Technology is something that many of us battle with.

Some of us refuse to use it altogether, others try our hardest in a constantly changing, and often confusing, techno world.

Even though I would be classed as a part of the generation that is meant to be confident and familiar with such, it is still the case that I don’t know things, or struggle with what some might find easy, and, of course, sometimes technology does just go wrong.

Last week, for example, it was my Mum’s birthday.  Being some 600 miles apart is always a challenge, but with the added issue of their social isolation due to the current situation it somehow felt even further.  Travel, of course, was out of the question. Online shopping was made more of a challenge, with many places closing their online shops. And of course, no amounts of gifts would be enough to replace the hug that I would have loved to give her.

So we decided to host an online tea party.  My brother and his family could join from France, and we could all sit in the safety of our own homes, eat cake, and imagine we were all together as we chatted.  It sounded so simple…

First off was the challenge of the birthday cake.  Luckily, my friend Jo, who lives just doors down from my parents, kindly delivered a whole basket of home baked goodies for them to enjoy.  Next, we needed to get Dad to use some new technology (something which Dad, by his own admission, is not always very good with). I sent a link to my Dad that he could just click on and it would take him to the right place.  How could it possibly go wrong?

Well, as you can possibly imagine, many things did.  I won’t bore you with all the details, but amongst other issues, at several points each of us couldn’t hear one of the others.  We could have got frustrated, we could have got angry, we could even have decided it really wasn’t worth it and hung up. However, we did none of these things.  We all stayed on, sometimes miming, sometimes relaying messages from one to the other, sometimes just pulling funny faces (well, until the video part broke down).

I spoke to Mum later (using the good old telephone) and apologised for everything that had gone wrong.  She assured me that she’d had a great time, and actually had found the whole thing so funny she probably had enjoyed it more.  I know my jaws were aching from laughing.

So, why am I telling you all this?  I guess I just want to say that sometimes technology goes wrong.  Sometimes things don’t go according to plan. We, here, at the Daily Ceilidh will try our best to make sure that the technology used on this site is the best we can get it.  However, at times things will still go wrong. All we ask is that you just bear with us.

We also appreciate that not all of you may be overly confident and familiar with such technology.  That’s why we’re here to help. If you’re struggling with something, let us know. If you’re having problems with a video chat, a link, or any aspect of using this site, just tell us and we’ll do our best to fix it for you.

In the meantime we promise to try very hard to improve our mime skills, just in case…