Day 170 - Playtime

buildering bridges

I've been thinking about the importance of playing, to us as adult humans.

I was going to use the word "mature", which made me think "immature"...but I don't think play is immature behaviour, despite what society often tells us.

Stop acting like a child, we're told, or act your age, if we do things for no other reason than just because... 

Of course, it's fine to play if it's competitive (in which case it's not really playing at all)...one can play football, or golf, or even darts - as long as there are losers, there can be winners...

(Side note - I struggle with the morality of sports sometimes...I fear they do subtle damage to society, by teaching the lesson that in order for you to succeed, someone else must fail.  This seems distinctly unhealthy to me, psychologically...it feels as though it might be a small thing that sits at the heart of our collective consciousness, leading to us valuing personal success above mutual support...the default game is win-lose. 

What's wrong with win-win?!)

In the adult world, play doesn't seem very...playful.   We play hard and we play dirty...we play the game, and if we play our cards right, we can play to win.

(Musically speaking, you can play it by ear, you can play it again, and you can play that funky music 'til you die...but that's a different meaning of the word play!)

Playfulness is one aspect of climbing that I find deeply gratifying...

Yesterday, Anna, Jezz and I spent a brilliant hour at the end of our climbing session, just playing, inventing simple physical challenges for each other:

Can you do this problem in only three moves?

Can you get to the top using only one hold between the start and the finish?

Can you jump up and catch that hold way up there, from these holds way down here?  

All silly, childish challenges, risking injury to no real benefit...except brilliant fun!

This evening as I was in the garden looking for subjects, Anna came out and playfully began to climb the house...exactly the kind of thing your parents tell you not to do when you're a kid...

I was pleased to find that my instinctive response was not "get down!", but rather, "climb higher, let me take photo's!"

If play is childish, then I'm glad I haven't quite shaken off my immaturity just yet!

:-)

In other news, we have an(other) intriguing new mystery!

On the decking in our garden, we have some trees and shrubs that stand on the corner in pots.  We planted them for our old boy Bluez after he passed.

At the weekend, we came down one morning to find that the bark mulch in the top of a couple of them had been pulled out and spread across the decking...Anna diligently picked all the bits up and replaced them...

Today, they're spread over the decking again!

bark bestrewn

Who (or what) is responsible for this?!   After I've finished this blog, I'm going to try to remember to put the trailcam (which Anna conveniently retrieved today) out there, see what we can see...

Finally, here are some flowers for my mum.

happy tuesday, mum...

This is the clematis that is blooming outside our kitchen at the moment...the flowers very much remind me of some of mum's artwork, and I thought she'd appreciate their vibrant colours...

:-)