Serious fun

It’s hard to hold a child’s attention at the best of times. But when you’re competing for a 10-year-old’s focus in the face of the triumvirate of PlayStation, Xbox and Switch, you haven’t a hope in hell.

At least, that was the conclusion to which I’d resigned myself to after years of trying.

Dragging my son out for a dog walk required ever greater levels of diplomacy and, if that didn’t work, bribery as the appeal of building a dam out of sticks in the local stream waned. A bicycle was used so infrequently its tyres needed re-inflating between rides. Talk amongst friends during Saturday morning training with the local village football club was mostly of Fortnite Ranked Play status. Whatever on earth or elsewhere that might be.