What to talk about on family conference calls

With the ongoing pandemic and ‘lockdown’ facing a decent chunk of the planet, we’ve had to resort to video calls with our families using FaceTime, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp or Zoom. This is all well and good but one thing many of us have noticed is that there’s a lot less than normal to talk about. No longer can we discuss that great new restaurant we visited on Friday night, or about our recent holiday - as it of course didn’t happen. The closest any of us are getting to a holiday at the moment is spending more time in the garden, or perhaps the kitchen if you’re that way inclined.

Subsequently, when it comes to sharing news with our family and friends, there’s little to talk about beyond what we’re all watching on TV or the number of puzzles solved this week and this gets boring pretty fast. For this reason one side of my family has taken to having a weekly quiz to justify the time spent together on a call - and it seems to work well. We all come prepared with a set of questions and take it in turns to quiz other callers.

A nice side effect of us all preparing a set of questions independently is that they’re all rather different and can link deeply to those asking them. Obviously there’s no swapping of answer sheets, but who cares - it’s about ensuring that when we can eventually see each other again, we’ll be able to recognise one another. 😄