Celia Walden My secret to a good night’s sleep

Nomadland is an Oscars frontrunner, Tim Robey says, but the race for best actress is wide open

Halfway through my Sunday morning run I stopped, pulled out my phone from its weird Velcro armband and tapped out the following text to my husband: “Her screen needs to be turned off in four minutes.” I then sank down on my haunches to stare at this aggressive little sentence. There’s “helicopter parenting”, and there’s the whizz of parental propellers so fast and furious that it threatens to blow away everything within a 10-mile radius. When did I become that woman?

I thought back to the Manhattan mum I’d once witnessed kneeling before her toddler on a pavement: “I need to hear you verbalise why that was wrong.” Once you’ve reached that point, it’s not so much about control as suppressed rage. And after a year of homeschooling, British parents are finding it hard to contain that rage, whether it’s directed at schools, their own academic inadequacies, or – as in my case – the five to eight hours of screen time their children have been subjected to daily. That’s often without counting the homework, Zoom catch-ups with friends and entertainment needed to stay sane during lockdown.

This week, as the country finally prepares to get kids offline and back to school and pupils are being urged to celebrate Thursday’s World Book Day… on Zoom, how many of us are counting the costs of that screen on our children’s mental health, attention spans, sleep and literacy?

For the first eight years of my daughter’s life, I measured out and restricted her screen time more obsessively than sugar. If shaving off five minutes meant less time for me to write an article, shower or talk to a friend on the phone, I’d take the hit. All of those things can and have been done while wiggling a jiggle toy.

Anything to stop her turning into one of those dead-eyed zombie kids whose face lights up only when talking Roblox or Minecraft-ese, and who would never even consider something as stultifying as a book. Yet within a few months, Covid had made eight years’ worth of discipline and petty arguments over that extra 60 seconds sucking on the iteat redundant.

Granted, this past year thrust us into the most extraordinary circumstances we could ever hope to live through, and just as the Second World War Brits receiving their condensed milk rations would never have dreamt of sneering “not very healthy, is it?”, we should of course be grateful to technology for making schooling, socialising and myriad forms of entertainment possible at all.

But let’s not pretend there hasn’t been considerable damage done here. Recent data taken from more than 120,000 Chinese schoolchildren showed a three-fold increase in the prevalence of short-sightedness among six to eight-year-olds since the pandemic began. And according to Vicki Dawson, the founder of the UK’S Sleep Charity, there has been a “significant increase in children experiencing sleep problems” over the past year, with increased screen time being one of the primary factors.

My daughter certainly takes far longer to fall asleep on school days than before, her hands and feet twitching in a way they never have previously. Meanwhile, a friend’s daughter has developed a series of nervous habits that she attributes to the long, lonely hours in which she has been confined to her Zoom box.

But while these things will naturally be erased by a return to normal life, a catastrophic rise in child illiteracy is bound to be the most serious and enduring side effect – unless we make a concerted effort to promote and reinstate reading, and refuse to allow 2020 to set a dangerous precedent.

To that aim thousands of bookshops have provided £1 book tokens to children all over the country for World Book Day. And yesterday, a new campaign, Turn on the Subtitles (Tots), which wants subtitles to be a default setting on children’s TV programmes in an attempt to improve child literacy, appealed to thousands of schools to help them to spread their message.

“I like to think of it as a bit like sneaking vegetables into dinner,” said Henry Warren, its co-founder. “The children don’t notice, but you know you’re doing them the world of good.”

But the best advice I was ever given came from Pamela Paul, the New York Times Book Review editor, who in her How to Raise a Reader urged parents to “lose the fear of ‘late’” – whether they’re five or 15 there is always time for your child to become a reader

– and to never, ever, be a book snob. Because whatever the “gateway drug” turns out to be, comic books, pony books or ghastly pink princess books, it’ll lead them into a world of addiction that will never need policing by a helicopter parent trying to enjoy her morning run.

A catastrophic rise in child illiteracy is bound to be the most enduring side effect

Dedicated observers of the Golden Globes will tell you that, in fact, they mean next to nothing. You can win one and not even get an Oscar nomination. Ask Colin Farrell or Madonna. In fact, in 78 years of broadcasts, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which conducts the ceremony, has not established a reputation as a reliable bellwether of anything much.

