Dad tries to find another station but when he fiddles with the button it’s just static noise, so he gives up and turns it off. He starts talking to us about his bad day at work. ‘The whole system is down,’ he says, but I can’t help thinking he’s being dramatic. I mean, hello? Free day off! That’s not exactly the worst thing ever!
Mum is being just as bad and panicky. She can’t see if anyone has ordered anything from her website or not. She usually sends off a few packages a week of her fancy design stuff, but just lately she’s also set up an eBay shop where she sometimes sells some of our old toys that we don’t need any more. I wondered if it was for charity but Mum says it’s for a rainy day.
Dad keeps checking his phone to see if it’s working. It’s like he can’t stop looking even though he knows nothing has changed. Dad’s always on his phone, but he doesn’t use it as a phone. I know some people still use phones to actually ring up and talk to people – you see it on TV, don’t you? – but Dad says that’s the last thing he wants, to actually talk to people. He doesn’t even like getting messages. ‘Oh no!’ he says when his phone pings with one. ‘They want me to call them back! It’s a nightmare!’ And we all laugh at him.
Dad gets really stressed sometimes and I think he’s a bit sad about his job. One night, after they’d had one of their arguments, Mum told me Dad feels like he’s got to the ancient age of forty-two and suddenly thinks he should never have been an estate agent in the first place and that he’s wasted his time. Last summer Dad bought a motorbike called Blue Thunder, which seemed to make him feel better, but two months later he had to sell it because sometimes we don’t have quite enough money. The old man who bought Blue Thunder lives in Mousehole too, and Dad looks really sad every time we hear it zoom by. Once, when I was helping Dad in our front garden, we saw the old man roar by with a woman who must have been his daughter on the back and Dad just stood there, staring. I’ve told Dad he could use my bike if he wants. Personally, I think Dad should be happy he is a forty-two-year-old estate agent. He could be a forty-one-year-old estate agent, with a whole year’s less experience on the job! Plus he can take whatever he wants out of the stationery cupboard. (At my school the stationery cupboard is pretty empty. They keep asking the parents to provide the school with pencils and pens. Er, they’ve already provided the school with children – what more do they want?!)
Anyway, the doorbell rings and Sandra from next door comes in and says, ‘Guess what?’
And we’re like, ‘What?’
And she says, ‘No, go on, guess what?’
And we say, ‘WHAT?’
And she’s like, ‘Guess!’
And we’re like, ‘Your telly’s still not working?’
And she says, ‘Yeah.’
Tonight Mum and Dad don’t feel like cooking because of all the weirdness and whatnot.
(Total excuse, but I’m good with it.)
Dad picks up the iPad so he can check what time the Chinese restaurant opens, and then he puts it down again and rolls his eyes when he remembers.
So we all decide just to walk to the restaurant and see for ourselves.
Mum and Dad still feel weird leaving the house without their phones so they take them anyway, even though you might as well just put a brick in your pocket. Mum brings an old comic instead of a tablet to keep Teddy occupied over dinner, but I don’t need anything.
And then we step outside, totally without technology!
I ask Mum if we can go to the woods tomorrow after school and have an adventure, but she says we have to wait and see if there even is school tomorrow.
The idea of no school puts me in a very good mood.
The restaurant is packed when we get there. Everyone seems to have had the same idea. Mr Cheung is sweating, and he’s had to put a sign up outside saying CASH ONLY because his card machine isn’t working any more. Dad sighs but luckily Mum has some money in her bag, so we can go in. I admire her for this. Mum is not a very practical woman but she often comes through in a crisis.
Some of the people who’ve come on their own are just sitting there, fidgeting, while they wait for their food because they’ve got nothing to do. Mum says that before smart phones people just used to read the back of peanut packets so they looked busy. I am not sure that can be true because it sounds absolutely… well… nuts.
One of Dad’s friends, Ernie, is at a table near us. As we sit down, he says, ‘What do you think’s going on?’ I’m not sure why Ernie thinks my dad will know, but not knowing never stops my dad from having a go. He will literally pretend he has an opinion on anything, which is actually very useful for his social-media numbers (he has twenty-four followers on Twitter: he used to have twenty-five but the newsagent unfollowed him after he complained about some M&Ms).
‘Probably something to do with satellites,’ says my dad, and Ernie nods wisely.
‘They’re saying it’ll all be fine by tomorrow afternoon,’ says Ernie.
‘Are they?’ says Mum. ‘Who’s saying that?’
‘The guys in the pub,’ says Ernie.
Teddy keeps asking when he can watch planes again on YouTube. He can be a bit annoying sometimes because he seems to think this is Planet Teddy, not Planet Earth. Usually I would tell him not to just
