Project 365 day 134: Zoom Ball

Today J's friend B invited us to a Zoom Ball for her birthday. The invitation specified party frocks and best champagne flutes, so I pulled a loose dress (the only kind I could possibly wear after a year at home!) over my jeans and slippers. J exchanged her hoody for a dark blue sparkly top, a very nice piece of French Collection chic which she astutely acquired a decade ago in a clothes swap event at college, and a pretty shawl which she bought in January last year and had never worn. She too completed her outfit with the obligatory Zoom leggings and slippers. One of the most positive aspects of this year for her has been the normalisation of online socialising: it works well with her assistive technology, and means that she has had far more contact than usual with two key groups of friends, the little group of school and college friends who she left behind when we moved south eight years ago and she has been revisiting only once a year; and a somewhat larger peer group of young adults who use AAC (alternative and augmentative communication - electronic communication aids) who met two decades ago through a small charity/support group and have grown into adulthood together, meeting a couple of times a year at weekend events and increasingly staying in touch through social media. Now that they have discovered how easily they can gather online for video chats, I'm sure they will continue even when they can resume the occasional in person gatherings they all enjoy.