Lee Randall: Communication breakdown isn't what it used to be

Published on Friday 30 July 2010 12:17

TECHNOLOGICALLY SPEAKING, I'm more of a late bloomer than an early adopter. So I'm just getting around to Skype.

Of course I'd heard of this remarkable free international telephone service that you accessed via the internet. I'd even read about its clever Scandinavian inventors. But part of me, the part tutored in the "no such thing as a free lunch" school of hard knocks, refused to believe there wasn't a catch.

That changed the other week when my brother emailed from Dallas to say they'd signed on for the service, and suggesting that I do the same. Being an obedient older sister (firstborns are so receptive to authority), I did so immediately.

Except the computer I had running at the time is a bit of a relic (ie: it's more than five minutes old) and hasn't got a camera. Too busy preparing for a long working trip to London to down my tools and boot up the other laptop, which does, I emailed them my brand spanking new Skype address and said I'd need a wee while to get up to speed.

Except I'd forgotten how daft we Randalls can be. The next thing I knew they'd Skyped me and for three fleeting seconds, I glimpsed the sweet, grinning faces of my niece and nephew. I was too slow to respond intelligently and wound up shouting ineffectually at my computer, which, it goes without saying, also lacks a microphone. So I sent a message, instead.

In the other room, my landline rang. It was my brother calling. "I saw you!" I squealed, "but you hung up!"

Intrigued, he had the kids - she's eight, he's ten - Skype me. And so began 40 minutes of hysterical chit chat designed to demonstrate the marvellous advantages of free video-calling, but conducted via an old-fashioned pay-by-the-minute landline service. "Don't you find this a bit bonkers and counter intuitive?" I asked repeatedly.

Off camera - what was that about? - I sensed my brother shrugging, so apparently not. And the kids were loving it. Clearly some of the unorthodox behaviour that made our childhood so, shall we say, interesting, is genetic, and has wriggled to the surface in the fruit of brother's loins.

Giggling their butts off, they shrieked, "You're a giant question mark, Aunt Lee." They meant the picture on their computer screen, but it's poignantly appropriate on another level, for despite the blood link, despite updates that come via my brother and sister-in-law (who's more like a proper sister, than one imported by marriage), the three of us barely know each other.

One of my big regrets - not big enough to inspire a move to Dallas, there's nothing on earth that big - is not being able to watch them grow up.

When I have had the pleasure of their company, I've found them energetic, interesting conversationalists, but our phone encounters have been less successful and, frankly, more disheartening. I never felt we could keep up the momentum of those rare face to face encounters. Perhaps it's because the medium is too abstract.

That's all about to change, thanks to the miracle of modern technology. Before the camera, they were the animated chatterboxes I remembered. I had fun teasing my nephew about constantly flicking his fringe, and my niece about shoving her face much too close to the lens to show off colourful new orthodontia decorating the inside of her mouth.

Naturally the minute we found our holy grail, we discovered our diaries at cross purposes, and the experiment hasn't been repeated. Just as well to ease into it gently, since the happy experiment had an unexpected upsetting side-effect: having seen them, at last, I now miss them horribly.