Going #screenfree in the Sprite

Having caravanned a huge amount with the kids for over a decade, I thought I knew how our screen-free breaks would go. I’d pictured a snapshot of my own youth, when gadgets were limited to the Bat & Ball ‘games consul’ that plugged into the telly and TV channels could be counted on the fingers of one hand. Mobile phones? Well, they were nothing more than a discussion topic on Tomorrow’s World. Ditching the screens would instantly transport me back to the late 70’s and early 80’s to a simpler time where we weren’t at the beck and call of mobile devices. Or so I thought…

 Somewhat unexpectedly, Poppy (12) and Charlie (7) embraced our tech-free break with a degree of excitement and produced a handful of homemade games complete with league table to measure our progress. Us grown-ups, however, seemed to be on repeat with constant pocket-tapping, trying to find a non-existent phone. Facebook would surely fold, emails would be lost if left unanswered and would the world still turn if Candy Crush was ignored?

 Apologies if you were in Devon recently and saw a couple in their mid-40’d sat blindfold in the front of a Swift Sprite. You see, Poppy & Charlie thought a blindfolded taste test would make an ideal first game, something that would ease us into the rest of the activities. Alarmingly, I failed to recognise marmalade and pickled onion which pushed me to the bottom of the leader board but I fared well with their second game. I wondered why they wanted a hat, scarf and gloves but didn’t give the crisps and cutlery much thought so when they suggested running from their bunks to the front chest, donning the aforementioned cold weather clobber, eating the crisps with a knife and fork, removing hat, scarf and gloves, and running back to the start line, all become clear. If you fancy giving this game a go yourself, do as we did and play it in the early evening as the laughter is infectious and running from one end to the other sounds like the Giant’s footprints in Jack and the Beanstalk. Luckily, I won the crisp eating game as my poor performance at Draughts did little for my position in the league table and, with my fate being sealed by flapping the fish under the fridge in a game involving a fish-shaped paper cut-out and a book to propel it, I was doomed.

 Arrived at purely by accident, our screen-free success seemed to be a combination of daytime activities planned by me and Helen with our evenings being left to the kid’s imaginations. We’d pre-planned a few adrenalin-inducing tips such as surfing and kayaking and, as fantastic as they were, I can’t help but chuckle when thinking of our evenings. Dipping into a game from the App Store or popping-on a DVD may be an easy thing to do and, to be honest, it’s what we do when we’re on autopilot, but trying something new can have unexpected but hilariously funny consequences.  What’s more, the pocket-tapping stops after a day or so…

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