A well-known scientific fact is that prolonged time spent indoors with young children can drive you crazy.

Parents across the Sunshine Coast can testify to this, I’m sure, after enduring weeks of wild and wet weather over a Christmas holiday period that should have been defined by long balmy days of beach cricket and barbecues.

There is a limit to how much Specky Magee my eight-year-old can read quietly in his room before the craving to kick a real ball becomes intolerable.

The five-year-old Florence Nightingale wannabe can apply bandages to her dolls in the makeshift bedroom hospital for only so long before an injection of the great outdoors seems the only cure.

Eventually the damaging effects caused by lack of fresh air in their lungs, warm sunshine on their shoulders and salt water in their sinuses take their toll.

The dreaded cabin fever sets in.

Holed up at home for what felt like our 10th day straight, someone came up with the preposterous idea of going to the Sunshine Plaza to catch a movie.

I peered out the porthole of our storm-ravaged ship on to a moody Buderim streetscape drawn in grey pastels, which the artist inadvertently ruined by knocking a glass of water over, and then attempted to dry out by applying a turbo fan.

It didn’t look good.

To make it worse, when I squinted, I was almost certain I could see brave souls of all sizes in Driza-Bones, leaning into the wind, marking the end of the queue for Bee Movie down where our street meets Mill Road.

“Kids, it will be chaos down there today, I don’t think we should risk it,’’ I said, drawing a collective sigh.

I could see them thinking: “Here we go again, break out the boardgames for another thrilling session of Junior Monopoly – or – it’s back to the bedrooms we go to see what new stories the patterns in the carpet can tell us.”

Then something came out of my mouth that I’m guessing was a symptom of the fever, because for somebody so averse to busy cities it is not something I could conceive of offering voluntarily under normal conditions.

“Why don’t we go to the Sciencentre in Brisbane?’’ I said.

I have always been a closet sucker for science since becoming hooked on the Curiosity Show as a kid, when Dean and Rob amazed me with such creations as a hovercraft made from a paper plate, small electric motor, polystyrene coffee cup, Paddle Pop sticks and double-sided tape.

“You could probably make this with things you have lying around the home,’’ they would say quite matter-of-factly, perhaps unaware that I did not live at a Price Rite store or wasn’t boarding with Professor Julius Sumner Miller.

If they ever decided to base an experiment on chokos, flat batteries, blunt scissors and ancient rolls of Scotch sticky tape that you couldn’t find the start to, I would have been set. These items were readily accessible around my place.

Alas, it was never to be, but I still watched in wonderment, often cranking the volume as far as the old Rank Arena could go, to cover the sound of Mum’s vacuuming.

I persuaded my family that finding a car park at the Plaza would be harder than finding a small electric motor in the Waddington “fossick drawer” circa 1975, and that Brisbane might even be a simpler option.

Although they didn’t really know what I meant, I got my wish and in just over an hour we were at South Bank.

To remember where we parked the car, I used the data-storage mechanism that has served me well in recent times. I told my son to make a mental note of where we were – M3 (orange).

“Got it Dad,” he said.

My memory is okay for certain things. I can recall as a boy the particular way the summer sun caught the Sunnyboy’s orange shards of ice while I sat poolside at the Burleigh Baths watching the big kids bombdive.

But for useful things like where I parked the car, I’m hopeless. I convince myself that I am going to remember something as simple as M3 (orange) plastered on a concrete pole, but when crunch time comes all I can narrow it down to is a letter, a number and a colour.

If I was in the multi-level carpark business I would use more memorable icons – such as a gorilla with an alarm clock on its head, or a skateboarding pineapple – so people like me would have a chance.

To be continued next week ...