The Day the Screens Went Blank Danny Wallace (best summer reads .TXT) 📖

Something unrecorded. It’s like magic. It’s like a present.

‘Did Dad use to play like that?’ I ask her.

‘Oh my, oh yes,’ says Grandma. ‘We used to put cereal boxes on our backs and pretend to be divers or astronauts. Oh, it was such fun. Can you imagine? Your dad could play for hours. He would just laugh and laugh and create incredible worlds!’

Hang on.

‘What – my dad?’

‘Yes,’ says Grandma. ‘Wait. I can show you!’

We have had to wait until the sky got a little bit darker and Grandma could find all the things she needed from the attic.

I still didn’t see how she could show us Dad as a kid. I still didn’t really believe Dad ever was a kid. Though I suppose seeing him and Mum singing and acting like they were young and then even playing Ding Dong Ditch is a clue that he must have been young at some stage.

Mum and Dad have been giggling in the kitchen, I think because they’d opened some wine (uh-oh) while they chopped some of Uncle Tony’s vegetables for a sauce, and now we have a big steaming bowl of pasta for us all to eat in the garden. We’re sat under the Story Tree, lit by yellow light bulbs, and I take two big bits of garlic bread. One for me and one for Teddy.

Then Grandma brings all these weird bits of equipment out.

‘I found the old films!’ she says.

‘Oh no,’ says Dad.

‘We can’t watch films, Grandma,’ I say. ‘The screens are all gone, remember?’

She laughs.

‘We haven’t always needed screens,’ she says. ‘Not electronic ones anyway!’

And she unfolds this big white sheet on a tripod and it’s like a sort of cinema screen. Then she puts together an old ‘projector’ that looks like something from before time began, but which Grandma says is actually from 1981, which I have to say sounds like a made-up year.

‘What’s that?’ I say, pointing to a square orange box in her hand. She doesn’t answer, but opens it up and I can see a roll of plastic inside, which she threads into the projector.

And then…

Up on the screen, in very tiny shorts – there’s a little boy Grandma claims is Dad!

‘Awwwww!’ says Mum, and she ruffles the real-life Dad’s hair and cuddles into him.

The colours are all a bit weird and there’s no sound apart from the whirr of the projector but, yeah, I think that’s my dad!

‘That’s Daddy!’ I tell Teddy. ‘In the very tight Superman T-shirt!’

And then there’s Grandma, with red hair, and she’s wearing cardboard boxes on her back and pretending to be an evil robot! And they’re laughing and playing and I don’t even need to hear what they’re saying because I’m just blown away by all the…

The what?

The love.

Next to me, Dad puts his arm round Grandma and kisses her on the head.

And he cuddles her a little more when the camera turns round and there’s Grandad.

The screens still haven’t come back, of course. But you know that.

Mum says everyone needs to learn how to live in a different world, and Grandma says she’s right because things always change.

But it’s a world I’m cool with.

We’re going to stay with Grandma the whole of the summer.

She says every day is going to be a play day. Of course at first this panics me because as you know I do enjoy a rigorously structured timetable. But she says by playing, we’ll learn. She’s going to teach us everything she knows. Things we wouldn’t learn if the screens came back, or from an online lesson, or from what she calls the Google Machines.

We’re going to get dirty every day, and we’re going to get out of breath, and we’re going to grow flowers and bake bread and invent stories and we’re going to talk.

And every week we’re going to do something special for someone we don’t really know at all. The way Uncle Tony and Ellie and the people we met did something for us.

And we’re going to make sure we remember to pay for those fish and chips from that rude woman at that pub.

Most importantly, every Sunday will still be Bobcroft Family Film Night. But now the films will be ones we make ourselves, ones we watch while eating great big bowls of pasta around a table in the garden together.

We can’t take pictures on our phones any more. But I blink, hard, whenever I find a moment to remember. There are so many.

And just before I go, because I think I’ve given you the whole story now, Dad said that he thinks that in the past week we’ve made more memories together than we ever did before. So he said that he and Mum had been talking, and it was time to make some more. And that if I promised that I would be responsible for the walks, and for the feeding, and the care, we could do it this week.

So we’re going to go to the rescue centre, and we’re actually going to get a puppy.

I’m going to call her Grandma.

Acknowledgements

Huge thanks to Jane Griffiths, Ali Dougal, Sam Swinnerton, Jesse Green, Rachel Denwood, Laura Hough, Eve Wersocki Morris and all the greats at Simon & Schuster – as a reward, you all get an extra hour of screen time this weekend!

Robert Kirby, I’m taking your phone away, I’m afraid.

All Hail Gemma Correll!

And big thanks to my three inspirations: Elliot, Clover and Kit. Let’s do a road trip!

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About the Author and Illustrator

DANNY WALLACE is an award-winning writer and radio presenter who’s