Today marks one year since the last normal day in Ireland

Str8outtaWuhan

What did you do on March 11th last year that would seem crazy now?

I walked my kids and the neighbours kids to school , which was fully open.

I went to the hospital (20miles away)to visit a neighbour from home ( no mask).

Went down to pub to watch the pool match v athletico

Away With The Fairies

That week was not normal for me at all, hearing the news coming out from Italy on March 8. I haven't done anything normal since then.

ShatterAlan

Str8outtaWuhan wrote: »

What did you do on March 11th last year that would seem crazy now?

I walked my kids and the neighbours kids to school , which was fully open.

I went to the hospital (20miles away)to visit a neighbour from home ( no mask).

Went down to pub to watch the pool match v athletico

The lockdown was introduced on the 15th of March.

Away With The Fairies

ShatterAlan wrote: »

The lockdown was introduced on the 15th of March.

Schools were closed on March 12?

CalamariFritti

ShatterAlan wrote: »

The lockdown was introduced on the 15th of March.

Work from home was March 12. That was the beginning for me.

igCorcaigh

I remember taking this screenshot of BBC news on March 14th.

.anon.

Str8outtaWuhan wrote: »

What did you do on March 11th last year that would seem crazy now?

I drove a bus with >90 passengers on board. It seemed crazy at the time, to be honest.

banie01

Happy birthday 'Rona!

Not often I'd wish death on something, but ya can fúck off now!

And when you get to where you're going...
Fúck off some more!

Hodors Appletart

I went for pints on the 10th with a mate, my text said "before this lockdown that looks like it's coming"

I was able to WFH the odd time previously to lockdown, so I told my boss I was WFH the next day (Wednesday) and then I went into the office for the last time on the Thursday.

It was normal for me, but there was a definite tension around, with people worried, and I think we had our first death announced later that day too, so all signs were pointing to an announcement, rumours flying around about the army and stuff like that.

FlubberJones

Worked from home from the 15th March, I remember sayin to the team on a quick zoom call that they "get comfortable this could last two or three months"... we laugh about that now.

I wasn't worried really, I just thought that this looked like a whole hap of hassle... and I was right, I just never contemplated that the heap was so large and that Ireland would be warning of more L5 lockdowns 12 months later ffs.

FanadMan

I was going shopping and meeting up with a few mates when the lockdown announcement was made. Thought I better pop into the local lidl just in case. Total mayhem! There was one guy with a shopping trolley full of bread and another one full of fruit and veg. I reached for one of the remaining loaves on the shelf and the face he gave me was feral! Thought he was going to swing at me.

Think since then I've only met my mates a couple of times and I really miss them. We are all suffering from mental health issues and are from different parts of the country so the meet-ups were quite important to us

Gregor Samsa

We had a close contact of one of the very first confirmed cases in our office in early March, so a fair few people in our office were working from home already by that stage as a precaution, but I worked from home once the schools closed, and the company introduced total working from home for the whole company globally from the 13th. A few of the offices opened up a bit during the summer, and our Taiwan office has pretty much been operating normally for the past 6 months.

The last normal social thing I did was on the previous weekend, were I was at a small wedding.

Our company have given us all the day off tomorrow to mark the occasion. They've also introduced optional permanent remote working, even when the restrictions are all lifted. The executive who introduced this is moving from Minnesota to California, so it's working out handy for him anyway

The madness of this time last year is still hard to fathom. Schools were to be closed until the 29th of March, but everyone was speculating that it would be until the end of the Easter holidays in April. Little did we know!

The next few weeks were marked with information overload and meeting fatigue, as every office, department and manager had daily (and totally useless) "check-ins". They died a death after about a month. In fairness to our company, they handled the whole thing very well, the business didn't skip a beat, and it's just become "normal" for us all to be WFH now (although I still don't like it).

Away With The Fairies

Away With The Fairies wrote: »

That week was not normal for me at all, hearing the news coming out from Italy on March 8. I haven't done anything normal since then.

I had a similar week, that week. My mother's nursing home had already been locked down on the 6th, so I was expecting things to get worse.

On the 11th I went into my boss and said I wanted to work from home full time (already did part time) due to my underlying conditions and he had no problem with that, so it was my last day in the office.

I think it was about a week (or maybe two) later, that we were all told to work from home.

Goodigal

I was at a lovely lunch for a leaving do in Dublin city centre. But we decided we couldn't hug the lady leaving because of the virus. Did not expect to be locked down for the majority of the next year...

