Skype Street
Like so many did during the height of lockdown, when paranoia about contacts and movements and the spread of contagion was at its peak, we resorted to subdued Skype parties in lieu of pub meetups - toasting each other electronically and virtually in cyberspace, eyes bleary from excess of cans and screen time. Initially awkward and stilted (people talk over each other far more often online than when face-to-face, lacking many a social cue), things mellowed and relaxed the more one drank (inevitably and naturally), and sometimes three or four hours could fly by merrily, serving to distract one from the fact that you're basically just talking to a computer screen and bingeing blasphemously on your own in your room, like a right little incel, an apt image of the widespread online alienation of our era.
At other times, a poor network connection could render any communication close to impossible, resulting in a lot of fruitless shouting and freezing and tearing out what little hair one had left. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and so for the short term it was an adequate means of social engagement, albeit a very poor substitute for the true warmhearted camaraderie and bonhomie of a pub, and one dearly hopes it will never become the norm now that most pubs have been restored to a sort of life and semblance of business as usual, as of January 2022...
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