Game on: hands down

So you’re underway with word games. What next? Time for a bit of hand-slapping. By which I mean games that involve hands to play the game – with the potential for a bit more overtly competitive behaviour, if you want.

1) The classic is Hand Sandwich. One person puts one hand on a flat surface: the table on a train, your knee, whatever is to hand. The next person puts one hand on top.  If you’ve got more than one person, they go next.

When you’ve got everyone involved, you all then put the other hand on top, in the same order as for the first hand. Once all those hands are stacked up, then you really get going.

The first person slides their hand out from the bottom, and puts it on top.  Then the next person. Then the next. And so on.

All this sounds a bit tame – so let’s just say that the fun is to go as fast as you can. The game ends at some point when all the hands are going faster than you can stack them (which can mean a bit of light hand slapping, if you choose).

2) Hand Sandwich: Going Up in the World

This is a variant we’ve come up with while on trains around London. You build up the stack, but allow your hand to move up at each new addition, so that the hands go up into the air.

Then you rebuild downwards ie reposition your hand directly below the lowest one.  It’s surprisingly hard to do – but quite fun as a shift part way through, if you sense your small companion is getting bored. (It also allows for a certain level of collapse onto the chosen surface, which can be fun if you’ve had enough.)

3) Hand Sandwich: Add the Filling

This is quite a new one, but allows for hands + words. You do the same as in the first version, but each time you verbally add a new ‘ingredient’.

Usually the first person starts with ‘bread’ (or whatever you want your ingredients to go int0) e.g.

Bread…

Ham…

Cheese…

Ketchup…

Fried egg…

Custard…

And so on. This is fun for food awareness – as well as grossing your opponents out. You can try to preempt an end to the game (‘bread’ for the top layer), or you can allow for multiple carb layers, and make it a club sandwich.

Younger players may choose to pretend to eat the stack of hands – or wipe pretend ketchup on their opponents – or however you choose to end.

I’m sure you could probably come up with some other versions of your layers.
Any suggestions?

Game on: playing with worms

I think you know by now that I like the odd pun, a spot of alliteration. So when I say playing with worms, it’s really about playing with words. There.  Just to reassure you.

Playing with words may not feel like playing a game – and in a sense, it’s not. But wordplay is still entertainment, and useful in all those places where games would come in handy. Buses. Trains. Doctor’s waiting rooms.

Playing with words is rewarding for anyone who likes a game that requires you to be inventive. It encourages a good vocabulary (or perhaps more accurately, allows for smugness if you already do. But then most games do also allow for a measure of smugness, so it doesn’t get excluded just because of that). I’ll limit it to a couple of games:

1) The word game of my youth is The Minister’s Cat. I’m sure it goes by other names too, but the notion is that you work through the alphabet, in turn. (A certain amount of leeway is usually given if you have to do ‘X’ on your turn: eXciting, eXuberant.)

The usual way of playing is with adjectives:

The Minister’s Cat is a….(use an adjective beginning with A) cat.

e.g. The Minister’s Cat is an active cat.

You then take it in turns to come up with other equivalents where the adjective starts with A. (If the group is big, that allows for a good range – but it can still be fun even with just two.)

The plus point of playing with a few people is that it gives you time to come up with your next go:

The Minister’s Cat is a bumptious cat. And so on.

This one works fine for a medium-length car journey – but it might do just as well on another shared task where you are all together, and need a little entertainment.  Chopping lots of veg? Doing some pre-Christmas making? Those kind of situations.

Variations:

Work with a theme, and keep going through the alphabet:

Food: The Minister’s Cat eats asparagus…

International places: The Minister’s Cat lives in Amsterdam…

(or do a place names for the country you live in e.g. The Minister’s Cat lives in Anstruther…)

And so on. I’m sure you could work your way around sports teams, too…

(The Minister’s Cat plays for AC Milan??)

Helping out:

If you are playing with younger team mates, grown-ups are allowed to pile in and help if kids are struggling for a suitable word for that letter. I’m sure you could equally play this in teams, and if one team can’t answer, you could offer it up as a bonus point for the other team.

