The Day the Screens Went Blank Read online

  Mum decides that we’re going to need a map and checks the little shelf on her side of the car, but there’s no map in there, which she should know because there’s never been a map in there. She laughs and says when she was a kid everyone always had a map in their car. A whole yellow book with every single road in Britain. Which, honestly, sounds like the dullest book ever!

  Sometimes when Dad’s work friend Boring Paul visits all he does is tell us how he drove to or from various places. ‘Oh, I got the A9 until the B52 then the C3P0 was full so I stopped at the Burger King and had fries, a Whopper, some chilli-cheese bites and a Sprite.’

  I don’t know why grown-ups do this. There must be an age you get to where you think everybody needs to know how you ended up standing in front of them. It’s not like I come down to breakfast and say, ‘So I took the hallway to the stairs and then it was straight down and a quick right to the kitchen.’

  Anyway, Mum says she can’t remember the last time she even saw a paper map, and this doesn’t help Dad, who’s gone bright red and a bit sweaty.

  ‘There’ll be one at the office,’ he says, and reverses the car out of the driveway, but because the screen that shows what’s behind you isn’t working, he immediately hits our bin. Then he gets redder and even more sweaty.

  Luckily, Dad at least knows the way to his office because he goes there every single day. I think that means that deep down he must actually enjoy going there. Mum’s brought the radio from the kitchen and extra batteries because she cleverly suspected the radio in the car wouldn’t work properly. This is excellent organization on the part of Mum and deserves recognition.

  There’s also a screen in front of Dad that shows useless things like how far he’s been, but also useful things like how fast he’s driving.

  Anyway, that’s all gone too. Did I tell you my dad was a slow driver? Well, guess how much slower he is when he doesn’t have anything to tell him how fast he’s going? Answer: REALLY SLOW!!

  As we leave Mousehole, Dad seems to be doing breathing exercises to keep calm. It’s a shame Mum’s app isn’t working because that would tell him how to breathe.

  Teddy has already asked if we’re nearly there yet about ten times, which I always thought was something grown-ups pretend that kids ask, but no, it turns out it’s true. The first time he asks we aren’t even off our street.

  When we finally drive the few miles to Penzance, I start to notice something weird. There are big queues of people on the high street. They’re all standing outside the banks and they don’t look happy at all. What if it’s because no one can do internet banking at the moment? So they’re having to crack open their piggy banks, and that’s always a bit sad. Or maybe there’s a sale on somewhere and they all need to get their money out pronto? I remember once at Claire’s Accessories they did a sale on bangles and four people got arrested.

  I notice a bit of shoving and pushing. And when Mum and Dad see the lines of people they give each other a Look and raise their eyebrows. I feel like there’s something they’re not telling me and suddenly this adventure makes me feel a bit worried in my tummy rather than excited.

  Dad pulls up outside his office and runs into work. A few minutes later, he comes out again with a piece of paper he hands to Mum. Boring Paul waves us off from the window, smiling. He’s told Dad exactly how to get to Rendlesham.

  ‘A30, A303, M3, M25, A12, A1152,’ reads Mum. ‘Well, that seems simple enough.’

  * * *

  Everyone is being super quiet in the car.

  We’ve been going about an hour and it’s raining heavily and the novelty of this adventure is definitely wearing off. Teddy is bored and in a grump and is punishing us by not speaking. But he doesn’t know that him being quiet is actually a bit of a reward, and no one wants to break the spell. So we just listen to the wipers squeaking and the raindrops battering the roof.

  Dad is gripping the steering wheel tightly and staring straight in front of him. He can’t relax because he doesn’t want to make any mistakes. He hates not having the GPS. He says he’s been scared of maps ever since he was a Boy Scout and he had to find his way out of the local forest using only a map. But it took him about six hours because he didn’t realize someone had played a trick on him and swapped his map of Rendlesham for one of Russia.