L1011

11th was still somewhat normal for me although we knew it wasn't going to last - we'd already cancelled a going away party for someone on the 6th due to the risk for instance. I went to the pub on the 12th. Ghost town.

Spent the 12th in work shuttling around electronics stores finding as much hardware for work-from-home as possible, ran my own credit card to the limit (but got it expensed back within a week thank feck) because the company card holder had already run away to their holiday home! They stayed there throughout working remote though.

Was in the pub when the 'if you have the kit to work from home, work from home' email came through, not that it applies to me. Spent the 13th and the 16th running kit around to people who were stuck waiting for it to arrive.

Possessions make you rich???????

Happy 1 year birthday national lockdown forgive me but I forgot to get you a present.

shesty

Went to work.I went swimming in the evening I think and between work and swimming I brought a child to GAA training, with 2 other kids with me, indoor in the hall at the club (hasn't happened since).

The 12th was my last day in work.Haven't been in the office since then.Pretty fed up with my kitchen table.Pretty fed up with all of it and well ready to move on.

Carodh

My sons birthday is March 13th. Can’t believe he is facing into another birthday that is restricted.

11 March 2020 was a Wednesday. A normal day in my office, based in Dublin city centre.
Back then I usually worked one or two days a week at home.
On Thursday 12th I did just that. The intention was to go back and work in the office on Friday 13th.

On the afternoon of the 12th we got an email to say "Work from home tomorrow"
Have never gone back since.

TheValeyard

I was in class with my students on the 12th. We stopped to watch Leo give his speech from Washington. Whole class cheered that school would be suspended for couple weeks, maybe Easter. I remember telling them not to be celebrating, that this would probably lead to a lockdown and last a long time. Like fcuk I thought it be still going on!!

Then by lunch time the school had nearly emptied out with parents bringing kids home and hearing about madness in the shops over bread and toilet paper.

joebloggs32

TheValeyard wrote: »

I was in class with my students on the 12th. We stopped to watch Leo give his speech from Washington. Whole class cheered that school would be suspended for couple weeks, maybe Easter. I remember telling them not to be celebrating, that this would probably lead to a lockdown and last a long time. Like fcuk I thought it be still going on!!

Then by lunch time the school had nearly emptied out with parents bringing kids home and hearing about madness in the shops over bread and toilet paper.

Like you, was sitting in a school staffroom watching Leo on my phone.
Id say half the school was streaming it as huge cheers went up from the students around the school.
I was supervising 5th years afterwards. They were thrilled. I burst their bubble a bit by telling them this was not a holiday and they would soon be virtually confined to their homes.
Today i was in school with those same kids, but only them. I never thought we would end up here. 52 weeks exactly. Hard to fathom it all really.
I knew it was going to go beyond Easter at that point, but thought we'd be back then.

wakka12

Felt like such a dark/scary time back then. Was doing my Masters and approaching an important examination period so we had to continue working hard as if the world wasn't looking to be collapsing around us, then there was the dramatic official cancellation of the in person teaching from our year head and with such an important year now up in their air we were all very uncertain and worried. Then my brothr and sister came home from their colleges outside Dublin, was weird us all being back in our family home again together. My parents were in a hotel away for their anniversary in another county the day we all arrived back, remember them calling us and being absolutely terrified to go to the hotel restaurant for dinner after hearing some awful death toll in Italy announced that very same evening, they cancelled and came back as soon as they could the next morning.

Nobody knew what was going on, remember shopping with my little brother and sister wondering what we should get, will we be hunkered down for months, panic everywhere, media just making everything worse. My tummy actually did a little somersault there thinking back to that time it was so surreal

Crazy, we were all looking at Italy thinking the poor buggers. My mate said we'd be lucky if we get 10 cases. People just did not understand it at all until it was here.

I remember leaving the office that day, cleaning my desk and emptying out bits with an impending strange feeling that I wouldn't be back for a long time.

.anon.

I realised that it was serious when I popped down to Aldi's (probably this day last year) and the place was rammed with idiots panic-buying bread and toilet paper. I remember thinking if you eat all that white bread, you're probably not going to need the toilet paper.

I actually had to punch an elderly lady to the ground for the last Brennan's batch (don't worry, she probably had an underlying condition anyway).

Junkyard Tom

I'll never forget how quiet it was during that first lockdown, you could almost hear the vegetation growing. Remember animals started coming into villages, and towns, to see what the hell the humans were up to?