2) My mother went shopping…

This is probably the classic title, but why limit it to mums? Or, indeed, to conventional shopping items?

This is really a memory game, where choosing unusual words/items can be a real help to remembering them. Each person repeats the whole thing from the beginning, and adds on another item:

My alien went shopping and it bought…

…a lump of smelly cheese

…a turbo booster for its space craft

…a bag of googly eyes…

This can be great if you are travelling, or in a room with lots of items, because it gives you lots of ideas for new shopping items, as well as visual prompts to remember the whole list.

Helping out: you might award a certain number of reminders, for junior players; or offer up a point to someone else if they can offer the prompt.

What other word games would you play on the move – or anywhere else? And which ones do you find offer the most entertainment? Add a comment, and offer your top tips!

Game on: confessions of a reluctant game-player

I had a plan, see. Six topics: six months.  Then I’d go round the topics again. Five down already. And the next one up was due to be travel.

Except that I’m not in the mood yet. To do a month of travel posts, you really need pictures to go with them. And I’m not there yet either (or the pictures that I need to go with the posts are in The Room Full Of Stuff).

So I thought I’d go for something different – lighter, perhaps, than last month’s eco audit. So here it is: games. Because all of a sudden, I’ve ended up with a category about it – so I might as well write some more.

I’ve written before that games and I don’t have the best of relationships. Some people manage to like games, some people manage to win at games, and some are Poor Losers.  I was in the last of these groups.

Games can be hard as a child. Yes, games of all sorts can be preparation for life – but no one said you have to like losing. Present a perfectionist child with an opportunity to lose, and they will find themselves in the place of sore loser pretty quickly, because it’s all too personal.

So why write about games now? Because the shoe is on the other foot. I am now in the position of trying to encourage perspective about winning and losing with my younger opponent. And I don’t now care so much if I win – I care about spending time together, and doing something fun.

I have a friend who is a keen game player.  (He pretty much always wins too, which can encourage a pro-games stance.) But he is also understanding about playing with those who don’t really get game playing, but will submit to it from time to time.

I’m not setting out to critique games, as he might. (There are any number of websites out there that do that, too.) But I am here to suggest that, should you be a reluctant game-player, here are some games that might not be too much like hard work.

They are going to be included because I have played them – and survived. Even, enjoyed the experience. They are therefore ones I’ll play again – might even suggest as an activity. (See how far the Sore Loser has come!)

I’m making sure that there’s a good number that are also free, or need little equipment, in case you fancy having a go, but don’t really want to part with cash to do so.

Eyes down. Game on.

Eco audit: results in

I may not have quite filled the month with posts. But February has come to an end, and I thought it would be worth rounding out the audit by seeing what I thought of the results.

Some of what I felt self-important about in my teens – like basic recycling – is now mainstream. Some of it is growing in public consciousness – and also public action: like buying locally.

There’s a whole set of eco behaviours around food. Some feel like second nature – and some I could do better at. And others are in that complicated area where eco principles and world trade meet.

I’ve found the reduce, reuse, recycle mantra a helpful one when looking at different areas of activity. I feel quite happy on reuse, generally, but I realise that reduce is the one that is often hardest to do.

Some areas have been debated a lot in the press – like flying. And others, like heating, have come up higher up the news cycle, as heating costs rise, and fuel poverty with it.

I realised that many of these eco behaviours are also frugal behaviours. When there’s not a lot of money to go round, you do what you can with what you have – and often find it satisfying in the process.

Making your own entertainment. Crafting. Mending. Not glamorous, but, increasingly, a source of pride for those who are going back to it more.

Equally, when we have a bit more money in our pockets, it’s easy to spend – and to be driven by societal expectations. I still think that this is the area my teenage self would be the most shocked by – the growing monetarisation of lifestyle, the increase of brands, and the temptation of luxury.

Sometimes, equally, we seem to rebel against plenty, and go off to find ways to live more simply – even if it’s just a week or two away.

