretty entertaining when they started substituting weird stuff for unavailable items, like an entire roasting chicken instead of a few tins of tuna.

Heard a few vegan friends say they had deliveries of dairy milk instead of soy milk etc. which must have been a bit rubbish, especially if they weren't able to give it to a neighbour/flatmate/food bank etc.

Without wanting to sound too virtue-signally, did anyone else get weird looks/comments for distancing/mask wearing around the first UK lockdown in March/April? I remember when I first started to wear a scarf over my nose and mouth to go to the shop (before I got hold of some masks) I got some right dirty looks. Although maybe they were just massive racists and assumed it was some sort of religious covering. Had a few people comment (negatively) on me trying to distance in supermarkets and parks too, although they still do that.

[IsavedLatin]

I was extremely, embarrassingly late to the party. I believe in late Feb (I can't bear to actually check the dates and see quite how blind I was) I booked flights to Berlin for an Easter trip, and almost immediately had to rearrange them -- which I did, to July, the rationale for which was "surely it has to be in hand by then!" (Reader, I still haven't been.)

However once I got that, I was quick to understand the longer-term effects. I think I realised around May that I wouldn't be seeing my family (who live in Ireland, I'm in the UK) for Christmas. Similarly started to dread what the winter had to bring in midsummer. Haven't seen my family now since Christmas 2019.

[flotemysost]

I think it was definitely hard to comprehend the seriousness of it for a while, paired with the fact that there was lots that wasn't yet known (or hadn't been communicated clearly to the public, at least) about how it was spreading, etc.

A book club that I was a part of decided to host their get-together in (I think) late February on some video call platform called Zoom, instead of the venue they had originally booked. Seeing as part of the whole appeal of the book club for me was getting out of the flat and being around people, I took my laptop and headphones to the pub and did it from there, as the thought of a social life that consisted of hunching over a screen in my tiny bedroom seemed a bit bleak. Ha.

[Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse]

Back in March when I started to see yellow tape on the floors of shops marking out one-way systems and 2m distances for queueing. There was a great feeling of "this is real my god this is real".

[mobias]

It wasn't until early to mid March that I realised that it really was looking very bleak. We had conversations at work and none of us believed they were going to fully lockdown here. I remember reading endless stuff on Twitter
that sources in Downing Street were saying Boris Johnson was in no way entertaining the idea of locking down and it definitely wasn't on the cards. Then a few days later there was that press conference.

What I find weird comparing this lockdown to last Spring is that we were all really scared and there was a full lockdown yet the virus wasn't really on a lot of peoples doorstep, certainly up here in Scotland anyway. I knew no one up here that had the virus last Spring.
Now however I know quite a few people who have had it in the last 6 weeks or so up here, fairly badly some of them, yet so many people I know are still going to work and there isn't that sense of real danger there was last year. Despite the death toll and hospital situation.

I watched an interview with Stuart Lee the other day on Youtube and he was saying his guilty pleasure is he really enjoyed the first big lockdown last Spring. I know it sounds bad considering the amount of suffering there's been
but I enjoyed it too. I wish I'd gone into it differently though. I genuinely thought we were only going to be locked down for a couple of weeks, a month at the most. If I had known I was going to be at home for 3 months I would have
structured things a bit differently earlier on. Obviously no one knew though.

Its odd how much of a fondness I've got for last years lockdown looking back at it now but I agree with Stuart Lee it is a really guilty fondness considering how much suffering there's been. It just seemed nice that modern life
slowed right down to a halt for a few months and people took stock of themselves. There was a nice communal vibe in the air for a little while.

I remember going back to work at the start of last July and I was quite shocked and almost weirdly disappointed that life was returning to normal. It just felt too quick and it felt like that communal spirit evaporated all too soon.

[Blinder Data]

I don't know if there was a proper moment of realisation. It was a slow, creeping thing. Throughout February my friend would show me worrying clips from China he found on Twitter, which I didn't know what to make of. Some time later I saw some bloke wearing latex gloves and a medical-grade mask in the supermarket remonstrating with shelf-stackers, and thought "that's a bit much". My brother in Spain would WhatsApp us like Kyle Reese in the Terminator: "I am from the future, you need to be prepared!". I only started working from home the week before lockdown and that was my own choice.

I feel blessed in that no one who is close to me has died of it, which would affect my feelings. Even though, like everyone else, I know how bad it is, if no one I care about has died of it I don't feel like I know, you know?

I cannot believe the UK is in this situation one year on. I was chatting to a friend in Shanghai today. He said they had one strict lockdown last spring but, apart from international and domestic travel restrictions, everything is pretty much as it was before COVID-19. Here on plague island, that seems unimaginable.

[Dex Sawash]

Enjoy reading the oldest threads in this SF. Lots of 1 pagers and RFV doing his thing.

