We’ll meet again, just hopefully not virtually!

MANY of us have had to get used to virtual meetings this year, thanks to Covid measures that have clamped down on public gatherings. They’ve meant that organisations have been able to continue with their work, albeit in this nontraditional manner. Personally I’ve been surprised as to how well I’ve managed to cope with these electronic gatherings, despite my lack of computer expertise.

Still, like anything else, there are drawbacks with being at home and logging on to meet up with others virtually. One of these manifested itself the other day during an online meeting. For out of the blue, someone knocked on my front door. Now were there someone else in my household, they could have seen to my visitor and explained that I was in the middle of a meeting. But as I was on my own, I felt I had no option but to go and see who it was. After all I wasn’t expecting anybody, and didn’t know who it might be. So I left the meeting to deal with the caller, who was wanting some information. I went back on the computer, accessed a website which gave me the knowledge he was wanting to know. I wrote down the details on a piece of paper, and then took this to my visitor. I then returned to the rest of the meeting. Now I hadn’t missed anything vital during this short period of absence. Yet I could have done. For later on we had a vote which was only carried by 6 votes to 5, with me being one of the six. Had the vote been therefore taken while I’d been at the door, the outcome would have been 5-5 necessitating a chairman’s casting vote.

Thankfully that didn’t happen, though I’ll be glad when we can return to proper meetings again and be cocooned in a room where I’m not going to get any visitors!