This Side of the Pond

I like to think of myself as someone who is capable of change. Someone who embraces the new and combines it with the old in an ongoing effort to improve.

I can “lol” with the best of them. I know what the instant grams are, and why I should be giving them my photographs.

I am aware of those meme things and that it is now apparently the done thing to end a story about the knee surgery your great aunt just had done with the phrase, “and that’s the tea”. (Even though it has clearly been misidentified in this phrase, I’m also fine with talking about tea even more than I already do.)

I know that I can click a couple of buttons on my screen and a package containing pencils, chocolate biscuits and a drill bit set will suddenly appear on the doorstep. I am aware that email is now obsolete, thanks to the advice of my young niece, though I’m not sure what we’re supposed to be replacing it with.

See? I can keep up with the times.

I even use emojis. Only the smile ones and the round ball with the nerd glasses, because I can’t work out what the rest of them are supposed to mean, but it’s a step in the right direction.

What I can’t do, apparently, is figure out this new technology that’s supposed to be keeping us all in contact. I thought I could, but I was mistaken.

I’ve discovered over the last week that I vastly overestimated how ahead of the curve I am. I thought that using FaceTime to contact my parents every couple of days meant I was down with the kids and ready to welcome the future.

At least a little more ready than my dear dad, before he got the hang of video chat. I spent a couple of years conversing with two nostrils and a ceiling fan.

Fate proved me wrong when the two friends I meet weekly for a coffee date suggested we try an online alternative. I asked Mr. Google for instructions and it seemed it would be simple to accomplish.

What I did not realize was that you need to update your phone in order to initiate or accept a three-way call. I do not ever update my phone because I am determined to cling to the belief that my cell phone manufacturer is attempting to ruin my device by making it go slower each time I acquiesce.

It didn’t work on FaceTime, it couldn’t be done on Facebook and by that point I was too exhausted to figure out how to initiate a Zoom call. For an hour, both of them asked me repeatedly to press a specific button I didn’t have available, while my husband sat behind me suggesting I press the same specific button I didn’t have.

In the end, I gave up and chimed in with voice only (before I gave in to the temptation to find a button I could thwack them all over the head with). This meant I missed out on the discovery of filters.

I did not get to witness until sent photographic evidence that one of them had set up purple mood lighting for themselves and the other somehow transformed their own face into a talking foot. That right there is a sentence I never expected to write.

They aren’t the only ones who’ve been having fun with video chat. We’ve resorted to using Zoom for office meetings and it transpires you can change up the background, assuming you know how.

Unless my eyes deceive me, which I suppose is possible, at this very moment my boss is either with the rest of the cast of The Office or somewhere in space with the crew of the Starship Enterprise.

I take comfort in knowing I am not alone in finding this a strange new online world. Another friend of mine is meeting weekly for worship with the rest of her congregation using video chat.

During the service, when it comes time to sing a hymn, all 150 of the people on that call stand up and sing together, in a beautiful joining of voices across the miles. My friend tells me that she puts her heart and soul into the singing and finds it an uplifting experience.

She’s honestly not sure if her dog feels the same. Apparently, having stared at her intently during the first verse, the pup begins a quiet howl that builds to a crescendo. She can’t work out if the dog is joining in, or is begging her to please pipe down if she can’t hit the right key.

On the bright side, I’m sure many of us are going to come out of this isolation period more informed of modern practices than we ever have been before. I just hope I’m still able to recognize my loved ones when they’re no longer a talking foot.