Zooming Marvellous

As Ms C said, a few months ago no one had heard of Zoom, and now everyone's using it! C had been happily using Zoom and then it stopped working - the tech guy from her hospice hadn't made it any better and she was missing the regularly "Time to Talk" sessions, and seeing her friends' faces. She'd not left the house since March and still isn't allowed to due to her health.

So I arrived to help. I'm a bit of a Zoom afficionado (got a pro account and been using it since 2018, don'tcha know) but I was apprehensive about helping Ms C with her Samsung phone, although I had my suspicions that she might have not yet downloaded the update Zoom forced recently... Which turned out to be the case! So together we downloaded an updated version of Zoom, and tried out getting into meetings.

Ms C wrote down the step-by-step process, and we went in and out of the Time to Talk session a few times. The very first time, seeing each other's faces on the video and hearing her friends' voices for the first time since April, Ms C was overwhelmed: "It's so wonderful to see them!" she said, and we both got a bit emotional.

We went through the process a few times, and I'm pretty confident that Ms C will be able to join the next session on Friday. We stayed chatting for a while and found shared interests - I mentioned my work on women's rights and safe abortion and she knew all about what my organisation does. It was a lovely way to spend a Wednesday lunchtime and great to know that C will be able to spend time (albeit via Zoom) with people she loves to see.