FintanMcluskey

I spent the day preparing myself for the 14 day lockdown where never before was so much expected of so many.

byhookorbycrook

Primary school teacher here. The first we knew was parents ringing our school secretary to ask if it was true . We genuinely thought we’d be back after St. Patrick’s Day, so bar a rush for the photocopier, it was ok.
Suddenly, we found ourselves forced to work remotely. No training whatsoever, GDPR scattered to the wind as we tried to contact all of the parents to set up some form of remote learning on platforms we had never , ever used . But we did it . 10 weeks in, a circular from the DES focused on how parents could complain .
A year on, still no national platform, no training, but we continue to “ pull it out of the bag.”Scared about going in to work face to face as a high risk teacher , but longing to see my students face to face .

Dr. Bre

Never forget . Remember people screaming for the pubs to be closed

igCorcaigh

Junkyard Tom wrote: »

I'll never forget how quiet it was during that first lockdown, you could almost hear the vegetation growing. Remember animals started coming into villages, and towns, to see what the hell the humans were up to?

It was so eerie, I remember that well. A real sense of foreboding.

ulster

It's pretty bad. One year on. And probably a lot more time to go on these lockdowns yet

Goodness knows when the Government's gonna get the majority of the population vaccinated. I reckon we could be looking at 2022 before it'll be back to some form of normal.

buried

I remember seeing a lot of video clips, supposedly from Wuhan, of people supposedly falling to the ground dead from this thing which looked ridiculous back then and have turned out now to be not only ridiculous but also total absolute bull$hit. Those videos circulated on the likes of whatsapp et al, scared the Hell out of a lot of people.

GT89

Remember all the brain donors buying up all the bog roll in work. The place was like Christmas. The next week I was off and was supposed to be going to Copenhagen for a few days which never happened. When I got back to work it had changed completely queuing outside the shop hand sanitiser at the door, social distancing markers everywhere and perspex at the tills.

BobbyMalone

Was in work as normal - lockdown didn't begin for me until that Monday. I didn't do anything different that day or week - when there was rumblings about us shutting down it was considered that it would be for two weeks, three tops.



Seems mad now.

Gruffalux

I had booked the following week off and was due to fly on the 13th to Europe to see one of my children. Cancelled flight. Texted them telling them it was just a delay in plans for a while and better to be safe than sorry. Have not seen them yet.

wakka12

buried wrote: »

I remember seeing a lot of video clips, supposedly from Wuhan, of people supposedly falling to the ground dead from this thing which looked ridiculous back then and have turned out now to be not only ridiculous but also total absolute bull$hit. Those videos circulated on the likes of whatsapp et al, scared the Hell out of a lot of people.

Social media has done such incredible damage to society this year, it really has been our downfall. Something needs to be done to help prevent dissemination of such scourges of misinformation in the event of another emergency

I brought a cat to the DSPCA to be spayed on the 13th. There was hand sanitiser at the door, but other than that things were as normal, no social distancing, large group mingling together in the waiting area. We were sitting at a small table with complete strangers filling out forms. But there was a sort of tense feeling around, like we knew we probably shouldn't be doing this.

dmc17

FanadMan wrote: »

I was going shopping and meeting up with a few mates when the lockdown announcement was made. Thought I better pop into the local lidl just in case. Total mayhem! There was one guy with a shopping trolley full of bread and another one full of fruit and veg. I reached for one of the remaining loaves on the shelf and the face he gave me was feral! Thought he was going to swing at me.

I'd say he didn't really think that one through

joe40

dmc17 wrote: »

I'd say he didn't really think that one through

I remember that, all the fruit, veg and bread gone. Plenty of whole grain pasta, nut etc.
You're right the whole survival thing wasn't thought through.

paddydriver

GT89 wrote: »

Remember all the brain donors buying up all the bog roll in work.

Started a subscription with Amazon for 56 rolls of Andrew Quilts per month... dropped it to every 2 months in Sept and then panicked again in Dec and bumped it back to monthly. Have an attic of the stuff now if anyone is short.. keep meaning to log on and cancel next months!

Leg End Reject

The sense of fear was palpable, overnight we treated others like lepers.

Empty shelves in supermarkets full of people before social distancing was strictly enforced. I couldn't get pasta or eggs for weeks. Looking for toilet roll (that was needed, not to build a toilet roll mountain) was like looking for gold at the end of the rainbow.