  Right now, we don’t even have a map of Russia, but at least Mum has the piece of paper with the directions in her hand. You can tell she’s bored because she suddenly starts making clicking noises with her cheeks. It’s like having a dolphin in the car.

  ‘Let’s play a game!’ she says.

  We don’t normally play games unless they’re like Words with Friends or Candy Crush or whatnot.

  ‘You mean a real-life one?’ I say.

  Teddy immediately cheers up and says, ‘Hide-and-seek?’

  ‘That might be a little tricky in a car, Ted,’ says Mum.

  ‘Or a little easy,’ says Dad.

  ‘Can we play Tag then?’ says Teddy.

  But Dad doesn’t want to play a game. He’s become concerned because there’s lots of traffic going the same way we are.

  ‘Dad, can we stop at the park?’ I say.

  I’ve always wanted to go to Dartmoor National Park. I don’t know if it’s on the way, but it must be because when I’ve looked on Google I’ve noticed that it’s on the way to everywhere. Mousehole is squashed right down in the bottom-left corner of the country, so if you want to go to Scotland? You go past Dartmoor National Park. You want to go to France? You go past Dartmoor National Park. I know nothing else about Dartmoor National Park except that every word in its name makes it sound exciting.

  ‘No,’ says Dad. ‘We’re just going straight to Grandma’s.’

  I frown so he can see me frown in the mirror. So we’re just going to sit here for hours and hours and not have a pee break or anything? Welcome to Broken Britain!

  Dad seems really nervous and quiet. He gets worried every time he sees more cars joining our road because he doesn’t have a screen to tell him how to get away from them. And every time the car makes a weird sound he gets jumpy because he doesn’t know if there’s something wrong with it or not.

  ‘I mean, we’ll have to stop somewhere,’ says Mum. ‘To eat our lunch and so on?’

  Dad sighs.

  ‘If we happen to go past it and it’s the right time, then maybe.’

  I look out of the window again. Maybe I don’t usually notice other cars because I’m watching something, but there seem to be a lot of broken-down cars stopped by the side of the road today. I’ve seen two red cars, a silver one and a black one. And each time the driver has just been standing outside in the rain, holding a broken phone, looking like they have absolutely no idea what to do.

  * * *

  Dad has gone even quieter, if that’s possible. We’ve had to leave the main road and drive down a small country lane because there’d been an accident. He is not happy about it and is driving reeeeeaaaaallllly slowly.

  There’s no numbers I can look at to tell me, but I would estimate we are now going at 21.5 miles an hour, which has just increased our journey time by about 18.3 hours. That said, I have no idea what I’m talking about.

  At least it’s stopped raining, though now the lane is full of big puddles.

  Dad keeps looking out for signs to tell him how to get back on to the road he needs, but instead all we see are signs for little places we don’t need to go to. He seems annoyed that the roads are so narrow that you can only fit one car on them, and says he wants to get back to the big road, and are we nearly there yet?

  I know where Teddy gets it from now!

  ‘Oh great!’ says Dad. A car is coming from the other direction and it stops right in front of us. It’s a big black Range Rover carrying a big man in red braces. Dad has to drive the car on to the grass by a gate to let the bigger guy in the bigger car pass, and it doesn’t make him happy.

  ‘You don’t want to head for the A30!’ shouts the man from his win
dow as he squeezes past.

  I notice Teddy trying to hide his face in the corner of his child seat. He can be quite shy around strangers, whereas I find them interesting.

  ‘Oh yeah?’ says Dad. ‘What’s wrong with the A30?’

  Dad always pretends he knows more about roads when he talks with other men.

  ‘Tailbacks, mate. Both sides. Absolute ’mare.’

  ‘Your screens working, mate?’ says Dad, making his voice weirdly low, and the other man shakes his head.

  ‘Stay at home if I were you, mate,’ he goes. ‘Turn the telly on and wait for it to come back.’

  And then he roars off, way too quickly, scaring all the cows in the field next to us.

  ‘Tsk. “Turn the telly on”,’ says Dad. ‘Then what? Stare at nothing?’

