*Title credit to JCB
We saw my family last night. It was such a great feeling to all be together again.
Bella sees my mum every day, which she really enjoys, and Henry and Judy - Andy’s mum - hang out most days.
On Friday night we had a late night after attending a 40th birthday party.
Oh OF COURSE I’m talking about video calls!
I know we’re not the only ones who are far more social now than we have been in recent years, seeing loads of friends, family and acquaintances we struggle to catch up with in person once a year.
The last two weekends we’ve done a scavenger hunt with the Douglases (who I know love a good blog mention), and Henry has had a Zoom chat with his old nursery pal Drew.
Today he’s embarking on a chess tournament with his NCT gang, and last week Bella had a glorious chat with her friend Saffron in which I overheard them both empathising with each other over how much they miss their respective nurseries.
Judy has been reading a Roald Dahl book with Henry - to the point she is itching to read on between sessions - and Mum has been reading a bedtime story to her granddaughters at 6pm every night for over a week now.
We’re all seeing far more of each other than we ever do normally, and if nothing else it buys me half an hour to concentrate on whichever of the children aren’t occupied on the laptop.
That said, while socialising behind a screen is great when it’s your only option, it’s certainly not the most natural way to carry on. People speak over each other, background noise can get in the way and the kids spend most of the time either yelling at the screen or pulling faces at their own image.
My personal favourite was when my Dad was reading a lesson in a Zoom church service. I joined the call for a bit of moral support and had a joyful 40 minutes watching a lot of people over a certain age struggling to locate the mute button during the hymns. I can only imagine the havoc that the feedback played with their various hearing aids….
Anyway, the C-B quiz night was easily one of my favourite evenings since the lockdown began. We each took a round, Julia and Dave cheated by enlisting her in-laws off camera, Mum thought the toys that had seen a 60% sales increase across Europe were jigsaws, rather than sex toys, and no one would believe there were a total of just 246 deaths over the course of the first 14 series of Midsomer Murders. I haven’t laughed that much for a good while.
As much as I miss my family - and I know how desperately our parents miss the kids - video calls are a very lovely substitute. And they are something I am confident we will continue long after Coronavirus is just a memory. But maybe as an addition to face-to-face catch ups, not a replacement...
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