Once you’ve got the basics under control, why not learn a new skill?

Online video-conferencing is amazing.

I’m getting to know Zoom – designed for business video-conferencing, and used by many health providers, lawyers, and other professionals.  There’s no reason why you can’t use it for your book club, your gardening group, your service club, your choir, or even your orchestra.

Take a look at this YouTube clip – the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, from their homes – playing Bach, using Zoom (or similar).

There are online tutorial videos, and also live webinars, that tell you how to use Zoom.  They’ve also just put up a new page with links to advice about using Zoom in business (working from home), education (schools needing to teach pupils at home), and health care (doctors and other professions).

Get a friend – or a grandchild – to sign up at the same time as you, and allocate one of you to ‘host a meeting’, and play with it until you get used to it.  You’ll be doing each other a favour.

Use the free plan – you can have 1 to 1 ‘meetings’ of unlimited duration, or meetings with several participants for up to 45 minutes.

A Hamilton friend and I are going to have coffee this week – by Zoom. She was going to be visiting Oxford last weekend, and had to cancel her trip. We were going to meet for coffee. We are still going to – I’ll be in a cafe in Oxford, and she’ll be in a cafe in Hamilton, and we’ll chat by Zoom. We both need to practise Zoom (she’s due to be working from home and will be using it then), and the cafes need the business.