  ‘Okay, let’s go,’ says Mum, and Dad tries, but something’s wrong.

  * * *

  The problem with driving on to the grass at the side of the road is that, with all the rain, the ground is now really, really soft.

  The tyres on both sides have squidged into the mud, and the car won’t go forward.

  ‘Brilliant!’ says Dad, unbuckling his seatbelt and opening the door, but I can tell he actually means the opposite. ‘I’ll have to push!’

  Mum slides across to the driver’s side and already this is exciting because Mum is a very different driver to Dad. She gets really aggressive and screams at people, which is why it’s best if Dad drives. I have learned six of the seven bad words I know from driving to the shops with Mum.

  She starts to rev the engine and Dad yells at her not to. He says she’s only to step on the accelerator thing very gently when he starts to push. On NO ACCOUNT is she to do ANYTHING ELSE. She should NOT do it AGGRESSIVELY. She should do it the way a KITTEN would.

  Mum rolls her eyes and Dad gets behind the car and tells her to, ‘RELEASE THE HANDBRAKE!’

  Mum does that and then IMMEDIATELY jams her foot down, which even I know was NOT what he said to do.

  The back of the car slides about as the wheels spin madly and the whole thing revs like crazy.

  From my seat I get a perfect view as Dad gets…

  COVERED!

  IN!

  MUD!

  When we look at him from the back window, I have to honestly say it looks like someone’s made a bad statue of him out of chocolate.

  Me and Mum and Teddy stay completely quiet.

  I watch Dad slowly squelch to the side of the car.

  He inspects the wheels.

  He opens the front door and Mum quietly slides back into her seat.

  We all look at him because he CAN’T be about to sit back down, can he?

  But he sits down in his seat with a SQUISH, repositions the mirror, and says, ‘On we go.’

  About one minute after Dad sat back down in the car, we start to realize that he didn’t just get covered in mud.

  We all have our hands over our mouths and noses because Dad stinks exactly like what comes out of cows.

  It smells like a farm in here.

  But we can all tell that it wouldn’t be a good idea for anyone to point this out to Dad, who seems to be ignoring the smell.

  ‘We could always stop at a hotel on the way,’ says Mum, casually. ‘Maybe have a shower, you know.’

  ‘We are going straight to Grandma’s,’ says Dad. ‘We are not stopping. Not for anything.’

  Mum gives us a Look, then quietly lowers her window to let some air in.

  Then she lowers my window and Teddy’s too, and winks at us.

  Dad is going pretty fast now, compared to how he usually drives. The wind is whipping around, taking the smell with it, thank goodness.

  But then the wind takes something else from the car… I look at Mum with horror as the small piece of paper with the directions on it suddenly flies out of her hand and is sucked out of the window.

  She turns round and for a moment we just stare at each other with big wide eyes. I don’t know whether to tell Dad.

  She shakes her head at me and I shake my head at her.

  But then we realize how annoyed he’ll be if we don’t know where we’re going so we both suddenly scream, ‘STOOOOOP THE CAAAAR!’

  * * *

  Since Dad hit the hedge, we can’t turn the horn off. It keeps beeping on its own every few seconds, like an alarm.

  Mum inspects the damage. The whole bonnet is hidden by leaves.

  Dad is halfway down the road, looking in puddles. He has remained remarkably calm. Like, if he doesn’t admit out loud that this happened, it hasn’t happened.

  ‘Was it about here?’ he shouts to us.

  ‘Further!’ I yell back.

  ‘Here?’ he yells, a moment later.

  I have no idea. I mean, it could be anywhere. It was a small piece of paper, and this is… well, it’s the entire countryside!

  Up ahead, a tractor is coming very fast down the road, bouncing along with a farmer on top.

  ‘Ah!’ shouts Dad. ‘I’ll ask the farmer!’

  What’s he going to ask him? ‘Have you seen a minuscule scrap of paper with mad numbers on it?’

