A place to play?

First of all, this is a screenshot from my iPad. I don't usually blip in this manner, but it seems appropriate.

After getting home from work, I spent some time looking for some historical credit card details, PPI-related. I couldn't find them, and the helpline closes at 5, too early for me. I had to get the tea on, as I was due to go out to a talk on Gloucestershire place names, organised by the local history society.

After the embarassment of finding I'd left my wallet on the table at home and having to borrow the entrance fee from Symon and Jon, I settled into my brown rexine bucket seat with a cup of instant coffee and a biscuit, and pondered that it was only a week since I'd sat in the same hall, on the same chairs, with the same biscuits, but on that occasion I was donating blood. The crowd was roughly the same, too. I recalled looking for my mother in Tesco's in Oban: suddenly the shop seemed filled with generic old ladies wearing red coats and grey hair. One has to be careful to approach the right one.

The talk was interesting, but studded with generic place-name knowledge, rather than tantalising local nuggets. To needle the speaker, who says he's always asked about non-local place names, I asked about Plaistow, in East London, where I lived. Locals always pronounced in Plah-stow, rather than Play-stow. Apparently it means Special (religious worship) place for play. Stow is the place, and plei or plai is the play element. Harvest festival, anyone? We had one at school today, but nursery didn't take part in a big way.

Back in Plaistow days, before I'd even heard of playwork as a profession, I didn't play a lot, but did live very near the tube station, in a street called Salmen Road, next to Helena road. I was a little narked not to live in Helena road, since that is my name. (Helena, not road!) I was only three stops on the tube from Barking, and that sums up my mental state at the time rather neatly. In the end I decided that if I moved any further east I really would be out of London, and completely Barking. So I made a complete break and relocated to Eastern Europe.
It was a decision I've never regretted.