Your Place or Mine?

For us during this lockdown, videoconferencing has become a magic carpet.  It is as easy to have a natter with friends who live at a distance as it is people who live just round the corner.

Some of our friends have lived miles from us for many years and we are used to putting aside weekends to see them.  But recently, several other friends have moved away from the south east and are now a day trip away, or even a whole weekend.  And there are only so many weekends in the year.

However, we can now see them for an hour or so on any evening.  If they’re not already busy videoconferencing somebody else, that is!

Similarly, because Pascoe lives in Edinburgh, it is rare to have all our offspring in one room together.  But now we are achieving this once a week.

All this was available before, but it was not socially accepted to meet a bunch of friends as if it was a work conference call.  It is one of the things from Lockdown that I hope we keep. 

Now when we make a social arrangement, we ask “Skype or Zoom?”

Nigel figures it’s become the new “Your place or mine?”

The Queen of Video-conferencing

At the start of last week, I had only ever attended a handful of video conferences, and had certainly never set up a meeting.

By the end of this week, I will have taught Latin to over seventy children and adults via several Zoom sessions I set up.

Communicating with twenty-five teens on a single video call is…interesting, but I’m getting better at it.

I always thought that classroom teaching was not a job I could do from home, but these strange times have proved me wrong.  I feel lucky to have had the previous two terms to establish a rapport with my pupils before we embarked on this new adventure together.

And it’s not just the teachers who are learning new skills – the children are having to learn to work independently without the structure of a classroom and teacher for much of the day.

For those who find their inner discipline, this life skill will be the most valuable learning experience of all; for those who don’t it will mean several weeks of lost education & worried parents.

As for me, my neighbours probably think I’ve gone bonkers through isolation.  My desk is in front of the window and anybody passing by will be able to spot me quite alone, apparently talking animatedly to myself for hours on end.

A Mother's Day Service

At church, Mother’s day is called Mothering Sunday and is said to be the day when people would traditionally revisit their mother church – the one where they were baptised.

But I have always held this to be an evil rumour put about by clergymen who have forgotten to buy their mothers a card.

Mother’s Day is about ME.

Obviously.

So although I’m a regular churchgoer at St Luke’s, I usually eschew Mothering Sunday Services and force my benighted children to accompany me on a day trip into the countryside.

However, due to current guidelines, I couldn’t gather my offspring this year.  We phoned Nigel’s Mum in Northumberland, mine in Cornwall.  My kids Skyped and Zoomed in.

However, the thing that really made it feel like Mother’s Day was, paradoxically, church.

The church Mother’s Day service was not held this year owing to Covid 19.  In the Vicar’s garden paraded a legion of brightly-coloured pots of polyanthus. They had been purchased to hand out on Mother’s Day, but were now unclaimed.

A few of us who could not think up an excuse quickly enough were delegated to place these on the doorsteps of the women who should have received them.

Initially, the freezing East wind and the fact that my recipients were dotted all over town made me curse.  But then I got into it. 

I began to feel a bit like the Easter Bunny come early.

And in the end, one of the nicest things about my Mother’s Day was the thought of those other mothers opening their doors to an unexpected splash of colourful flowers.