[Mr Eggs]

Getting a phone call from my manager to see if I'd fancy having a chuck at working in a crematorium.
Don't mind it. Good lads and banter. Did it till June.
Putting the labels on the racks in a temporary mortuary complex to hold 1100 potential dead in 3 air con tents. That shit me right up. One tent was 600 capacity, coffins to be racked 4 high. It would of been like the Ikea warehouse of dead folk.

Funeral celebrants getting £200 a chuck for 20 minutes work was a bit of pisser.

[Dr Rock]

When they delayed the Bond film (and why).

[Norton Canes]

I think that Van Morrison song really brought it home

[Utter Shit]

Very early on for me, working in a uni with a large Chinese population we knew pretty quickly that it was going to be a major issue and there was a weird, unsettling purgatory for a while where it was understood that shutting everything down was inevitable, but the government weren't doing anything. We were aware that the uni - and therefore just about everything else in the country - was almost certainly going to shut a good three weeks before it actually did, Christ knows how many deaths that delay caused.

[phes]

11th March, 2020. The Budget.

I'd already cancelled my travel plans in the couple of weeks before and begun talking with friends and colleagues about how serious and enduring this could be, but seeing the arrogance and ignorance on display that day for the budget to go ahead in the way it does, crammed in there, whooping and cheering. That's when I realised why it was going to be so bad in the UK

[Sonny_Jim]

It's an Australian tradition to go to Bunnings (DIY shop eerily similar to B&Q) on a weekend and have a 'Bunnings sausage'.  Each branch has a small tent with a grill, that sells exclusively sausages served on a single piece of sliced white bread.  It's staffed by local charity volunteers, which is where the profits go.  There's even special dispensation in the Health & Safety laws that they must only serve sausages, no burgers allowed. Nothing beats walking around looking at garden furniture and barbecues you can't afford whilst chomping down on a greasy sausage.  Famously one guy got fined $9000 for sending his drone to pick up a bunnings snag.

Shit Got Extremely Real for a lot of Australians when they shut down the sausage sizzles.  It felt like one of their rights was being taken from them.  The final straw.

[George Oscar Bluth II]

When convoys of army trucks were shipping the dead out of Bergamo and Boris was missing Cobra meetings.

Yes remember when THE PRIME MINISTER OF THE UNITED KINGDOM disappeared to chequers to write some shitty book spend quality time with his partner and we heard nothing from him for a week while shit started to get real in Italy and Spain and so on.

11th March, 2020. The Budget.

I'd already cancelled my travel plans in the couple of weeks before and begun talking with friends and colleagues about how serious and enduring this could be, but seeing the arrogance and ignorance on display that day for the budget to go ahead in the way it does, crammed in there, whooping and cheering. That's when I realised why it was going to be so bad in the UK

Yeah this would have been the week after the supermarkets were stripped clear of stuff. Bizarre how long the government insisted stuff could continue as normal despite the fact things were clearly not normal.[nb]This is, incidentally, why the conspiracism rings so hollow. At what point do you believe this government wants to lock us in our homes? They clearly don't really want to lock us in our homes now.[/nb]

[The Culture Bunker]

My other half was still in Iran a year ago, so I was aware something serious was going on as well as being worried of it affecting our visa process (in the end, it delayed her arrival by eight months). But somehow, I never really clicked things might go the way they did here until a few days before the first lockdown announcement - work only really made plans on the Thursday and then that weekend it was 'stay at home'. I went for a walk out and saw lines of people outside the supermarket, and others rolling out with trollies full of bog roll and tinned goods. Strange days.

[Huxleys Babkins]

When Johnson was still trying to laugh it off in spite of the utter carnage in Italy and then trying to act like if we were stubborn enough it'd be too intimidated to have a go at us plucky Brits.

All that time to prepare and fortify the country and he just squandered it and made it worse. He should be in jail.

[idunnosomename]

and we're a fucking island, so we should've been better than continental europe, not worse

the honest to god time realised we were fucked was the week beginning 16 March. 17th is St Paddy's, and Ireland closed all its pubs. We still had the Cheltenham Festival, 16-19 March, but with hand sanitising stations.

are brave boys should hold a coup and court-martial the cabinet and have them hung.

[QDRPHNC]

Had a big trip planned, big 4000 mile southwest road trip. My sister and her husband bringing their kids over from N. Ireland. Had everything book, the hotels, spent ages figuring out the route, bought tickets for Shin Lim in Las Vegas, it was going to be fucking brilliant. Had to cancel, obviously.

But I think when it really sank in for me was the first time I went to the supermarket and saw a line-up of masked people waiting to get in.

[peanutbutter]

When Italy was going to shit but it hadn't properly made its way here yet, second last week of february?

Bad meaning a month of working from home. If I knew it was gonna be this long I'd've probably spent the end of february getting wrecked or trying to guess what country I could escape to that would handle it best tbh (Vietnam? would they have booted me out?).

