I can’t wait for my break from mid-term

So, I say to my kids brightly, is there anything you’d like to do this mid term? That doesn’t cost any money? (Skiing’s out, sorry).

But they don’t even look up from their screens. I sneak off, leaving them in their pyjamas at noon, one playing something unsuitable on the Xbox, the other streaming something inappropriate from PutLocker.

I text them to tell them that the sun is shining, and suggest they might like to go outside, perhaps interact with their own species in the hours of daylight. Whatevs, the politer one texts back.

Hours later on my return, they remain in exactly the same position, the blinds still down, the only sign of activity an array of takeaway food detritus littering the sitting room floor amongst the bank of screens and scattered communications technology. Like vampire hackers with a taste for BBQ Pringles and blue ‘sports’ drinks.

It’s a whole new kind of awful when teenagers make the link between mobile phones and the arrival of junk food on the doorstep. In our household, it has become not just a waste of their pocket money, but a political statement.

One which basically says, take your fridge full of healthy vegetarian food and shove it, I’m ordering deep fried battery chicken limbs from the biohazard down the road that delivers on a Honda 50. And chips.

Would you like to make your own pizza for dinner, I ask, proffering an array of pizza bases, tomato, olives, mozzarella, fresh basil. They used to love doing this, the autonomy of creating their own pizza giving them a power rush.

Nah, the younger one says now. Gonna get one delivered. But you can make one here right now for free, I say, in a strangulated Basil Fawlty voice. Whatevs, says the older one.

Then they simultaneously stuff their headphones in their ears, to signal that they are no longer available for interaction.

How about, I say the next day, we go out for lunch? You can choose the restaurant, I add meaningfully, and with great personal sacrifice, knowing that the younger one will choose the minging all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet. And we could go see a film afterwards?

Nah, he says. No offence, but I’d rather not be seen out with you. Instead he tells me he is off to Nando’s with Spotty, Dopey and Fighty, or whatever his latest batch of best friends are called. Can you just give me the money but not come? Thanks.

Which is how I have come to spend mid term blissfully eating lunch in my favourite vegan café. Later I will go to see a grown-up movie with subtitles, one that does not contain any car chases or exploding buildings.

When I come home, I will pointedly step over the build-up of pizza boxes and chicken bags, the empty Pringles tubes and scattered sweet wrappers, and retire to the sanctuary of my room, knowing that school is reopening any day now. Any day.