The phone-free meal

Text: an original contemporary personal account-style practice extract.

Our family tried leaving our phones in a basket during dinner. I expected to resent the rule, but I enjoyed finishing a conversation without a notification breaking it up. I also liked not being asked to pose for a photograph before my food went cold. We did not suddenly agree about everything. My brother still complained about the vegetables, and the bus timetable still needed checking afterwards. What changed was that those small arguments could finish before something on a screen replaced them.

From the extract, give two things the writer liked about the phone-free dinner.