I was in the fifth floor kitchenette at work, watching Dave fill up his plastic cup of water. When he finished he turned to me, expectant and uncertain. Clearly, he sensed the ‘I want to say something to you’ vibe of my loitering.

Indeed, there was something I wanted to ask. I have spent the past year watching people fill up plastic cups of water in the kitchen. People would take a plastic cup, fill it, drink from it, then very conscientiously place it into the plastic recycling bin. Meanwhile, two shelves of perfectly reusable ceramic mugs hovered above the filtered water tap.

My company is full of environmentally friendly people, yet despite recurring requests, the stacked column of plastic cups continues to be replenished.

I wanted to ask someone about this. Today was my lucky day because Dave is a nice Englishman and probably wouldn’t be offended.

‘Dave,’ I said. ‘Is there some reason you use a plastic cup instead of a mug? Is it…’ I paused, ‘…a cultural thing?’

Dave looked surprised, then lifted up his cup of water and gazed at it for five seconds.

‘I don’t know,’ he began. ‘I guess I wouldn’t drink water from a mug. I never thought about it.’

So he thought about it. ‘I think it is a cultural thing. I feel like I need to drink water from a clear cup.’

Now this was something that hadn’t occurred to me! I had speculated to myself that there was something wrong with having a handle on the cup, or that mugs were too big for water.

‘Oh! Thank you for that,’ I said.

Later, I tried to corroborate my findings with Chris, another Englishman.

‘I use a mug for water,’ Chris said. ‘But I can see why others might not want to. I think it’s because mugs are sometimes stained. When you have tea or coffee, then you don’t mind because you can’t see. But because water is transparent, the staining probably puts people off.’

While cooking my week’s worth of food this evening, I listened to a programme on BBC’s Radio 4 about the games that kids play. It reminded me of the things I used to do to while away play lunch, lunch time, and after school. What games did you play?

Prep
I can’t remember a single game I played in Prep.

Grade 1
I think roleplay games were pretty big. I remember playing ‘mothers and fathers’. Back in grade 1, everyone wanted to play a mother or father. For some reason, as we got older (grades 2 and 3), we tended to want to play the baby.

I definitely remember playing tiggy, which I felt to be a terrifying game. Being chased made my heart beat in fear, not just exertion. Then there was the feeling of resignation when I got tigged (or ‘tagged’). It would always take me a long time to tig someone else because back then I was a slow runner.

As a variation on tiggy, I remember being swept up in about a week of ‘bum tiggy’. Some kid decided that tiggy would be improved if the aim was to whack people on their backsides. This indignity, combined with my general fear of tiggy, caused me to rebel and I sat on a bench to thwart anyone who would want to tig my bottom.

One of my favourite games in Grade 1 was ‘statues’. The music goes on, everyone dances, the music stops, then you freeze. Someone goes around and if he or she detects you moving, you’re out.

I loved statues. There wasn’t the panic of tiggy, and I liked dancing.

I think I also played with the monkey bars. I remember falling off the top level of the monkey bars and hitting the bark-covered ground head first.

Grade 2
Two words: clapping games. The girls went a bit crazy with clapping games that year. You know the ones I mean, right? You recite ditties and clapped hands with a partner (and sometimes, even two partners, if you could form a ring of clapping people). The more complicated the clapping sequence, the more prestigious. I remember being taught some of these. I think I caught on pretty quickly.

Grade 2 was also the first wave of marble mania. ‘Marble season’, as it was called, seemed to come every year or second year. I found marbles to be quite a distressing game. I hated losing my marbles, so I engaged only in the collecting and trading activities of marble season.

I think there was a skipping season in Grade 2 (and this reoccurred in Grade 5). We favoured the big skipping ropes, one girl at each end and people timing their entry and exit into the looping vortex. Actually, boys played with us too. Skipping seems to have enough of a physical activity component so that boys enjoy it too.

Grade 3
Grade 3 was my favourite year of school and play. We had a teacher, Miss Kingman, who would bring our games into the classroom, and would take the classroom to our games. I spent a lot of time in Grade 3 making sand cakes. There was a sand pit at the end of the primary school and we would make three tier sand cakes (no castles). After play lunch or lunch break, Miss Kingman would take the whole class down to the sand pit to see what people had made.

When marble season came back again in Grade 3, I was making ‘marble traps’, which were hidden tunnels designed to capture marbles. I would come back to my trap at the end of the lunch session to see if there were any marbles. There never were.

The other thing we played was ‘Space Jump‘, which is actually a sophisticated improv game that adults play. For those who don’t know it, the game master sets a topic. The first person comes on to role play that topic. Then the game master shouts ‘Space Jump!’ and the next person comes it, picks up on the first person’s position and pose and completely changes the topic. The first person has to fit right into the second person’s scenario. Then another ‘Space Jump!’ is shouted, and a third person goes in. This is repeated for the fourth person.

After the fourth person, the whole thing unravels. After ‘Space Jump!’, the fourth person leaves, and everyone goes back to the third scenario. This is repeated until only the original person in the original scenario is left.

Thinking back, as kids, I think we were amazingly inventive and brave. Everyone played, no one was self conscious. We played in class, we played outside class. It was my all time favourite game.

Grade 4
As I remember, Grade 4 was dominated by two games: 40-40 and elastics. 40-40 is a variation of hide and seek, where the aim is to return to base before someone spotted you and yelled ’40-40, I see Joan!’ I really liked this game. It wasn’t scary like tiggy.

