Joanne McNeil: Gadgets help keep kids quiet

Technology keeps the kids busy on road trips. Photo/Thinkstock

As families headed off on the great storm-ravaged New Zealand road movie that is an enduring holiday tradition - to bach, beach, spectacle and family gatherings for the annual autumn headless chocolate rabbit festival Easter has come to represent in our evolving calendar of culturally and hemispherically confused rituals - it became clear that marathon driving trips have nevertheless changed.

Once families adventured into the wild alone together, cut off from the world inside the confined moving capsule of the car's interior, along with the dog, provisions and the kitchen sink, for interminable miles while singing every song anybody ever knew the words to and playing "I spy", to distract (unrestrained) kids from fighting over incursions into the personal territory in the back seat demarcated by imaginary lions, from throwing up, or from honing their best whines with "How far is it now dad?"

Equipped with portable globally interconnected gizmos though, today's travellers are no longer isolated in their moving bubbles (and restrained children have no need of imaginary lions).

Smart distraction devices can play games and give precise locations (if anyone really cares), and all passengers can keep wide social networks entranced, in a kind of global, interactive, touring game of "I spy", with blow by blow snaps of progress, small-town roadside oddities, dodgy drivers, petrol consumption, landscape features, cafe menus, weather and traffic snarls while conducting witty repartee with absentees.

The lyrics of Rick Bryant's epic NZ road trip anthem Snow on the Desert Road - which as I am sure I have suggested before but bears repeating, should be played compulsorily as a ceremonial waiata after every broadcast weather forecast which includes the eponymous line - include "I spy with my little eye something beginning with death", which transports us nicely from the crazy, mixed-up, movable feast of crucifixion, chocolate and fertility to Anzac Day where a century out from World War I, commemorative ceremonies on the day are becoming ever more popular with those who were not there. Maybe war seems more romantic with longer hindsight.

Born to parents fundamentally shaped by service in World War II - mum a WAAF at Bomber Command and dad in the Royal Tank Corps before being taken prisoner - and later daughter-in-law of an imprisoned conscientious objector whose wife bore white feathers, alienation, hunger and children beaten up at school, I haven't been to an Anzac Day service since the anti-Vietnam war student protest days when we burnt a flag and all got arrested.

This year, so far away in both time and distance, our little rural village is having the first Anzac service at the local obelisk for years. I guess earlier, old soldiers went to the dawn parade in town so there was no need, but there are precious few old soldiers left now. In fact my dad's Christchurch branch of the Ex-Prisoners of War Association had to wind up for lack of a quorum. Now my mother - always very proud of membership of the RSA - is dead and can no longer wear her medals on the big day though, I think I might break the habit of a lifetime, go along, join in and lay some roses in her honour.