Lovely Mrs M needed some help with her computer. I bravely volunteered myself to help out… it’s funny how in comparison to people of my age I am clearly not very technical at all, and it took me until my mid twenties to learn how to use a spreadsheet properly, and the keyboard short cut to copy and paste! Yet with the older generation, even just turning a computer on is seemed as wizardry!

Mrs M was incredibly on it with her technology, and was able to whizz her way around her desktop with ease. Her problem was with Zoom. Remember Zoom from all the lockdowns ago?

Lovely Mrs M was trying to use Zoom to stay in contact with her family, and with her support networks. Her lovely husband had recently been diagnosed with dementia and she was linked to some wonderful online resources, including a weekly Zoom support session. Now Mrs M had managed to get onto the Zoom, but not work her video or her audio, so it had not been a particularly successful time.

Cue Lucy. Firstly, I managed to put a link to Zoom on Mrs M’s navigator bar, which she was thrilled at. We then tried to open up the link to her most recent invite to see what was going on. Turns out the camera had been paused, and the microphone muted. I showed Mrs M how to change this - and like magic our faces popped up on the screen!

Time to practise with the real thing, so I started a call between my phone and Mrs M’s computer. Cue excitement as I let Mrs M into the chat, and she clicked on the small camera and audio icons. We shrieked in excitement. Party because there were now two Lucy’s on the screen, and partly because the feedback between my phone and her computer was ear piercing!

I ran downstairs and got Mrs M to practise muting and unmuting herself, and turning her camera off and on. Even Mrs M’s husband gave us a wave from one side of the house! In the words of Borat, it was a great success.

Mrs M was zooming chuffed. She asked if I could work some techno skills on her Facebook messenger too (as she was not able to work her camera for the video chat function). I had a look but despite trying the whole turning it off and on again thing and several calls again and a lot of button clicking, we weren’t quite so successful. Never mind.

The main thing was she was able to work her video calls again, and will be zooming around the internet in no time! Something that might seem very small will hopefully make a huge difference for Mrs M and her husband now.