[Toxteth OGrady]

12th of March, we'd gone to see Tony Law in Manchester. I was having a piss and a bloke walked into the gents, washed his hands, and then walked out again. Never ever seen that in my life.

We sat in socially distanced seats at the side of the gig after that.

[Ferris]

Still haven't fully acknowledged how terrifying it is, intentionally, as a coping method. I'm just getting through one day at a time, projecting as much normality as possible for everyone around me, and hoping it will end soon.

The first few weeks were very scary because no one really knew what was going on or what the best advice was to avoid it or how dangerous it was for different age categories and all that and what the fuck happens to our jobs and oh Christ nursery is closed down and the grocery store is closed and there's no bog roll and no one has N95 masks or hand sanitizer etc etc etc.

I'm actually delighted I massively underestimated it, because if I'd known how long this would drag on for I would have been panic-stricken. Now I've sort of adjusted to the new normal, focusing on what's immediately in front of me and within my control without really stopping to think about it all too much.

There you go - the show runners for I Love 2020 can have that for free, but I'll need SAG minimum if they want me to do the talking head bit as well.

[gilbertharding]

It's an Australian tradition to go to Bunnings (DIY shop eerily similar to B&Q) on a weekend and have a 'Bunnings sausage'.  Each branch has a small tent with a grill, that sells exclusively sausages served on a single piece of sliced white bread.  It's staffed by local charity volunteers, which is where the profits go.  There's even special dispensation in the Health & Safety laws that they must only serve sausages, no burgers allowed. Nothing beats walking around looking at garden furniture and barbecues you can't afford whilst chomping down on a greasy sausage.  Famously one guy got fined $9000 for sending his drone to pick up a bunnings snag.

Shit Got Extremely Real for a lot of Australians when they shut down the sausage sizzles.  It felt like one of their rights was being taken from them.  The final straw.

Bunnings still going? They took over the UK chain Homebase a few years ago, and filled the shops with 4 burner barbeques at £700, and massive workbenches and toolchests and all sorts of stuff that they were never, ever going to sell in this country, and withdrew two years later writing off £585M.

[wooders1978]

At the end of feb my mum was hospitalised with multiple organ failure and very nearly passed away (n.b. her life was saved by very hardworking dedicated NHS nurses who refused to write her off even though the so called "expert" doctors had, they are the best among us are nurses)

She was there for a good few weeks obviously and it was very unerring to see a major hospital go from busy corridors to gradually emptying and then seeing extra beds lining the corridors in anticipation of what was to come - eventually towards the end of March I was told I couldn't visit mum anymore; then 2 days later they discharged her early as she was "no longer safe at the hospital" - she was definitely still too poorly to be discharged; so shit got pretty real for me in those moments!

[machotrouts]

An Atlantic article headlined "You will probably get the coronavirus" that did the rounds on Twitter in late February was when it went from being some boring trending hashtag that would never affect me, to some boring trending hashtag that I suppose might affect me. But I didn't actually read it and assumed it was just a shitty little new kind of cold or something, because otherwise wouldn't society be collapsing right now? Pfft, not interesting, let's read about something else. What's going on in Labour? Is Rebecca Long-Bailey leader yet?

My brainmelt moment was on the 17th of March: the cancellation of Edinburgh Pride, which had been scheduled for the 13th of June. That was the first time I'd heard of anything later than April being cancelled. June is months away? That's... in the future?? Isn't this just a thing that's happening in the present??? Isn't the worst case scenario we lock down for a couple of weeks then everything goes back to normal???? We can't still be doing this in summer..... can we?????

[jobotic]

Yeah, I was in the pub on March 9th and we vaguely talked about it but not that bothered. Two weeks later I was terrified and very angry that work wasn't shutting down.

I mentioned to a friend that I didn't think we'd be going on the holiday we'd booked in France in May and he mocked me - because of Covid? It'll all be over by then, don't worry about it!

[Ferris]

I was supposed to be going on a lads holiday to Montréal in June as a result of accidentally befriending someone with mild laddish tendencies (who had more openly lad-mates who I suspect were the driving force) and I was really anxious about it. Talk of going to clubs made me feel ill so listen covid canceling THE ENTIRE WORLD is not all bad is what I'm saying.

Remember thinking "well there's no way that'll get canceled" because I thought this would be a 3 or 4 week thing tops. Idiot Ferris cunt strikes again.

[shiftwork2]

An occasional flight of fancy is for me to imagine explaining to my Feb 2020 self what's about to happen.  Where would you start?  I suppose with 'there's a flu-like pandemic for which there is zip immunity and there has been no preparation and everyone has to stay 2m from everyone else for a year with everything that that implies'.

I mean it just invites a big fat WHAT

[willbo]

some time around Feb 2020 people on my local area's facebook group were asking if their workplaces were being closed down, and I and everyone else in the group were laughing at them and treating them like flat-earthers. Someone was posting them fake rick-roll links about lockdowns and even the admin of the group (local community leaders) were putting laughs on them.