Covid memories: Giving birth alone, pavement pubs and hugs outside funerals

For some, lockdown was a time of baking banana bread, rekindling relationships with family and getting fit.

For others, it was a time of unbearable hardship. People had to attend hospital treatments alone, go months without seeing some of their closest friends and relatives, and say their final farewells to loved ones over video call - in some cases without being able to attend their funerals.

Hundreds of people ed us to share their memories of lockdown in response to the BBC's coverage of the Covid day of reflection, charting the high and lows they experienced after the UK entered lockdown on 23 March 2020.

These memories – of new hobbies and relationships, of motherhood and family, of loneliness, of interrupted treatments, of joy and grief – offer a snapshot of what people across the UK went through five years ago.

With many people cut off from their close friends and relatives, lockdown encouraged people to get closer to their neighbours.

Nik Barratt, 56, from Leicester, and his neighbours sat on their driveways to enjoy a beer every Saturday afternoon for 65 consecutive weeks, sometimes with umbrellas or torches.

Other people walking past would say hello, and Nik says that the sense of community is still strong five years later.

Meanwhile, over in Reading people decorated a street with banners, drawings and chalked messages on pavements to celebrate the fourth birthday of their neighbour Felix in May 2020.

"We have no family in the country, so it was really lovely to have that community around us," his mother Julie Ricau says.

People had to make a quick decision about who to go into lockdown with. One woman, who did not want to be named, says she went into lockdown with someone she had been dating for just a few months - and, five years later, they are now living in the Lake District with two children.

Many people told the BBC they were grateful to be able to work from home or otherwise avoid the hubbub of daily life, and instead spend more time with their families, in some cases with their adult children returning home.

Rachel Newton-Carroll, 51, Sheffield, formed a bubble with her parents, who lived a short drive away. She was able to spend more time with her father, who had prostate cancer, visiting National Trust properties and going for short walks.

"Most people went through horrendous things during Covid," she says. "So the fact that I can turn around and almost say it was a blessing sounds really awful. And I do feel guilty for that sometimes."

Others relished their time alone during lockdown. People told the BBC they made sourdough, started exercising, wrote books and took the time to appreciate nature. They reminisced about quiet city centres and skies clear of contrails.

Eva Charrington, 59, from Tonbridge, Kent, took up watercolour painting.

Speaking about her new-found hobby, she said: "I was in a completely different world and I just completely forgot all the chaos and stress that was going around.

"I don't do so much now because life is just so busy in a sense. I miss those times when I couldn't do anything else other than that in the morning."

But for people whose loved ones ed away during the pandemic, lockdown made it difficult to grieve. People were not always able to say goodbye properly, attendance at funerals was strictly limited, and people could not be comforted by friends and family as they mourned.

Sue Stollery's husband Terry died just 10 days before the UK entered lockdown. Sue, 64, North Wales, says she was only able to invite nine other guests to his cremation.

They had to sit apart during the ceremony, but when they went outside afterwards, "we did all hug, even though we weren't supposed to," she says.

Jo Linney, 66, from east Hertfordshire, says she will "always feel guilty" for not being able to visit her daughter Sarah in hospital in the final days leading up to her death in April 2021. She had been hospitalised following a stroke earlier that year and only Sarah's husband was able to visit her during the final days of her life.

Jo's process of grieving was complicated by lockdown. Her husband had died in 2018 and she lived alone during the pandemic.

"I think the most difficult thing was dealing with all of this at home on my own," she says. "There was nobody to give me a cuddle. When you have to make the phone calls telling relatives that she's died, there wasn't anybody's shoulder to cry on when I'd made the calls except two labrador dogs."

For people who were ill during lockdown, their treatment had to continue, but it had to be adapted to social distancing. Some people had to go to hospital alone or get their treatment at home instead. groups switched to online and some treatments were delayed as the pandemic put huge strain on the NHS.

Steve Priest, from Manchester, and his partner were both diagnosed with cancer at the start of lockdown and moved in together so that they could take turns looking after each other.

"We were trapped and there was nobody, there was no network and it made it 10-times worse," he says.

"You had people moaning about toilet rolls," he re. "Are you for real":[]}