Enjoying Quiet Evenings at Home Without Screens

The trouble with the telly after dark

By eight o'clock most of us have finished the day: the animals fed, the fire banked up, the tea things in the sink. The easy thing is the telly, and there is nothing wicked in a documentary about drystone walls. But the screen is bright, and the mind does not distinguish well between an argument in a drama and a real threat in the room. Half an hour of it and you are wide awake at half ten, thumbing through channels, wondering why you cannot settle.

There is a plain reason for it. Bright light late in the evening, especially the blue-heavy light of a screen, tells the body that the day is still going. In the countryside we have a natural advantage: the dark arrives properly here. In December the lanes are black by half past four and the windows glow. If you let the dark do its work instead of fighting it with a screen, an early night stops feeling like a punishment and begins to feel like the obvious thing.

Setting the room before you need it

Good evenings are arranged in the afternoon, not the evening. Draw the curtains as the light goes, lay the fire ready with kindling and a matchbox, and get into the habit of using lamps rather than the ceiling light. A bulb of 2,200 to 2,700 kelvin — sold simply as warm white — makes a small sitting room feel like a room rather than an operating theatre.

Then deal with the screen itself. Put the remote in a drawer rather than on the arm of the chair, and if the black rectangle still pulls at you from the corner, drape a cloth over it. It sounds daft until you try it. Let the phone charge in the kitchen overnight, and keep the clock on the mantelpiece instead of in your hand. A wireless on low, or an audiobook, is not a screen; it gives the room a voice without asking anything of your eyes.

Reading: the simplest swap of all

A book left by the chair is the whole trick. Keep one there permanently — a novel with short chapters, a book of essays, or poetry, which suits tired minds particularly well because a single page is a complete sitting. Twenty minutes before bed is plenty; nobody is marking you on it.

Light it properly, with a lamp over your shoulder rather than one in your eyeline. If you drop off with the book on your chest, that is not failure, it is the system working. Keep a small notebook beside you for the line worth remembering, or for whatever you have suddenly recalled you must do tomorrow. Writing it down lets your mind put it down.

Cards, dominoes and a jigsaw on the table

A game asks for just enough attention to keep you out of your own head, and it is companionable without being loud. Cribbage, dominoes, draughts, backgammon, whist, Newmarket — none of them need a plug, and all of them are better with a pot of tea. On your own, patience with a worn pack of cards is a fine way to pass forty minutes.

A jigsaw left out on a card table is the quietest pastime of the lot. You can add a piece in passing, no one has to be spoken to, and the slow filling of the picture does something restful to a restless mind. Keep a small table kit ready so nobody has to hunt for anything:

• A deck of cards, a cribbage board and a pencil each
• A scorepad, a spare pair of reading glasses and a candle stub
• A folded wool blanket for the knees
• A torch kept by the door for the trip to the woodpile or the hen house

Mending, knitting and gentle handwork

There is a reason our grandmothers darned in the evening. Work with the hands slows the breathing and gives the worrying part of the mind a job. A wooden darning mushroom, a few balls of matching wool and a basket beside the chair will see you through a winter of socks, shirt buttons and torn coat pockets. It is also the most frugal habit on this list: a darned heel costs nothing and saves a pair of good socks.

Knitting is the natural next step — a plain scarf or a pair of socks on four needles, worked slowly while the fire settles. If wool does not appeal, try whittling a spoon from a hazel branch with a sharp knife and a steady thumb, or soaking willow withies for a small basket. None of it needs to be good. The rhythm is the point, and a mended thing at the end of it is a quiet sort of contentment.

A last look at the stars, then off to bed

Before you turn in, step outside for five minutes. Wrap up, take a flask, and let your eyes adjust — a red-filtered torch, or one covered with red cellophane, keeps your night vision intact. In winter look for Orion in the south-east, the Plough overhead and Cassiopeia away to the north; in summer, sit out for the Perseids in August. You will hear a fox, or an owl, and very likely nothing else at all.

Then in, and straight to bed: a mug of chamomile, the notebook, and the lamp off. Keep the same hour each night and the body learns the pattern inside a fortnight. A quiet evening is not an evening wasted. It is how the countryside has always put itself to bed, and it will do the same for you.