The Doom of Zoom by Sandra Horn
That’s it! I’m done with Zoom. A murrain on it! Bad cess to it! I’ve always had an edgy relationship with it, beginning in lockdown when our choir went online. We had to mute everybody because the time-lag turned the singing into an unpleasing sound-swill, so each of us could only sing at our machines alone. Not a choir by any measure. I gave up on it after one or two sessions because it made me so sad – all those dear faces in some other place I couldn’t reach. It felt like a bereavement. Worse was to come, with workshops about poetry. Group chats in which I was largely ignored. Looking hard at the image of myself on camera, I began to see why anyone who didn’t know me might have been expecting Nurse, hovering just out of sight, ready to wheel me off to the third bathchair on the right. I know from the mad-looking picture on my City smartcard, taken by a woman sitting down while I was standing up, that the up-the-nose shot really wouldn’t fill anyone with confidence...