He’s 12 next month, my eldest son, but he’s rejected the ‘movie night’ party I’ve suggested, and he doesn’t want any of his new friends from senior school to come for a sleepover. And I know why. Our television is a modest one, not the size of one of the screens flanking the main stage at Glastonbury.

I recently went to pick up my son, who was at a new friend’s house. They were playing Mario Kart on a screen that took up about half a wall of the living room. Neither looked up when his mum let me in, so I stood in front of them. ‘Hello? Hel-LO?’ ‘It’s so hard when they’re on screens, isn’t it?’ exclaimed the other mum, as her son manoeuvred Luigi around Brain Rot circuit on Bilge Island with slack-jawed expertise. When I said to his friend that he’d have to come to us next time, my son looked rueful and said, apologetically: ‘Yeah, no gaming at ours. My mum’s a Screen Grinch.’ I don’t think the friend responded.

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No, I can’t offer your child the tweenage equivalent of a crack pipe when they come over. But we have table tennis, trees to climb, dogs to play........

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