Families used to find different ways of passing time when forced to spend hours together on long car journeys or waiting in airports for delayed flights. Nowadays we mostly just stare at our phones, but we are poorer for the technology.

It’s the three dimensions into two, conundrum…inadequately solved by projections. Crossing from Auckland to Melbourne a few years ago we calculated we would have saved 24 miles by following a great circle route rather than a fixed course. That’s four hours over an eight day journey.