On Saturday A festive party on Zoom just isn’t the same

WRITING a newspaper column is like everything else in life: you make plans and sort things out in your mind – but when you sit down to open the literary sluice-gates, you spot some lastminute thing that changes everything.

The exact moment I opened a blank page on my computer screen just now, an email arrived declaring: “More than half UK Brits (53 per cent) are ‘dreading’ the winter months ahead, with four in 10 not looking forward to a ‘Covid-Christmas’. 53 per cent admit that they have felt more down and unsettled than ever before.”

The Schulstad Bakery Solutions Company (yes, I get emails from strange places) was able to state the figures with confidence having hired a leading British polling company to undertake research this month.

I could have saved them the cost, although my figures would have been higher than those quoted. And I speak as a man who has woken up with a hangover after a party.

Yes, a party. A genuine boozy Christmas office free-for-all where things got bawdy and just a little rude (or, I did). I hasten to add that the jollities all took place on Zoom.

And maybe that is why I’d put the figures regarding sadness and discontent so much higher. Not because of the hangover – but because of the grim realisation that get-togethers on digital platforms like Zoom simply do not cut-the-party-mustard when it comes to social interaction.

Video conferencing is brilliant for business meetings. I’ve had several work-related Zoom meetings this week and they’ve saved me travelling a total of near-on 1,000 miles in the car. How good is that for the planet? And how good is it for the poor schmuck who’d otherwise be stuck behind the wheel on Britain’s increasingly dangerous roads?

Very good: is the answer.

It’s not only the pollution and carbon-burning or the potentially perilous waste of valuable human time. It is the fact that video conferencing is so much more productive. Zoom puts a 40-minute time limit on its free-touse service – which concentrates the minds of participants and helps reduce constant repetition, which is normally the time-wasting hallmark of every business meeting I’ve ever been to.

An executive I know who works for one of the richest corporations on Earth tells me he was informed this week he’d never have to work from a company office again because his department’s productivity, operating from home since Covid struck, has more than doubled.

He’s now considering moving out of London, where a one-bedroom house across the street from his apartment just sold for £1.5 million. Why not earn all that dot-com money working from a home-office with a sea-view?

Another person I know, an estate agent in a South Devon seaside town, tells me her office has never been so busy. “DFLs,” she shrugs. “It stands for Down From London.”

So Number One in the Hit Parade called Things We Found Out During the Pandemic is: most stuff that goes on in offices is unnecessary, so work from home, be more productive, save yourself that awful commute, live somewhere nice and enjoy your life. Not a bad hit, that one.

But number two is: if you hope to have much fun in social-isolation, think again. Digital business meetings based on facts and figures might score 10-out-of-10 – but the satisfaction of enjoying one another’s company scrapes just 1 or 2.

A socially isolated celebration is like going sailing without wind. Like a Sunday roast without gravy. It is, indeed, like alcohol-free beer. Devoid of thrills, dry, and somehow unsatisfying. You end up thinking: what’s the point?

My lovely, generous colleague, Hayley, organised last night’s Christmas office party – she even posted us goodie-bags so we could get into the swing of things in our distant, socially isolated, homes. And, over three hours, there was much laughter and jollity. But sitting there alone by the log fire – with my red-flashing festive bow-tie and my fast-melting chocolates and my even more rapidly shrinking bottle of wine – I ended up feeling more lonely than at any other time since the pandemic began.

Maybe it was the booze. More likely it was recollecting a lifetime of parties, of getting drunk, flirting and carousing… Gazing into a little iPad screen perched on a coffee table just ain’t the same. If you think a football match without a crowd is weird, try going to a boozy party online.

As the dog snored at my feet, a huge wave of sorrow swept over me. But the melancholy for my own past was soon overtaken by feelings of sorrow for the youngsters today.

The media constantly talks about the loneliness of old folk this Christmas, but most of us over 60 have enjoyed full lives. How many Christmases do you get in your late teens when you’re legally allowed to drink alcohol and generally go wild? Just two. A few more if you count the early 20s…

It was young people I ended up toasting as the iPad battery died and I staggered off to bed. If you guys can’t party this Christmas, I hope you can make up for it in 2021.

It was young people I ended up toasting as the iPad battery died and I staggered off to bed