We often spend New Year’s Eve at our old university friends’ in London. The routine is a familiar one: the children play together, then later the grown-ups get out the board games to pass the time until Big Ben does its thing.

Increasingly, the kids are becoming more interested and involved in the games. Ticket to Ride is an old favourite, and although the adults didn’t play it this year Isaac and Toby were keen to get the game out, having both played the iPad version for some time. It’s not designed with children in mind, but our boys have long since mastered the rules and basic strategies and were able to set up and play it unsupervised.

We’ve always been keen to ensure the kids don’t jump straight into the world of XBox and Playstation bypassing more traditional games, so to see them voluntarily embracing old-fashioned ‘analogue’ gaming is a delight. At least it will be until they start beating us!