It wasn’t meant to be like this.
I’d swallowed a nut the wrong way on the drive into Midhurst and was having a coughing fit in the queue for Tesco. These days, the two metre social distancing guidance quickly becomes a five metre total exclusion zone if you happen to be coughing, and no amount of me saying ‘nut’ and pointing at my throat was going to make any difference. I was about as welcome as a kind thought at a Trump rally and, understandably, no one wanted to pat me on the back.
Still, it gave me time to think through what I was going to say in my stint as guest speaker to the Edinburgh and Midlothian Beekeepers Association in a couple of hours’ time.
Three months ago, I hadn’t so much as heard of Zoom, or Microsoft Teams or any of the other video conferencing platforms knocking about. Now, they are as much a part of my writer’s world as they are of our social life at home. Book Festivals, annual dinners, retail events and book clubs have all gone virtual and, if you want to be part of it all, you have to surrender your middle aged prejudices and jump right in.
And the world you jump right into is a funny old one. Sitting in my slightly stage-managed study with shelves of improving books behind me, I stare into the sitting rooms, kitchens and sheds of 50 or so people I have never met before, trying to judge through their soft-focus body language if what I have just said has entertained, or irritated, amused or appalled. For the time being, I am looking at many screens- too many to keep an eye on them all, whilst they are just looking at mine. Every mannerism, each sniff or twitch I give, travels over the ether and becomes part of an impression of who I am.
And for a few moments, I am a guest in their own most personal spaces, free to judge their choice of curtains if I really want to, or to watch them get up and cross the floor in silent slow motion to go and make another cup of tea.
I have a strange and unusual power, as it is only the moderator and I who are unmuted. In a life when I have often wanted to press someone’s metaphorical ‘mute’ button (and they mine, of course), it is weird that I now actually can.
And then, when the questions come, you can tell who is used to this sort of thing, as the moderator tells them to unmute themselves and ask their question. Archie, who bellows at a determinedly silent screen as if he is trying to be heard in Linlithgow, or Heather, who enquires in crisp professionalism how far ahead I think the beekeeping season is where I am, 500 miles south of them.
Add to this the couple of book clubs, where I have attended as the writer of the book they have just been reading, and the Derby Book Festival’s virtual interview on the day I was supposed to be standing on a stage in one of the festival venues, it all helps. In the Land of the Blind, the one-eyed man is king, and I am grateful just to be given these chances.
But I find myself wondering how much of it will stick, and hoping deep down that the answer is ‘not a lot’. Hysteresis is the scientific term for something which, once bent out of shape, does not necessarily return to its normal form given time, and I treasure the thought that hysteresis won’t apply too much here.
For all the irritations and foibles around me, it turns out that I just love spending time with other non-virtual human beings.
I can hardly wait.
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