Avi’s Lockdown Barmy

We’re coming to the end of our son Avi’s bar mitzvah weekend. It’s an event that we faced with a certain amount of trepidation. Robbed of the ability to watch Avi sing his portion from the torah in synagogue, surrounded by family and friends, and unable to gather together afterwards in a confined space for an evening of sweaty dancing, emotional speeches and canapes, how could it possibly be the same?

And sure enough, it wasn’t the same. But it hit the spot, and it was certainly memorable.

On Thursday night, we held our first, and hopefully last, lockdown celebration. We decided to broadcast it live from our home on Zoom. The plan was that Avi would sing his portions, topped and tailed by a bit of entertainment, Allon-style.

A few nights before we went live, a friend offered to give us technical support, so that we could concentrate on presenting the event. “Nah”, I said, “we’ll be fine. I know what I’m doing”.

Reader, I did not know what I was doing.

By Thursday night, we were ready to go live. We had a website, with links to the Zoom call and to a surprise video. We had two laptops, a webcam / tripod set up, a brand new mic, extra screens. And autocue. I was particularly excited about my new autocue app. A game changer, I felt. All my techy dreams come true.

I had tested and tested, created back ups and contingency plans. Nothing could possibly go wrong.

We launched with a bit of live music, all the way from Hendon, then I introduced our big night with greetings to friends and family around the world. At this point, the autocue stopped working. A portent for the evening ahead.

Lois spoke beautifully, then introduced the main man of the evening — Avi. He spoke, then sang his first portion with panache. We were thrilled.

We asked Avi’s wonderful bar mitzvah teacher Simon to unmute himself and say a few words. He promptly did, and started to regale a story about a talking donkey. Lois promptly muted him again. By accident. After a period of confusion, Simon was able to finish his story, then it was back to Avi, who recited his haftorah with gusto. He really did himself and us proud.

Sadly our approach to the rest of the evening was a little less professional than our son’s. Our Rabbi came on to pay tribute to Avi’s great performance. Unfortunately we (and when I say we, I mean Lois) pulled a wire out at a crucial point, and we disappeared for several minutes. A friend of my parents randomly shared his screen a little later, clearly feeling that his word document was more interesting than me droning on. We shared a lovely video of messages from his friends, but one of our guests decided to draw a random blue shape over it.

And then the jaw-dropping moment. We still had quite a bit to go, when Lois said the words which sent a chill to my bones.

“We have 4% left on the laptop”.

I still feel ill when I relive that moment.

So many obvious questions. Why didn’t you just plug it in? Why wasn’t it fully charged in the first place? I’m not going to bore you with technical minutiae, all I’ll say is that it was Lois’ stupid Macbook with two sockets, both being used. Seriously, Apple Macs are a shitty useless abomination. But I digress.

We now needed three sockets– one for our internet wire (our wifi is a disaster), one for our camera and microphone combo, and one for power. There followed what I can only describe as half an hour of desperately tense socket hopping, as one of us kept things going on camera while the other switched wires around (tragically, Lois pulled my camera and mic when I was halfway through a particularly amusing anecdote).

I’d love to say I kept my cool throughout, but off camera, the atmosphere was getting a little spikey as we raced against time to complete the event. We pulled a video of our friends singing, we pulled my speech (and to be fair everyone had heard more than enough from me by then). My dad spoke beautifully and eloquently. We just about heard it between palpitations.

And through it all, Avi remained calm, composed, unfazed. Don’t know where he got that from.

We made it to the end. We were in truth a little frazzled by the whole experience. It’s only a couple of days later that we can truly rejoice in that hilarious, shambolic evening. Here are just a few of the lessons that we have taken from the night:

- Our off-screen panic didn’t transmit on-screen (or so our friends have kindly reassured us). Our chaotic shitshow has been reframed as endearing authenticity.

- You would think I’d know after working in TV production for 20 years that even the simplest production needs producers as well as presenters.

- If you’re going to broadcast your son’s big day to the world via a laptop — charge the bloody laptop.

- Avi was brilliant. None of the rest actually matters.

Today Avi performed his haftorah again, surrounded by his close family. It was a glorious, golden moment. He made us all very proud. Again.

And all of this is a very long preamble to telling you that we also made Avi a special video which we played to him and our guests on the Thursday night. He’s a big Queen fan, so we went with that. With huge thanks to David Pliener for wonderful vocals. Enjoy!