Elastics were more fun than skipping. I remember being quite good at it. I also remember mum making me my own equipment with with elastic from her sewing kit. Thanks mum!

Grade 5
Besides the return of skipping season, I think Grade 5 was the first time we started playing ‘two square’ and ‘four square’. Two square is like playing tennis but with your hand as the tennis racquet. There were two options: you could play ‘on the full’ (the you had to hit the ball straight to your opponent’s square like in tennis) or with a bounce (like table tennis, you hit the ball into your own side before it bounces into your opponents).

Four square is similar with the added nomenclature of rankings: king, queen, jack and dunce, where the aim is to move from dunce up to king.

Damjan just reminded me of a game he calls ‘downball’. At our school, we played ‘deadshot’. For us, the difference was that downball used a larger ball like a basketball and deadshot used a tennis ball. We bounced the tennis ball on the ground, then a wall, before someone caught it. I can’t remember who was meant to catch it. Did it go in a sequence of people? (i.e. did I have to catch it on my ‘turn’?)

Regardless, I remember being surprised that I wasn’t bad at this game. It seems that in Grade 5, my physical prowess improved a lot. I could suddenly keep up running with my class mates, I did the 3 km fun run quite easily, and I could catch a ball.

Grade 6
I noticed that as we grew older, we played fewer and fewer active games and spent more time sitting around chatting during play time. I think Grade 6 was the start of this trend. Certainly, in high school, we only sometimes played two square, four square and dead shot, and spent more time gossiping. Later, breaks were spent working and being in the debating club. Others played Magic, chess, did choir… I’m not sure what the non-nerds did.

I really like the light in Cambridge and London, which are the places that I’ve lived in the UK. When the sun is out, we get a soft golden light. It’s the same as the light we get on an early Melbourne morning, only we’re getting at two or three o’clock in the afternoon in London/Cambridge.

The ‘golden hours‘ are when sunlight comes in at low angles. In Melbourne, I could get this kind of light at 7 AM on a spring morning. By 9 AM, though, the Melbourne sun is bright and white, which makes shadows pretty hard. Here, though, the golden hours last much longer.

For a long time, I wondered if I was just imagining it. Maybe I was exaggerating the brightness and directness of Melbourne light in my mind. Maybe I’ve just been paying more attention to the light here.

However, someone has given me a plausible explanation for London/Cambridge’s extended golden hours. I’ve been living at 52 degrees north. Melbourne is 38 degrees south. The difference in distance from the equator could mean that the elevation of the sun (the inclination?) is lower here in London/Cambridge than it is in Melbourne.

Do you think that’s right? Would such a latitude difference be noticeable?

This is Sackler Crossing at Kew Gardens. The light was really, really gorgeous at about 4 PM.

Unfortunately, it seems my lens was dirty. I didn’t notice the blemishes in this photo until now. I haven’t cleaned my lens recently so it’s probably still like that.

Here is the famous Canterbury Cathedral, centre of the Anglican world. (Doesn’t it look a lot like the Dom in Cologne? All that Gothic architecture, I guess.)

The cloisters of Canterbury Cathedral, which look a lot like the cloisters I’ve come across in Oxford.

The herbarium of the cathedral.

The ruins of Canterbury Castle, formerly a vital line of defence against the French, then a storage depot for a gas company.

A nice tree in a nice Canterbury garden.

For my birthday, Damjan and I had a weekend away in Canterbury. I could have asked for the world.

It wouldn’t have cost Damjan that much.

Instead, he bought me pigeon risotto with barley pearls.

And then there were the guys in asbestos suits playing big band numbers. They were really cool. One of them was a girl but it’s hard to tell which one.

‘House proud’. It’s a new term for me, and an unexpected source of stress when I was being kicked out of my first London home.

During the second week after we had been given notice to leave, I got a call on my mobile at lunch time. It was Damian.

‘Joan, the real estate agent is going to show some people through the house. Is that okay with you?’

I panicked. I thought of the pyjamas thrown over my computer chair, the unmade bed, books and bills on my desk, towel drying over the radiator, shoes placed around my bedroom to trip unsuspecting guests.

‘Erm…’ I hemmed.

‘I’ll say no if you want,’ Damian said. ‘I told the landlord that we’d have the last stay for showing people through.’

‘Ah, no, it’s okay.’ I was embarrassed. ‘Will you be there?’

‘Yes, as a matter of fact, I’ve got a half day off.’

‘Um, would you mind going up to my room and shoving the clothes on my bed under the blanket?’

‘House proud, Joan? I never knew.’

I never knew either. All of a sudden, the idea of strangers seeing my slobbishness filled me with deep shame.

Ten minutes after Damian hung up the phone, I messaged him to ask him to open up the curtains as well. I don’t know why I wanted my room to look its best. It wasn’t like I wanted the landlord to sell the house!

After that day, the estate agent showed two more groups of people through and let a builder in as well. Each time, my bedroom was immaculate. I couldn’t leave the house without making the bed and putting away bits, bobs and clothes.

You know, keeping your room tidy takes up a lot of time. I got to work five or ten minutes later every day.

The good news is that I’ve carried my new tidy habit over to my new bedroom. You never know when someone is going to come in…

This fridge magnet features in the kitchen of my new flat. Is it true?

I was away from work today. Looking at my work email from the internet, I have 31 new emails! I must be popular.