Free the words: villanelle

Timeflight

The birds fly down, the curving wings unfurl.

Though I would catch them, make them stay,

The summer’s gone, the autumn must return.

 

They say that time is hard to trap – to trick,

We scrabble hard to hold it. All the while,

The birds fly down, the curving wings unfurl.

 

Some days I too take flight. I leave

the day behind; misgivings; moments lost.

The summer’s gone, the autumn must return.

 

I launch into tomorrow, waiting for

The updraft; an escape from time?

The birds fly down, the curving wings unfurl.

 

Move on? I must. The pace it gathers fast,

The days move swifter every year.

The summer’s gone, the autumn must return.

 

Or yet – I summon all my strength – I’ll float,

Be in this moment, see it glow, then burn.

The birds fly down, the curving wings unfurl.

The summer’s gone, the autumn must return.

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[The above is a combination of two things – a notion inspired by a picture I love, and a poetry form, the villanelle, that I’ve meant to try before.

The picture is by Braque, with three white bird shapes on a blue background – they all seem to be flying downward, at different angles.

The villanelle is a form favoured by Sylvia Plath, I knew, but I discovered that it’s also the form of Dylan Thomas’ famous ‘Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night’.

For someone waiting for spring, I don’t really want to rush away summer too, but once I had the line about the birds, the repeating line about the summer was one that seemed to fit.]

Free the words: six words

Lights low

Calm restored –

Leak stopped.

==========

[A friend regularly puts up six word posts on Facebook, often on Sundays.

I noticed that he got quite a few people adding their own six word compositions, and thought I’d try one too.

I realise this may come across as an April Fool’s joke. If only. Sometimes six words is all you have energy for to explain what happened to your day.]

Game on: on becoming a Good Loser

It doesn’t seem to matter whether or not you are a Sore Loser, earlier in life, whether or not you like games. At some point in time, you find yourself playing again.

It may be having your own junior players or joining ones in other families. It may also be needing to do something with dead time on journeys, wet days, being poorly, and the like.

I have come to learn that there is a space for games – and that games can in fact be fun.
For both sides.

I don’t know that I really became a Good Loser when I was younger. But one thing changed, with the passing of time. I became a Senior Player – needing to steer junior players through their own struggles with losing, and with winning.

I had an opportunity to demonstrate what it might look like to win (gracefully), what it might look like to lose (hopefully also gracefully) – or even to draw.

Part of the fun, as a Senior Player, is seeing junior players through the prism of the game. Their involvement, their enjoyment of turning the tables on the adult.

Their excitement at moving on – whether being able to play fully on their own, or simply mastering how to be able to move a figure on a board and count at the same time.

It is so much more about them, and so much less about the game. And it is definitely about the time we spend together as a result.

All of the games I’ve included this month are ones that we play. Maybe not constantly, but all of them have had their place in the last few years. All of them are ones in which it is no hardship to be the Loser – ones which can even make it easier to accept losing.

Part of me doesn’t take on the big strategists, when it comes to games. Playing with junior players levels the playing field for me too, and that is good, for an ex-Sore Loser.

What I love, perhaps the most, is the opportunity for inventiveness that games provide. I like the regular games we play a lot – I kind of have to – but I also love the ones that change every time, like balloon football or games on a tray.

I learn, too, from Junior Player, who is fearless in inventing new games. And who responds, eagerly, when I invent one or two back.

And that will do for now for games. Time to shut the lid – and find a new writing topic for next month.

Game on: story cubes

Hello again.  It’s been a while. Building work, junior player being ill rather a lot, family celebrations and even a trip abroad to add to the mix. Lots of living – less writing.

Those of you who’ve read the blog in the past know that there’s a seasonal shift around this time of year.  Autumn evenings: words start to flow.  Spring days: more interest in getting out and doing.

This time round, I’m planning to keep going on the writing. Because even if I’ve not been writing, others have. I’ve still been reading other people’s blogs, and gaining things from them.

But the main reason I write is for myself. I write to think clearly.  I write to enjoy words.  I write to remember things – or work out how I feel about them – or both. And even if the season is changing, these things are still the same.

The game

So: back to some games for now. Our trip abroad included the chance to join some other junior players and try out other games, some familiar, some new.

Here’s something new, that we bought on the plane on the way home: story cubes.

Imagine a small box which has 9 dice inside.  Instead of numbers on the dice, there are little pictures – or pictograms, if you will. 9 dice, 6 sides each = 54 different pictures.

The notion behind story cubes is that they make it easy to tell stories. (And in good travelling tradition, they are easy to pack, and to put away.) So it’s a game, if you will, but also a chance to talk, to imagine, and to tell stories.

The way it works

The pictures are great: imagine snakes, ray guns, toadstools, beans, large and tiny figures together, submarines and so on. The notion is that, with 54 different pictures, you can come up with very varied stories.

Junior player has been reading (or more accurately being read to) a series of stories about a boy spy, solving problems in lots of different countries.  The story cubes worked really well for him to retell bits of those stories that he remembered and liked – as well as new ones he came up with.

The impact

The fun thing is the creative element.  You can refer to the picture on a dice really quickly in your story – or spend a long time on it.  You can take it in turns to add in a new picture – or do all 9 pictures into one story by yourself.

