The Z-Word ... and a Bit More!

I suppose it's a regular question in many a household - whether we're in lock-down or not - "Is there anything worth watching on the telly tonight?"  In my case, in a household without a TV, it's one that's never asked, not least because there's no one to reply anyway.  But with endless days spent in the same two or three rooms, disturbed only by the occasional walk around the block, I confess that my attention is often drawn to another, smaller, rectangular screen for relaxation.

I have a couple of shelves of DVDs, a few of which have not actually been watched yet, so there is capacity to provide entertainment of my own choosing, but another phenomenon that has crossed my visual threshold in the last few weeks is something called Zoom.  I first encountered it last summer during my brief flirtation with a small committee whose members were located as far apart as London, Edinburgh and Plymouth.  Now, however it's come into its own in a really big way.

This week for me - if you'll pardon the pun - has positively 'zoomed' by.  Since we started having live-streamed worship on a Sunday morning, the service has been followed by a virtual coffee gathering through the medium of Zoom.  This week started, though, with more of a 'boom' than a 'zoom' when the virtual coffee session seemed to explode.  I had other things I could get on with and decided to abort rather than sit looking at a frozen screen waiting to see what would happen.  I heard later that Zoom itself had collapsed.

By Tuesday evening it had all been fixed and I was able to take part with several dozen others in a Q&A session with a new MP, in the campaign for whose election in December I'd played a very small part.  Wednesday in my diary was 'Zoom Day'.  In the afternoon I attended an 'introduction to Zoom' webinar, hosted from Germany by a lady whose English was faultless; then in the evening I was once more looking at the diced screen.  This time I was one of about a dozen who took part in a quiz organised to raise funds for the hospice for which I volunteer in normal times.  Sadly my enjoyment was not matched by my success .. I came last!

Yesterday was Ascension Day in our church calendar and I spent half an hour in the morning following an international talk and prayer session led by three Archbishops (Canterbury, York and Westminster); it actually came to my screen via YouTube, but had clearly been made using Zoom.  And then, to crown my Zoom week, this evening for, I think, the third time, the men of the church are joining for a chat session, again using the 'Z-technology'.

Now, just in case you are getting the idea that I do nothing but look at the computer screen (it's almost true, but not completely so), let me finish by telling you about two books I've been reading.  The first is The House on South Road by Joyce Storey, the biography of a woman who lived for most of her live in Bristol and was almost exactly contemporaneous with my mother.  And the second, which I actually sat in the armchair and finished last evening, without falling asleep (the usual outcome when I try to read there), is If I Only Had Wings by Paul Daneman.  This is fiction, so I can't vouch for how true to life it is, but it tells of a young man who yearned to fly but was failed for aircrew because of his eyesight, and describes his time on a bomber base in Yorkshire towards the end of WW2. 

While total opposites, these two have each presented me with just a kernel of atmosphere that I might be able to utilise in my efforts on my mother's biography in the coming weeks.