  Dad stands to one side and raises his arm to stop the tractor.

  ‘Excuse me!’ shouts Dad, with a big friendly smile.

  But the farmer’s wearing ear defenders and doesn’t even look at Dad.

  SPLAAAAAAAASH!

  An entire puddle is thrown at my dad as the tractor speeds past him.

  Dad stands there in disbelief, totally soaking wet.

  Well, at least we won’t have to spend any money on expensive hotel showers now.

  ‘You all right there?’ says the farmer to Mum as he spots the car and stops. ‘Stuck?’

  * * *

  When Dad caught up, the farmer asked him if he’d swum here. It was a joke about him being wet. Dad had to pretend to find it funny but I could tell he wanted to shout, ‘It was you that soaked me!’

  Anyway, the farmer helped pull the car out of the hedge, then told Dad how to get back to the road we need. So that was fine, but then we realized the new problems.

  Something has happened to one of the wheels and we’re now slightly bouncing along, like we’re driving over bumps all the time, even though we’re not.

  The car is still honking.

  That puddle did nothing cos Dad is still honking too.

  Everyone is just pretending things are completely normal, especially Dad, who is just grinning weirdly as the car goes hooooonk every three seconds.

  As soon as he started the car, Dad put the heating and fans up to 100 per cent to try and dry himself off, but that kind of heat just makes the smell unbearable for the rest of us.

  ‘Let’s not worry,’ he says, as we bounce in the beep-mobile, holding our noses. ‘We’ll be there in a little under ten hours.’

  That’s when I see Teddy is starting to look a bit car sick.

  ‘Why does everything stink of STINK?’ he wails.

  ‘Do not be sick,’ I tell him, sternly, and he nods at me and holds his mouth.

  Mum keeps asking Dad if he’s sure he knows the way. Mum explains to me and Teddy that before the Sat Nav lady and GPS you used to have to stop by the side of the road and ask a stranger directions. And then when they started giving you those directions you would immediately stop listening. She said it was like a brain freeze. You would really want the information but the second you heard them you’d just start to ignore them. You’d just say, ‘Oh thank you!’ and go off in the vague direction they pointed towards in the full knowledge you had no idea what you were doing and then half an hour later just stop and ask someone else.

  ‘I know which way I’m going,’ Dad tells her, sternly, as the car becomes hotter than the sun.

  * * *

  So, half an hour later, we’ve stopped a total stranger by the side of the road.

  Thankfully, the car isn’t beeping any more, but now it’s started making a sort of wheezing sound from the air vents, I suppose like be
ached whale might.

  ‘Have you got the time?’ asks the stranger, a grandma in a bobble hat. ‘I don’t know if I’m late or early.’

  ‘No,’ we all say.

  ‘Do you know how to get to the A30?’ asks Dad.

  ‘You don’t want to do that,’ says the lady, suddenly noticing my dad is caked in dried mud. ‘They’re saying on the radio that everybody should stay at home. Essential travel only. So back home with you!’

  ‘This is essential,’ I tell her. ‘We’re rescuing my grandma.’

  ‘Well, that does sound essential,’ says the lady. ‘Is she nearby?’

  ‘She’s in a mansion in a forest,’ I say.

  ‘Best place for her,’ she says, and I wonder what she means by that. ‘I’d stick to these smaller roads for now,’ she tells Dad. ‘Don’t go through the cities. You know, I heard it’s the new mobile-phone towers that did this screens business. They pump out shockwaves. Some people are saying it’s alien technology.’

  She winks at my dad and walks off. Dad gives Mum a confused look.

  ‘Should we put the radio on?’ I ask because that lady’s made me a bit concerned.

  ‘No,’ says Dad.

  ‘Well, maybe just for a second,’ says Mum, and she switches it on and finds the World Service.

  ‘Rising panic in London… fights outside betting shops…’

  ‘How about we try and find some music instead?’ says Mum with a smile, but Dad reaches over and switches it off.