The fatigue is palpable now and I can't wait for the one year anniversary thread celebrating the lifting of all restrictions.

buried

wakka12 wrote: »

Social media has done such incredible damage to society this year, it really has been our downfall. Something needs to be done to help prevent dissemination of such scourges of misinformation in the event of another emergency

It all comes down to well how your own cognition can digest or dissect what is going on. Controlling social media won't do that if you haven't got the awareness to control and access your own cognition, because some other dodgeball somewhere else is going to end up fooling you offline anyways.

Junkyard Tom

Junkyard Tom wrote: »

I'll never forget how quiet it was during that first lockdown, you could almost hear the vegetation growing. Remember animals started coming into villages, and towns, to see what the hell the humans were up to?

That was strange. Never seen so many huge bees and the birds singing very noticeable. Lots of foxes around Dublin CC.

This lockdown, not so much. Still loads of traffic on the road for sure.

cubatahavana

On the 11th I celebrated my first pandemic birthday, today my second. On the 12th I cancelled our family holiday to Dubai (my son got chickenpox). Little did I know 2020 was going to be a year of zero flights for me (first time since 2003)

elperello

This day last year I got back from a trip to the UK.

On that trip I stayed in a hotel, had meals in restaurants and went to the pub.

I haven't done any of those things since.

That was the last time I was out of the country, I'm really looking forward to the next trip.

Plasandrunt

Group of us supposed to be goin to Cheltenham on the Friday. Decided Thursday morning we weren't going over. Went into town on the Friday and we were in the Stags head all day. Went into town for round 2 on Saturday and places had already started to close.

Temptamperu

As I stay in the whole time nothings changed but the queues outside the shops.

Arghus

God, what a surreal time - not that things have become any less surreal since, but the suddenness and totality of it was something else last year.

I remember going out some Friday night in late February and we were all talking about Italy and kinda shaking our heads and just saying "ah, well hopefully it won't spread too much" and not really giving that much of a fck about it. Maybe didn't want to, looking back.

The mood music was already changing by March. It was starting to dawn, dimly, on me what could be on the cards. The nightly TV was filling up with immunologists who were trying to explain what was going on and what could happen - and all the hosts kept asking about was whether the Patrick's day parade was going to get cancelled. We really had no idea. Go back and watch some Prime Time from around that period - god bless our innocence. Simpler times.

I go to - or should I say I used to go to - a lot of gigs. I went to my last one on March 7th last year. At that stage I was a bit in two minds about whether this was a good idea, but, I thought fck it, it's probably grand, there's only a few cases - there's no point being ridiculous. It was a Saturday night and there was people around, as you would expect, but it wasn't as busy as usual and there was a definite odd vibe in the air. My mind alternated between thinking we were in for it and it's all a load of hype that the media are blowing up out of all proportion. Maybe everyone's mind a was a bit like that.

By the Monday things seemed different again - much more grave and foreboding, the tone of the conversation between people and what you heard around was much more uncertain.

Unreality was beginning to creep in, there was a sense to me of things accelerating. The impossible - a pandemic, things closing, people losing their lives - felt like it was almost here, but at the same time it wasn't here. Is this actually happening?

Normal life was still carrying on, but, yet the consensus seemed to be from anything you read, heard or watched that it wouldn't be carrying on for too much longer.

I remember being in a local Dunnes and watching everybody milling about as usual and wondering was I was going mad. It didn't seem real that something was going to come along and turn everything absolutely arse over tit. Normal life was normal life, reality, it was true and tangible and the stories of viral pandemics and lockdowns seemed fanciful, far-fetched, a bad joke. Impossible. But, yet, at some level, I knew it was coming. Even since a few days earlier, what was coming now seemed more concrete and inescapable. And that was scary. Really scary.

The dread continued on the Tuesday.

By Wednesday, I was a bit more defiant. I remember trying to rally the troops to watch the Liverpool-Athletico match. I knew this was going to be the last match of significance for a while - and who knew how long that while was going to be, or what was going to happen in that while. I wanted to watch it in a pub surrounded by people, to do a normal thing, before normal things might be taken away. I tried to explain it like this to a few, they thought I was crackers - what was I on about? Closing pubs? Stopping football? That's not going to happen! You can't stop football.

I went anyway to one of the locals, with a few others. A strange evening. Usually the place would be heaving if Liverpool were playing in a big game and while there was a crowd, it was nowhere near what you would have expected. People were staying in. And the people in the pub were a bit quieter too. It wasn't as rowdy as usual - people were pretty worried, you could feel it, even if they were in the pub watching the match. But I kept trying to park that feeling in the back of my mind. The match had taken on almost religious significance to me by then - and I don't even support Liverpool. It was a normal thing that was going on and I was going to enjoy it, that was the point: potential impending doom be damned, mud in your eye you viral bastard... and then I'd hear someone in the pub cough and my nerves would jangle like keys on a chain.