Yet in a fun way, the Globes can introduce some unpredictable chaos into awards season with its comedy/ musical categories, which bestow nominations on disreputable films

– The Prom! Sia’s Music! – that no one else would be seen dead with. A typical ceremony is about 50/50 diligent certainties and wacky wild cards.

You certainly could not guess where Oscars will be going in the female acting categories from any of the Globe recipients. Andra Day (The United States vs. Billie Holiday), Rosamund Pike (I Care a Lot) and Jodie Foster (The Mauritanian) were all shock winners. In the case of Day, it propelled her way up into the melee of the best actress race, but it’s hardly a foregone conclusion that she’ll repeat this coup against a trio of mighty contenders, all Oscar winners before – Viola Davis (Ma

Rainey’s Black Bottom), Frances Mcdormand (Nomadland) and Carey Mulligan (Promising Young Woman).

The men are looking more locked down. Chadwick Boseman (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom) is a certainty to win the third-ever posthumous acting Oscar. You’d be foolish to bet against Daniel Kaluuya’s fiery Fred Hampton (Judas and the Black Messiah) for best supporting actor now, too.

Before the Globes, Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland was well out in front as the film to beat for best picture and best director at the Oscars. While snagging the equivalent Globes has cemented that impression in some ways, nothing has really changed. The story of a widow (Mcdormand) who chooses an itinerant lifestyle after losing everything in the Great Recession, the film is a contemplation of America’s social fabric that asks searching questions about solitude in a broken world. It’s not hard to argue that its themes resonate more powerfully after a year of enforced isolation, social drift and economic turmoil. It has the texture, though, of an American classic that would have been taken as much to heart before the pandemic.

Zhao is the first woman to win the best director Globe since 1984, when Barbra Streisand won for Yentl before missing out on an Oscar nomination. In 2010, when Kathryn Bigelow broke the glass ceiling on Oscar night by winning for The Hurt Locker, the Globes rather pooped the party by honouring her ex-husband James Cameron (Avatar) instead.

It’s not that Oscar voters are going to line up dutifully with Zhao as a

Golden aura: Frances Mcdormand and David Strathairn in Nomadland

long-anointed champ. It’s not that the Globes “guessed” right. It’s that Nomadland has a wider base of admiration than any other option. The hauls of zero Globes for David Fincher’s Mank and Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman don’t bode well. But Nomadland has the golden aura around it of a best picture winner already. It’s easily the least talky of all these films. It’s the one that turns its gaze to the horizon of the Midwest at magic hour, and back to Mcdormand’s gloriously expressive face, and trusts in the unsaid. But it will keep on winning because, as a study of survival, it has the most to say.

If you’re going back to the office and among the 65 per cent of Britons feeling anxious about it, according to Bupa Health Clinics, here’s what the experts suggest for easing yourself in...

The commute

Planning your journey in advance can help soothe nerves, says Anji Mcgrandles, workplace well-being expert, and founder of the Mindtribe. “You might also want to get off the Tube/bus a few stops early and walk the rest of the way to avoid going straight into the office stressed,” she adds.

The clothes

After a year of living in our tracksuits, organisation is key. Mcgrandles recommends laying out your outfit the night before, to avoid a last-minute flap. “Clothes influence your mindset, so pick an outfit that makes you feel ready for business,” she explains.

The safety measures

Craig Jackson, professor of Occupational Health

Psychology at Birmingham City University, says that many people will take comfort in maintaining routines such as handwashing and social distancing, and may use them as “their own personal psychological safety measures”.

The small talk

Have you forgotten how to make conversation beyond the supermarket checkout? Remember you aren’t the only one. “Don’t worry about making small talk or overthinking it. Keep your conversations light and positive,” says Mcgrandles.

The overwhelm:

Being back in a noisy office may come as a bit of a shock. Dr Nadia Svirydzenka, psychology lecturer at De Montfort University, Leicester, advises that headphones can help to manage feelings of “sensory overload”. There is no shame in giving yourself a bit of space: if it helps, eat lunch alone, or go for a quick breather when needed.

Alice Hall