No matter who you are or where you were – we all felt some kind of loneliness in lockdown.
Aside from weekly trips to the supermarket, the only way we could still try and feel like part of society was through social media.
Having run Facebook pages prior to the pandemic, Benny and Charlotte Cassidy from Enniskillen knew this all too well.
And their page, Enniskillen Banter, got many locals through the hardest months of the pandemic.
Benny has witnessed some difficult things in his 36-year career as a hospital porter.
The 62-year-old said seeing people so sick from coronavirus was particularly “distressing”.
But when he came home from a long shift, and his wife from looking after her father, they would log onto Facebook and into their Enniskillen Banter page – with one motive in mind: "To lift people’s spirits."
He said: “At the height of the pandemic, there used to be people coming onto the page that were quite upset and anxious.
“The group, as a group, supported them, and said, ‘You’re not alone, we’re all in this'.
“The theme of the page is humour, but also about creating positivity.
“People feel they belong to something, you know?”
The Facebook group launched in 2019, and already has over 18,500 members.
And not just from Enniskillen, but "from Zimbabwe to New Zealand" Benny said, and many locations in between.
He said: “A lot of them don’t have any Enniskillen connection. But people from all over the world – they’re finding the same stuff funny.
“They get the humour, even though it might be Fermanagh humour,” he laughed.
What started as "a small effort to try and lighten things" has turned into a huge community for the people of Fermanagh and further afield.
One that got many through the worst stages of the pandemic - including the founding members themselves.
Benny said: “You’d go on the page and it would lift [us], just to see what people were writing. There is that wee sense of community.
“I couldn’t do without the page now myself. I get so much pleasure out of it.
“People feel able to talk and discuss things and share things.
“It wasn’t as much us helping them as them helping each other. People are keen to just get through this some way or another.”
