Let's Pretend
When most children play "lets pretend" they imagine a thing that isn't. Whilst I did do that as a kid, I also used to have little games in my head in which I imagined a thing that already was ... The first major incidence of the phenomenon that I can now recall was back in the seventies when we had an German exchange student staying with us, a woman studying architecture. As a favour to my parents - perhaps as a way of saying thank you for letting her stay - she took me off their hands for an afternoon on a trip to visit Welwyn Garden City and Harlow - of some significance to students of architecture and town planning as they were both "New Towns" built in the twentieth century in the commuter belt to ease overcrowding in London. Whilst we were in Harlow I started playing a strange game with myself. To clarify, this was playing a game in the sense of " let's play Star Trek " rather than " let's play Tiddlywinks ". I started ima...