Interestingly, junior player was keen to use the dice once we got home, in place of a bedtime story.  Keen too to get them out to show grandparents, and involve them in telling a story. So hopefully this one will run and run, in the best of game traditions.

My inner English teacher is very happy – particularly as this ties in with a book I bought recently on creative/crafting activities to support kids’ storytelling.  But it might just work well for serving up a little writing practice for the blogger in the family.

Practicalities

The dice are normal weight, and the box seems fairly sturdy, so this is a game that looks like it will last well.

You may also want to know that the lid of the box has a useful magnetic clasp, so it’s easy to get the dice in and out, but the box stays shut when you want it to.

You should know that too much shaking of dice, on a plane, could mean they disappear, so you may want to keep an eye on who’s shaking them.  But you should also know that you can fit the 9 dice quite nicely into the cup indent of a plane tray table, so everyone can see them.

I anticipate this should work well on train journeys too – as long as you are not in the quiet coach.  (Or if you are, maybe you’ll just have to whisper.)

Extension activities

The set we got is Voyages – sold as part of the selection on the plane, though no doubt available elsewhere.  There’s an intro set, and an actions set.  You can combine sets of dice to tell more and more stories.

As far as I can tell, the sets are colour coded, including the outline of the pictures on the dice (our set is in green), so you should be able to tell them apart and get them back into the correct box at the end.

I gather you can also use the website for the company to submit stories you’ve come up with, and share them, which might be good for the future.

If you’re looking to find a set for yourself, they’re called Rory’s Story Cubes.  And if you happen to be on a plane journey soon, and looking for a little something to bring home for your own junior player(s), it may well hit the spot.

Game on: Happy Families

I have ummed and ahhed about including this one.  Even the name feels un-PC these days, let alone the expectation that a family necessarily has mum, dad, boy and girl.

But part of the point of games is that they work.  The junior player I was with had no such qualms – she liked the game, and she wanted to play it with me.  A lot.  So we did.

And you know what? It’s fine.  It’s really just about forming sets of cards, bidding for the ones you want to collect and getting rid of the ones you don’t.  (Plenty of card games out there operate on the same principle.)

How to play

For those unfamiliar with the game, you have something like 11 or 12 sets of families.  All the cards are shuffled, and dealt out.  Each player therefore ends up with a mixture of cards across the possible sets.

If you have 3 of one set, it makes sense to try and collect the missing card, and complete your set.  If you have 1, you may want to move it on to someone else – unless you can tell they are collecting that set, and want to stall them doing so.

If you have 2 of a set, it’s up to you whether to collect or not.  You’ll probably get some clues from the other player(s) – if they seem to be collecting it too, you need to decide whether or not to hang onto your cards, and stall them, or focus on a different set to collect.

Once you have a complete set, you put them out on the table, so they all show.  The game keeps going until all the sets are complete, and out.  The winner is the person who has the most sets of cards collected.

Choice of cards

One of the reasons I am less keen on Happy Families is the sets of cards I remember from my childhood.  Each ‘family’ set is a different type of animal or bird, but done up in rather strange clothes, with props etc.

Some of the pictures are sort of sweet – some are downright strange. (Tadpole in a cradle, for the Frog family, would probably be in the latter category, even if it’s ‘accurate’.) I do still have a set, but the choice of pictures has been one of the reasons I’ve been less keen to show them to our own junior player.

I’m sure I’ve played a version of this where the cards are all professions.  Again, this may seem less relevant today, though clearly we still need butchers, bakers, grocers, but not automatically candlestick makers.

However…find a better set of cards, and it becomes a lot more interesting.  The ones we were using on holiday were of ‘international families’ ie still the same sets of 4, but each family representing a different country.

You therefore get a bit about national dress, landmarks of the country (background to each pic), and maybe a bit of self-identification too for junior players (what they are, and maybe what they would like to be).

Making it work

I was mostly playing as a two.  Happy Families probably works best when there are 3 or more of you, because if you ask a player for a card, you don’t know whether they have it or not.  (If there’s just two of you, there’s no question!)

Again, this was my hangup, not my partner’s.  She liked it because it made the game go faster, and she got to bang down her sets of cards quite quickly, shouting ‘Happy Family!’ with each new set.

In other words: if speed makes the game work better for the junior player, go with it.

Having your hands full

Playing as 3 or more may however help if your junior player is having difficulty holding a full handful of cards, because they won’t then have as many to deal with.

It can also help to get your sets in order in your hand, so you can see what you have, and what you are missing. However, if there’s another adult around, to help junior player hold and order their cards, this can help too.

Conclusions

I suspect I might not play this one as much, longer term, but if the pack had appealing pictures, it would probably help.  It doesn’t have the pace (and simplicity) of snap, but can be a good way for junior players to try a little strategy, without it being too complex.

There may be something of a gender influence too – my female junior player was happy to form families, a male one was less taken with the game. I should probably now quiz my brother as to whether he remembers playing it or not.

The important thing, really, is whether you liked the game, whether your junior opponent did, and whether you’d play it again.  And on the basis of a better pack of cards: yes, yes, and yes. Case closed.