Have you glimpsed the madness behind the screen?

Surviving 24h without any screens at all

#27. 24 Hours Screen-Free

The day stretched before me, an infinite void.

I’d vowed to go a whole Saturday without using screens of any kind. I’d had enough of it, all of it - the tweets, the headlines, the serial killer podcasts. I needed a reset: twenty-four hours, no screens. Now the question insisted itself – just what am I going to do all day?

‘What are you going to do all day?’ asked my wife.

‘I have absolutely no idea.’

So we just lay there, me, my wife, my son, playing and talking, staring out the window at this perfect golden summer’s day. The wind whistled through corn husks in the farm outside. We made the bed, tidied up, did some reading.

Half an hour had passed.

When people say, ooh, there’s not enough hours in the day, they’re wrong. There are definitely enough hours in the day – too many, actually. I mean, without screens, time really dragged. But isn’t that a blessing, to have time move more slowly?

We ambled downstairs to the sun-drenched sofa and made our intentions for the day with a pen and paper. My wife jotted down go for lunch; me, write letter to serial killer. Our boy sat on the remote and the TV hummed to life. We scrambled to turn if off, turn it off, quickly.

While my wife hoovered and dusted ancient cobwebs from the ceiling, I built a playpen for our boy. I played with him a lot that day, sitting him on the sofa and shaking the cushion beneath. ‘Eeeeaaaarthquaaake’, I cried.

‘More!’ he squealed. ‘More eggcake!’

We strapped ourselves into the car and headed to Beaconsfield (satnav permitted) for a spot of lunch. But where to eat? Without the luxury of phones, we had to muddle through the old-fashioned way, using our eyes to look at restaurants and evaluate them. After a delicious poulet à la moutarde (Jasmine) and burger (me), we paid (pin pad permitted). We really bonded as a family.

Back at the house, the boy napped and so did I. It felt good to give my brain room to breathe. I’d never been so clear. Half-sleeping, I reminisced about a past holiday in Mexico, all mindfulness and vegan food, where the posh children laughed about the kids in the neighbouring resort. iPad kids, they’d called them, peeing in the pool. I wondered if there were iPad adults too. I thought about the people I know who are chronically online – distracted, reactive, emotional. Always hysterical about one thing or the other. I dreamed of the Mexican holiday. Laying on the white beach facing the crystal waters, birds gently cooing over the lapping waves, I looked around: everyone was staring at their phones.

Frantic rustling woke me from upstairs. It was coming from Sonny’s room. I clambered up and gingerly popped my head round the doorframe.

My wife had thrown the bedsheets asunder, staring at the mattress, millimetres from her face, a crazed look in her eye.

‘Bedbugs!’ she hissed.

Bedbugs? I stepped closer. There were no bedbugs. No spots of blood or microscopic faeces either. I tried to coax her away - to no avail. She was a woman possessed.

We all construct fantasies and distractions for ourselves. We buy the latest kitchen and paint its walls the trendiest colour, all Bakelite countertops and Bosch appliances, to vainly obscure the cockroaches and centipedes scurrying in the dark, dank crawlspaces behind.

Without the narcotic of technology - the stench of mortality, the decay of all things, the inevitable turning to dust of even those we hold most dear. The yellow-toothed rats in the recesses of our minds start to gnaw through.

Exhausted, I climbed to bed. What else was there to do? I was starting to jones myself.

Sunday, I awoke (to 23 emails) and spent the morning catching up on Twitter – on all the crucial breaking headlines I’d missed.

‘Disney guest gropes Gaston and is asked to leave.’

Ah, sweet relief.

Could you make it 24 hours without any screens at all?