Lent 7: Playing

So, I didn't go home and clean my kitchen. I realised I had no commitments and it was my Mum's birthday, so I drove to Westbury to see her.

I was so glad I did. She and my dad were really pleased to see me, and I was another person who'd dropped in like many others that day to say hello to Mum on her birthday. I'd stopped for cake when I filled up the car with diesel, and ended up bringing profiteroles, crisps, beetroot dip and hummus to the party.

One of Mum's longstanding friends and her daughter joined us much later in the eve, and we had a lovely evening jabbering away and helping my dad with his essay.

I'm very very glad I didn't clean my kitchen. I love my parents very much.

Lent 7: Playing.

What were your favorite games as a child? What did you like to do with your classmates or the neighborhood kids? How did that affect the person you grew to become?

I loved make believe games as a child. Pretending to be a shopkeeper, or Laura from Little House on the Prairie. There was this one game I would play with Amey, called Cousin Suzy, about a glamourous older teenage cousin, all of 19(!), who would come pick us up in her limo and take us to parties.

I used to spend ages playing horses with Natalie Zoe and Jenny in the playground, each section of the school wall another stable.

Erica and I would force our siblings to dress up and put on lengthy plays for our long suffering parents.

All this imagining certainly fostered my creativity today. I'm good at picturing things and plans and how they may work. I'm still certainly very happy to dress up and pretend with little people. I love fancy dress parties.

A flip side of all this, that Tom and his friends suffer through is that I'm not over fond of board games. My dad loves them, and we would play as a family. But Dad is really competitive. And so I wouldn't win very often. Sure, when I did, the sense of satisfaction was immense. But I know I don't enjoy things I'm not good at. I know this means I don't persist with new things if I'm not showing promise at them right away. Board games are like this. I never used to win, so they weren't that fun.

And now, when Tom and his friends while away their evenings having a lovely time playing board games, they always politely ask if I want to play, and I decline. Knowing I won't enjoy it. I'd much rather sit and knit and watch them play. They take it all so seriously. Perhaps that's what I object to? So much effort into something with no tangible result? I'm a maker after all.

But that can't be it, because give me a creative game like Flux, or Cards Against Humanity, or the Marmer Game, or Contact or Hunt the Thimble anywhere in time and space and I love it.

So there you go.