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In these times of return-to-office life, WhatsApp Web really comes into its own.
When you’re involved in a GAA club, you’re likely to be a member of a few different chat groups – the “official” ones governing team and committee activity and, of course, the few where you and your friends cut the legs from under everyone else.
To give attention to them all would mean a lot of phone usage.
Thankfully having the messages on the computer means that the wasting of company time isn’t as noticeably egregious – especially when my mother’s somewhat-too-regular communiqués are taken into account.
Sit an Irish Mammy at a desktop computer and she’ll carry out one, maybe two, tasks online – “Sure you get nothing else done, just sitting there” – but give her an iPad and she has all of humanity at her fingertips and wants to experience every last drop of it while also being notionally efficient with her time.
The homepage on her tablet is RIP.ie, of course, ensuring a steady flow of messages. “Sr Robert died,” she’ll inform you, along with the crying-laughing emoji as, “the faces are too small to make out properly”.
But every death means a flow of condolence messages and that’s when she comes into her own.
“Marita Conway said: ‘You were the best teacher I ever had and made me who I am.’ She wasn’t saying that when Sr Robert caught her with a French dictionary under the desk in the mocks.”
Sometimes it’s easier to put her messages on mute, get a bit of work done and then call for a visit in the evening for the omnibus edition.
“The McNamara cousins were quick to comment when Noel O’Shea died,” she’d say as she scrolled furiously down the page. “Hoping for a cut of the will, no doubt. They never missed it.” Then she’ll relate how she’s getting on in Wordle and how Instagram is gone to the dogs “full of young ones posing by pretending not to know there’s a shagging camera in the vicinity”.
Mammy and the ‘meme’
It’s hard to believe that there was a time when she was almost completely technologically illiterate. About 20 years ago, having taken early retirement from her job as a public health nurse, mam applied for a part-time role in a local care home.
That meant garda vetting, so at the end of the routine procedure she was asked by Sergeant Kelleher which email the letter of approval should be sent to.
“Ah, go with carolfitz@hotmail.com,” she breezily replied, and he did. This was all fine except for the fact that she was not actually in possession of an email address at the time.
When I came home from college that Friday evening, she informed me of the situation and how I was to sort out the email address for her. My attempts at outlining how things didn’t work like that brought similar results to trying to teach a budgie Spanish: “Sure it’s my name,” she said, flustered.
Obviously, when I did try to create that account it was already taken and so I opted for the failsafe Irish-person thing of incorporating the actual house address – Lisheenaleen – into her new account. Then it was a case of emailing carolfitz@hotmail.com to explain the situation and hope that they would forward on the documentation. Thankfully, Caroline Fitzduncan – from Aberdeen in Scotland – was kind enough to do so.
In fairness to mam, she used her free time well in the wake of that, earning her European Computer Driving Licence and learning to take care of much of her business online. Having a digital foothold certainly helped her during the darkest parts of the pandemic, even if TikTok still has her somewhat befuddled.
The best education is the one that never stops, so – in something of a role-reversal from four decades ago – now I’m making sure I nurture her curiosity, like when she messaged the other day asking: “How do you make a MEME?” clearly thinking the letters stand for something.
“We’re trying to sort a bake sale but Theresa Ryan is on holidays for all of April. I want to do that one of the fella with the girlfriend, checking out the other girl – that’ll show her.”
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