This might sound ridiculous, but there was a feeling of absent minded camaraderie in that pub that night. As it turns out, the match itself was oftentimes only half paid attention to by the patrons in the bar, myself included. We all watched it and it was dramatic, but there was a kind of, "ah well, that's life" quality to when Liverpool eventually got knocked out, instead of the usual amount of guys shouting and roaring in emotional hysterics. It was only football that night it seemed, a bit of craic not that significant, everyone else's mind was elsewhere, despite themselves. Given what was happening it was hard to give a meaningful shit about the champions league really, even if you were there watching it.

I must have been in that pub several hundred times over the years and that night was the only night they've ever dished out finger food. Ever. They don't even have a toaster. Nonetheless, on that night they sourced it from somewhere, and lots of it. In retrospect, it's comical. We were already all in a pub, squashed together, shouting and spluttering on each other - what other element can we possibly now introduce to turn this even further into an infection control specialist's worst nightmare?

It did feel like they were just being sound, because people were a bit bummed out, confused and stressed and we'd made it out all the same to give the pub a bit of business when many had, sensibly, stayed at home - so they made an effort, for the increasingly insensible.

It's ludicrous to wax poetical about the emotional significance of some onion rings and cocktail sausages, but, at the time, after several pints, I was touched by the gesture. It was a nice thing to do, they didn't have to do it. It was very human, when the world had suddenly started becoming a bit crazy and uncertain. I suspected that it'd be a good long while after that night before I was back there watching football with friends and drinking Guinness - and it has been. A small pleasure in life that I miss a lot. Like all the little things we all miss.

The next day they closed the schools. Which really did confirm for me that normal life was suspended indefinitely and you couldn't even pretend otherwise - and going to the Supermarket that day was like being at the Fall of Saigon and the last chopper was just about to get the fck out of there. Five days earlier I'd been bouncing around at a gig, storm clouds were gathering off on the horizon, but life still felt recognisably normal.

Now, I didn't know it all.

JupiterKid

One year since the world went into a state of stasis and lockdowns...

It’s certainly been surreal, and rebuilding all the key aspects of my life is taking a bit longer than expected given how everything seems to be on hold, but I’m soldiering on as best I can as there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Barna77

On the 11th it was the last time I went for a pint without being asked for details, needing a booking or anything. I do remember the place was getting busy (some group of tourists) and being aware of keeping a distance from others. Mate and me picked the table the furthest away, and I'm quite sure I was using a hand sanitiser, which I already had as I used them in the gym.

Went shopping on the Thursday after Leo's speech and supermarket was quite busy yeah, even on the Friday first thing in the morning some shelves were empty.

The following week at work we were flooded with cancellations, and by the end of the week I was laid off.



I had been in Spain in late February when the first cases had been reported there. After I came back to Ireland the cases there started soaring, and I'm not sure now if there was any advise here about isolation on arrival :rolleyes: and by the weekend they went into lockdown.
It makes me uneasy every time I think of the packed metro I took in Madrid ....

That was the last time I travelled abroad. I haven't seen my family and friends there since Christmas 2019.

Graces7

It actually made almost no difference to my life at all; the " almost" being that in fact life got easier as more services were put on for the cocooners.

As my immune system is down, I was already in happy and peaceful isolation. Supply lines set up and working well with a local supermarket .. An Post.... the phone and internet. NB boards and ravelry is as far as I will go with " social media".

And our local volunteer group have been and are a wonder.

The only time I have been away was an emergency helicopter flight to hospital. And I did enjoy the journey home by road and ferry.

Else I am an observer in it all. Yes it took a lot of getting used to at the very beginning of the year before covid when the decision to isolate was needfully made. But we survive by being adaptable and accepting change, be it temporary or permanent the year before covid.

So I stopped yearning for more than I have; and am at peace. Such a sheer waste of energy and life is wishing for what cannot just now be. You miss out on so much!

Gregor Samsa

I got a promotion last March, and I remember on the 10th a visiting VP from the US office congratulating me in the canteen and us instinctively shaking hands. We then looked at each other as if to say “we probably shouldn’t have done that”, and both went straight to the sanitiser.

That was the last physical contact I’ve had with anyone outside of my wife & kids, and the gloved hands of my barber and dentist (hmmm.... that sounds kinkier than it is).