Lockdown Diaries: All dressed up and nothing to see

The signs were there that Saturday, 18 April, was going to be a special day.

For a start, I wore underpants. I had spent the days in lockdown up until then shloofing around in a tracksuit, and underwear seemed surplus to requirements under the lockdown restrictions. Besides, it was one less item to wash.

Then, the missus put on makeup, and I mean the whole bang-shoot. Not just the lip gloss she had been sporting for the previous two weeks.

She also set the table out on our patio, using our best cutlery and crockery, and I retrieved a pack of our favourite pre-cooked ribs from the bottom of the chest freezer to put on the braai.

We dressed up as if we were going to a wedding because, well, in a manner of speaking, we were.

My niece in Wellington in the Western Cape was marrying her long-time fiancé online and we had been invited to join in the festivities via Skype. I had sent her my Skype log-in details the previous week and she assured me she would take care of the rest.

We charged our glasses and gathered around the laptop at the stipulated time, making sure we were logged on to Skype.

Ten minutes after the scheduled start of the wedding, and nothing had happened. Then one of my daughters on the other side of Joburg sent me a WhatsApp to ask if we weren’t planning on watching the ceremony.

I told her we were and that I was on Skype but nothing had happened, so her husband sent us an invite which we immediately clicked on.

And there it was! There were probably a dozen or so other couples logged in, all eagerly staring at their screens. We were told to mute our microphones. Couples left the group and reappeared. After 20 minutes, there was still no sign of the bride and groom.

Then the same daughter who had contacted me earlier phoned. “Dad,” she wailed. “It’s all over. We were on the wrong group! We finally found the correct one but all we saw was the newly married couple exchanging a kiss.”

That explained the confused stares of many on the other group. Maybe they were staring at us. Maybe we were on the totally wrong group, although I could have sworn I saw a few familiar faces.

The bottom line is, being technologically challenged cost us. We missed everything. There we were, all dressed up with nowhere to go and nothing to see …

Guy Hawthorne.

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