Fat Larry has a lot to answer for

In the ‘60s and ‘70s it was a tricolour lolly with more E-numbers than several packets of Skittles, in the ‘80s it was a song about “your heart going boom” (song lyrics by Christiaan Barnard) and in the 2020s Zoom is now a  way of life.

There are, of course, other forms of video conferencing: Webex (this sounds like Tinder, only for divorcees) and Google Meets (an Internet cafe-cum-butcher for dyslexics), but Zoom seems to have become almost ubiquitous and over the past ten-months we have learned to introduce friends, family, and especially workmates, into the room which is now your office, but was the place in which things were dumped; you ate in or where you carried out your secret taxidermy hobby.

Zoom has also exposed our failings to master the medium – Zoom is basically FaceTime, but for professionals.  Although you’re not professional if an uninvited pet appears on your screen; a client asks, “are all those books on the Nazis?” or your mum comes in and empties your bin and proceeds to ask what you’d like for your tea (at least she’ll know what time you’re going to be in!).

2020 will have been the year when the most repeated phrase between 9 – 5 was “you’re on mute”; people with poor urine retention would have been found out by regularly having their camera video disabled – that, and they’d return to the meeting with their flies still open or knickers tucked into their skirts depending on what sex you were or type of clothing you choose to wear.

Unlike Jeremy Hunt, there seems to be an accepted dress code – albeit only for the top half of your body (although, it seems such a long time ago that I wore a tie; I asked Santa for a couple of clip-ons this Christmas, just in case I have a new business presentation to give).  Of course, you can take these calls in your pyjamas.  I don’t, as I don’t possess any and it would be unfair to share the evidence of several hernia operations, plus, with snow forecast in London, I’m not at my best when there’s a cold snap.

We’ve seen into peoples’ houses too and, like that time you were charged with covering your school text books only to witness the next days the person next to you clearly had the most horrific red flock wallpaper in their house (they could have lived in a cinema I guess?) you learn more about people and their environs through a Zoom call.  You can, of course, change the background and give the impression you’re taking the call in front of a blue lagoon.  Well, unless you’re on the set of the next Brooke Shields film, it’s not terribly professional.

So, as we enter 2021 and Zoom very much still in our lives, I do hope everyone got some decent (and comfortable) PJs for Christmas; given their pets access to their Outlook Calendar and remember, WTF isn’t an abbreviation for Working From Home, but might as well be.

You’re still on mute, by the way!