Let’s do this together

If you’ve wondered why the nation’s teenagers have been sleepier than usual this week, it’s because the long-awaited season four of Stranger Things dropped this week.

The Dark Lord organised two of her mates to stay for a “sleepover” and stayed up all night to watch the last series, and all seven episodes of the latest one.

“But won’t you get tired and scared?” I asked, projecting my own feelings.

I saw the first two episodes of the science fiction horror series back in 2016 and got so frightened by the face coming through the wall scene, that I turned it off, never to be watched again.

The Dark Lord has never let me live this down and regularly calls me out for being so pathetic.

But I’m still haunted by the horror films my friends and I used to sneak in to watch at the cinema back in the 80s. We’d spend hours making ourselves look older just to be able to scare ourselves silly. I burst into tears watching one of the Halloween movies and to this day have a deep-rooted fear of screechy violin effects.

She rolled her eyes at me.

“Stranger Things is NOT scary, Mum. It’s brilliant – and just a bit creepy.”

I joked that it’s taken so long for season four to drop after all the Covid delays, the actress Millie Bobby Brown, who plays teenager Eleven, is probably a mother of four by now.

“Is she really?” asked the gormless one. “No, you twit. Maths really isn’t your strong point, is it?”

They started their Netflix marathon at 7pm, and I delivered food to them at regular intervals – burgers, chips and boxes of popcorn. By 11pm, they were flagging and had to break out the pick ’n’ mix for a sugar hit.

I went off to bed and left them to it, but woke up at 2am and went to check on their televisual progress.

All the lights were on everywhere but the teenagers were sound asleep. Turns out that pulling an all-nighter is harder than it looks.

■ Email me at siobhan.mcnally@mirror.co.uk or write to Community Corner, PO Box 791, Winchester SO23 3RP.