Remote Access

Just a couple of weeks ago, there were certain areas of our computers where very few of us had ever been; under the stresses of the times intrepid souls have ventured into those unfamiliar hinterlands and have discovered - Microsoft Teams. From never having participated in anything of the kind before, yesterday I attended two meetings via Teams in the evening. I couldn't get the program to recognise my computer's camera, which seems thoroughly suspicious but appears to be due to a box not being ticked on the Teams website. The school governors' meeting was calm and orderly, marshalled by the school secretary who'd worked out how to manage the program and then tutored individually those of us who were a bit clueless; the ATC committee meeting, in contrast, was chaotic as nobody knew quite what to do and everybody kept playing with the format. It was a bit like watching attenders at the Toddler Group battling over a favoured toy.

I could have attended a third meeting had I had the will, of the management board of our local ecumenical Christian youth work charity. That wasn't carried out via Microsoft Teams but Zoom, another application people have only just discovered. Unfortunately - having just mentioned the Toddler Group - I can't get out of my head one of the songs we customarily sing, 'Zoom zoom zoom, we're going to the Moon.' And now, friends, if you are familiar with that lyric, neither can you.