Things I learned yesterday

Yesterday I learned several things.

I learned that you are only allowed to go to sleep in the world of Minecraft when it’s night, so daytime naps are out. I’d say that smacks of ageism.

But it is possible in Minecraft to create a world “inspired by the Coliseum” – as Tate and Gil have done (their words.) It is their current world. You will see the arena to the right and the seating to the left.

(Who me? Proud? Nah!)

I also learned that when I have breakfast with a young family on a day when both parents are going to work and children to school, the quiet house after they’ve gone feels very different from the quiet house when my family were young and had just gone out to school. In those days it was a “Phew” moment. But sitting there in Zoe’s quiet kitchen yesterday, it was sad. The house was bereft. Does the house miss them when they are out for the day?

It made me think of a quote from Out of Africa:

If I know a song of Africa, of the giraffe and the African new moon lying on her back, of the ploughs in the fields and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Will the air over the plain quiver with a colour that I have had on, or the children invent a game in which my name is, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me, or will the eagles of the Ngong Hills look out for me?

And this makes me think of the poem:

Wet Evening in April

The birds sang in the wet trees
And as I listened to them it was a hundred years from now
And I was dead and someone else was listening to them.
But I was glad I had recorded for him
The melancholy.

P.J.Kavanagh

Yep. It seems to be that kind of a week.

p.s. for those of you who have no idea what Minecraft is – I’d describe it as a kind of digital LEGO, but you can find out more about it, here.