At other times, our decisions to simplify are carried along on a wave of governmental concern: increase walking, not necessarily to cut down on carbon emissions, but because it may reduce obesity.

Sometimes my thinking moves on a stage, as a result of writing on a theme for a month. Sometimes, life circumstances combine with a theme, and help it have particular resonance. We can reduce, but we can also take up opportunities to renew – to gain a new mindset, and new permission to change.

Although I still want to nudge myself on a few behaviours, I recognise that gaining momentum for change is even more important. Yes, it can help to tick some boxes, and know that things are different. But it is even more freeing to think bigger than this – and find the capacity to change is still within us.

It remains hard to watch the news at times. To see the reality of environmental change. But the experience that change is possible – and that we can act on it – means that we don’t have to feel we are drowning.

Others are acting, in unique ways, in their own parts of the world. As with so many things, starting locally – as locally as our own homes – can mean that we begin to change how we feel about environmental issues.

My ongoing challenge to myself is to continue to change: and to use each step forward as an incentive to keep going. Stop by again, and ask me how it’s going in the months ahead.

Eco audit: on the outside, looking in

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, the time of my teens, a few key things happened that put eco-wheels in motion for me.

For one, I went to places where eco was made accessible, possible – and carried out as a mainstream way of living.

I went to other places where life was still familiar, but noticeably different. Simpler. Challenging in some ways, freeing in others. When I came back to the UK, it was to look at it afresh – and decide what I liked, and what actually bothered me quite a lot.

I’ll tell you the story of the mini pink doughnuts, because that summed up for me what was not working in the society I saw as home.

I came back from Poland, and although it was good to be back, it was also hard work.  At one point, I went to the big supermarket in town with mum.  Reasonable activity, but a bad move for me.

I felt overwhelmed – rows of products, massive amounts of choice. Did we need a whole aisle of breakfast cereals? Where did all these things come from, anyway?

At some point on our journey round the supermarket, I came across a fresh baking section. In it was a box of mini doughnuts. (I have a feeling ring doughnuts were less familiar in the UK at that time, so they stood out.)

Each doughnut seemed to be individually wrapped.  And then the whole lot were packaged together in something like a large see-through egg box. And the doughnuts were pink and sprinkled and whatever else it is people do to doughnuts.

I recoiled from it. That sounds over the top when I write about it now (particularly when others are ooing and ahing about the arrival of Krispy Kreme doughnuts close to home). But it was all too much – about three times over.

I queried what the society I knew had been doing when I had been away for only half a year. Who had come up with these ultra-packaged – and, to me, unnecessary – items? Why, equally, were others buying them? (And what was going to happen to all that packaging after the few moments of eating?)

Despite being back for only a few days, I took up an offer to go away again for a few. I went for walks, smelled the sea, and got some simplicity back again. And I continued to think about it all after I came back.

It’s become one of those things about gap years: that you learn about life by seeing how others live. But the other side of the coin is the equally powerful aspect of seeing your own culture afresh when you come home.

If we’re lucky, we can have this form of stopping short, and questioning, through an engagement with the alternative. I chose to be vegetarian because of reading a book that impacted me strongly – and managed to follow through on my response.

But as life goes on, our ways of living, our habits, become more and more fixed. We stop questioning what is around us, and those moments where we can see something afresh – they may not become fewer, but we tend to forget to look for them. To stop in them.  To take in what we are learning.

So sometimes it takes a bigger change to offer that impact. I may not be able to spare six months to live abroad again, to reconsider what my society is like.

But I have now had several months of living in a different way in my own home (thanks to the building project). And the longer I live with things being different, the more I wonder about what I really need, what can still work even if it’s different.

Giving yourself a new start can also allow you to change. With a ‘new’ room, there is the opportunity to live in new ways. To organise life differently – and make different choices.

I didn’t expect to see my society differently through living abroad – but it happened anyway. I didn’t expect to read a book that changed what I wanted to eat, overnight, but that happened too.

Sometimes, the significant thing seems to be staying open, in a new experience, not just to what we think we are taking in on the surface, but also the deeper messages that come through.