Virtually the whole world at your fingertips | BBC Radio Solent's Alun Newman

I even managed to keep my arms in the air for the whole thing, even with a loop-the-loop.

We didn’t stay long as we had to travel the short distance to New York for an amazing trip around, and up, the Statue of Liberty.

The view from the top is really quite wonderful and the helix-shaped staircase is a thing of beauty.

This wasn’t my idea sadly, although I have my sticky little needy fingerprints all over it.

It was actually my wife suggested that we needed something to make the weekend feel a bit different.

And that has to be the beauty of ‘virtual’ trips around the globe provided by your laptop and the internet.

We took it a step further and tried to coincide the experience with different foods from the places we were ‘virtually’ visiting.

However, that became ‘virtually’ impossible when we ventured to Sweden for the northern lights.

I don’t like herring when it's in any form including pickled. Whales are unsurprisingly hard to find and Ikea is shut for meatballs.

To go back to the beginning of this breakthrough…

We had been sitting as a family around the kitchen table and we all thought that weekends were a bit predictable (an understatement for me who find them excruciatingly dull and mind-numbing).

When this idea was tabled by my wife it unleashed a new level of possibilities.

It took some convincing to dim the lights, plug the laptop into the TV and move the sofa a bit closer. I’m pretty sure I was the only one who had their arms up for the rollercoaster.

However, there are so many options available around planet Earth.

But the best thing is, it’s free. Some tours are guided. Some have speeches. Others, like the Statue of Liberty, have great 360-degree high-definition levels that you can cruise through at the click of a mouse.

Throw in some dad facts and don’t hang around turning something fun into a university lecture and you're away.

The advantage any parent has in this instance, is that there’s still a screen involved and as long as you're not painstakingly creeping through the Louvre in Paris looking at old masters, you can get away with it.

What was quite funny was the fact that there were some ‘virtual’ visits that were off-limits. We weren’t allowed to go to the Smithsonian Museum because it would ‘ruin it’ when my son eventually gets there in real life.

We also couldn't visit the first McDonald's restaurant as my daughter wanted that to be part of her honeymoon experience (low bar. I think she says these things to irritate me).

I can report that Saturday evening was peppered with a world tour of wonder. We finished with a visit to Yellowstone National Park. The good folk of Wyoming post an approximate time that Old Faithful will blow (geyser). We logged on and waited with excitement. That’s not actually factually correct. We logged on and waited while everyone commented that it looked very cold and boring. We discussed in some detail why geological events are amazing and not only for dull adults. That aside, within ten minutes the webcam was perfectly positioned for this natural wonder to perform.

We finished the evening with a compulsory walk around our housing estate (referred to as the prison yard). It’s all very well letting the internet impress you but freezing cold rain helped us all blow off a bit of steam.

This weekend? Pisa. Great Barrier Reef and the bar that was used to film The Only Way is Essex.

Lockdown dress down

There has been a 260 per cent increase in the number of people looking to buy leisurewear online. This used to be more commonly known as a tracksuit but Leisurewear is a bit thinner, comfier, softer.

I used to tease my sister when she first got married telling her that nothing says ‘foot off the gas’ in a relationship more than returning home to your partner in Leisurewear.

Personally, I don’t mind it. Although, it sometimes can communicate a kind of relational Closed for Business sign. It’s saying ‘I’ve switched off’. I’m unwinding’. It’s saying ‘no, I'm not going to clean the car, thaw the freezer, put the washing on. You'll be lucky if I can even be bothered to feed myself’.

It’s the clothing equivalent of an off-switch. It’s clothing that’s tuned to sitting, watching TV and asking the next person who walks past if they can get you a blanket or make you a cuppa. Combine that with your favourite chair or seat in the front room and the message is clear. This day is done, it’s over.

There has emerged an interesting half-way house for this theory. Because so many people work from home and function on Zoom or Teams. You dress sensibly on the top half – a shirt, smart jumper, possibly even a tie. But it’s Leisurewear for the bottom half. It’s as if everything from the waist up is in work mode. Energised. Listening. Inputting dynamic ideas.

What the camera doesn’t see is that from the waist down, your body is in the blocks, ready to dash to the sofa. Employers don’t know the half of it.