Take a screen break
Switch off, read on
IT’S ALWAYS THE SAME. Porto or Plovdiv, as soon as the plane’s wheels clatter onto the runway, I grab my phone from the seat pocket. Signal again, after four hours in limbo. Thank God!
I look around the plane. Like the jittery smokers of yesteryear, sprinting through the terminal to be reunited with their nicotine, everybody else is doing the same thing. Tapping at WhatsApp, gawping at Instagram.
Our phones are not so much guidebooks as travel companions, sharing every jaunt, every scenic view, every minute.
No matter how far you travel, how wilfully obscure the destination, someone will have ranked it out of five, will have groused about the queue for the toilets. “Waste of time – looks better in the magazines.” That’s the Eiffel Tower. And, as for the Taj Mahal, just don’t bother: “There are no clear guidelines or information kiosks.”
Another app will have handed you your boarding pass and another will, even now, be guiding you towards the train into the city, to the apartment it picked out for you, the restaurant it recommended.
Nor does it stop once you reach your sunlounger. A few years ago, not only would you be unable to reply to work emails, but you’d give mum a goodbye call at the airport and then send her a postcard, if she was lucky, lest you get hit by roaming charges as sky-high as a stag party on Ryanair.
Not any more. After you’ve snapped selfies by the pool, it’s time to stretch out and see what’s happening on the thread. Then a quick peek at the gram. Once you’re finally ready to unwind, there’s the Kindle app, or perhaps Spotify.
All of this has crept up on us to the point where it seems inevitable, even unavoidable.
But we do have a choice. We can choose to let our holiday be a psychological as well as a geographical break. To recharge our minds instead of our phones.
On a recent getaway, I gave it a go. I stuck on a stern out-of-office and (gulp) deleted my email app and Instagram. I left my phone at the bottom of my beach bag or, if I really felt brave, in my hotel room.
To begin with, I admit, I felt unmoored. Had I gone a little bit mad? But by day three, I was convinced it was the people all around me on the poolside who were the crazy ones, making video calls (“I’m by the pool” is the new “I’m on the train”) and researching the best-rated spot for lunch instead of, you know, switching off. I came back, well, fully charged.
By now, you might have clocked my ulterior motive. Because of course you’ll need something to do with all this relaxation time. You’ll need to pack a good book, or five. But you don’t need your phone to research those, either. Let us be your guide: in next week’s newsletter, we’ll launch Backstory’s Summer Reading Guide, recommending 77 books we have read and love.
Whatever books you choose, let me and my Backstory colleagues know how you find them. But don’t get out your phone to tag us! Post your review to the bookshop (71 Balham High Road, London, SW12 9AP) on an old-fashioned postcard and we’ll give you a glass of wine or coffee on the house when you return.
Want more Backstory?
Come to one of our events
Request a book to pick up in the shop (we can usually get a book for the next day)
Order a book from our website
Happy reading,
Tom
YES!! => 📖
NO!! => 📱
I trust I make myself clear!!! 💪😅