Play time

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.

The golden hours

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.

Rock bottom globes

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

‘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?

Popular

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

Peak banana

Somehow, a while back, I found out that banana plants were actually giant herbs. I told this to some people and they ridiculed me.

‘Giant herbs?’ they said. ‘You’re making stuff up.’

‘It’s true!’ I cried. ‘I’ll show you. Let’s look it up on Wikipedia.’

Wikipedia is, of course, the fount of all knowledge. Imagine my distress, then, when there was no mention of ‘herb’ in Wikipedia’s banana article.*

‘But it’s true…’ I said plaintively.

‘Yeah, yeah,’ they said.

I started doubting my previous conviction.

Unexpectedly, while visiting the Palm House at Kew Gardens, I received long overdue vindication.


‘I told them so! I told them!’ I shouted.

Yap passed on some more interesting banana facts.

He said, ‘There is a disease killing all the bananas, you know. It’s gradually reducing the worldwide banana production.’

‘Really?’ I said. ‘I didn’t know that! It must be because all the bananas are clones of each other.’

Yap nodded. ‘In fact, due to this disease, some experts have announced that we have reached peak production.’ He paused. ‘It’s peak banana**.’

* The Wikipedia article on bananas now does have a reference to it growing from ‘herbaceous plants’ in the first line. I swear this wasn’t there when looked.

** I thought Yap was joking and I laughed hysterically. But I just now looked it up on Google and found that there are indeed people writing about peak banana.

Speeling

I’m pretty good at spelling. But I tried to spell that word that means really big, starts ‘c’ and rhymes with ‘fossil’. I tried to do it three times: callosal, collosal, collosol. I don’t think I’ve ever used it before! I was completely baffled.

Turns out it is spelled ‘colossal’.

Drowned Joanrat

It started on Friday night. I went to a nice quiet bar with my team mates to bid farewell to our team leader, who is leaving for hotter and more lucrative shores. At 11pm, the quiet bar turned into a thumping night club. So I checked my bag and jacket into the cloak room and boogied past the time that Tube trains stop running.

When I stepped out of the bar/club to take a night bus home, I discovered that my Oyster card was no longer in my coat pocket. I ran back to the bar but now that it had turned into a club, there were four burly bouncers at the door and a line of people waiting to get in. I was locked out.

To get home, I had to pay more than twice the normal bus fare by buying a fare from a ticket machine. Okay, fine, I deserved to be punished for being careless. But — I had no coins in my red wallet to feed the ticket machine! For a few minutes, I contemplated having to walk for 90 minutes in the middle of the night to get home.

I had an idea. If I could find a shop open, I could buy something to get some coins for change! Then I could get a bus ticket.

McDonald’s saved the day. I bought chips (yum!) and then had the coins I needed.

The next day, I bought a new Oyster card and loaded it up with a couple of pounds. After a weekend of travelling around London with friends, my Oyster card balance was £2.70 — enough for one more Tube trip.

I slept badly on Sunday night. I woke up at 3am because my feet were really cold. I got out of bed to put on two pairs of socks and still my feet were icy. I curled up in a ball and hung onto my feet. They must have warmed up because I eventually fell asleep.

Being tired the next day probably affected my thinking. I used up £1.50 of my Oyster credit to get to work. This meant that there was £1.20 credit left, not enough money to get back home but I planned to call Transport for London to transfer the £20 on my lost card to my new card. This they did for me — but it will only be available tomorrow. That was okay. I would top up my card with the 30 pence I needed to travel home.

Today, winter began in earnest, and rain bucketed down. I stayed in the office until 6:40pm. Monday is my dance lesson night. I had to get to Covent Garden for 7pm.

I packed up my desk, changed into my t-shirt and shorts, then stepped out into the night. Only there, standing at the front of the building, did I realise that there was no umbrella in my bag. I had left my umbrella in my weekend bag. Being tired this morning meant that I had forgotten to transfer things between bags.

Having missed my dance lesson last week, I was determined to make it this week. It was only 15 minutes walk. A little rain never killed anyone. So I headed off, grabbing the first free newspaper offered to me by a street spruiker, and held the paper over my face.

By the time I got to the dance studio, the paper was soaked through and my hair was dripping. At the reception, I reached into my bag to get out £4 for entry fee. My purse wasn’t in its usual place. I suddenly got a mental picture of my red purse next to my green umbrella at home. I knew it was fruitless but I dug around in my wallet some more while I thought about what to do.

I admitted to myself that I couldn’t go dancing today. So I ventured out back into the rain, unconvincingly batting away raindrops with my rapidly disintegrating free newspaper.

I very quickly realised I had another problem. The £1.20 on my Oyster card would not get me home on the Tube. I didn’t have even 30 pence to top it up.

I thought about begging.

Well, really, I was lucky I had enough for a 90 pence bus fare. Imagine if I hadn’t! I would have had to walk an hour through the rain with my bare legs sticking out from under my brown woollen coat to get home! Now though, I just needed to walk 10 minutes in the rain to get the bus, then another 10 minutes in the rain once I got off the bus.

By the time I reached home, my shoes were soaked wet. I was a drowned Joanrat and my feet were cold again.

Dodging homelessness

Last week, our landlord gave us a month’s notice to vacate the house. It was a bit of a shock. Although he had been talking about selling the place, considering how sickly the housing market was doing, I figured we had a while yet before eviction.

I’ve spent a week obsessing over house ads on Gumtree and Moveflat. In a week, I visited five potential houseshares and flatshares. I’ve been trying to move within walking distance of work. For a place near work, I am willing to pay:

  • £80/month, due to travel cost savings
  • £40/month, to save 10 hours commuting time
  • £15/month, to avoid the vagaries and germ-spreading of the Tube (although, really, I love the Tube and its glorious convenience)

At the end of Saturday, I found a place in north London. It’s a new neighbourhood for me, having lived in south London since last November.

It’s 20 minutes walk from work and 10 minutes walk from Regent’s Park. I’ll be living in a maisonette with a couple (I think they own the place).

I was first a bit worried that it was too expensive for me. After some pondering, I now think it’s probably worth pay the £10 a week premium for the niceness of the flat, the size of the room, the fact I won’t be sharing it with a zoo of people, the lack of long-term contract (I will pay month by month), the interesting neighbourhood, and, of course, the location.

English spider

‘There’s a giant spider in my room,’ I said conversationally. Damjan and I were talking to each other on the phone.

‘Oh! Are you going to kill it?’ Damjan asked.

‘I can’t. When I came in, I saw something black rush across the floor. I just caught a look at a massive hairy spider before it scurried under my chest of drawers. I can’t get to it now.’

‘You’re just going to leave it there?’ said Damjan.

‘I don’t really mind, as long as it doesn’t bother me. But if it comes out, it will be sorry. YOU HEAR?’ I shouted at my chest of drawers. ‘IF YOU COME OUT YOU’LL BE SORRY!’

Damjan laughed. ‘My sister would be terrified. She wouldn’t be able to sleep in the same room with a spider.’

‘Well, it’s not like it’s an Australian spider. It’s just a piddy English spider.’