While I am with my Head of Department, discussing the first draft of a marking allocation I prepared just before going to Berlin, the phone rings. Being a performer, he (Chris McCullough, a renown Brechtian and Shakespearian scholar) is quite happy to appear centre stage. We talk about his training as a visual artist, as well as the game, and I notice with interest that, as I talk, he is becoming increasingly absorbed in it. I realise later in the day that he is telling colleagues about it and that some even may take a peek at this documentation. I feel now that it would very rewarding to receive some feedback about what kind of sense this would make to someone who does not belong to this strange but wonderful world of Day of the Figurines. For instance, do we look like a population of our own? What is interesting to you about us? Would you like to join us? What do you think we are doing? Do you have a favourite figurine? There are over 80 of us in here – how would you like to encounter the documentation of this piece? What would be useful to you if you were, say, to offer a class about this in two years time. Please let me know by emailing me at g.giannachi@exeter.ac.uk.

At the internet café, I am told that it’s a nice day for an outdoor event. I am pretty ill. Although I thought I had picked up some sick dogs, I now appear to have a drum kit. BARNEY is here and asks RICHARD as to whether the scampi are healthy. Since, today, I will try everything out, I decide not to wait for the answer and pick up the scampi myself. I also eat them. But first I wish to give it a go with the drums and, of course, I make a fool of myself – I am told that the mood is wrong, the place even worse, there is no one here and I am still poorly. I should have known better. Then I eat the scampi and somehow they are offered to everybody in the café. I check if HASSAN has followed us but he hasn’t. I decide to have a quick look at Kath’s Café to see if he is still there but he isn’t. It is the first time that I realise how different the game is when one is no longer able to check, by looking at the destinations table, where other players are. This makes me feel slightly lost, but I remember yesterday’s lesson (thank you HASSAN) and focus on playing the game.

I am now in my office, meeting some tutees who have come back from the Summer holiday. It is their final year and they are nervous about results and life in general. Some feel rather stressed already. I wait until they leave to carry on playing. I decide to go back to the internet café to see if BARNEY is still there. BARNEY is feeling better and so I ask him what he did in order to improve his health. He says he had some tea and some scampi which he didn’t want but were somehow given to him. I’m glad that I was able to make him feel better and wonder whether I feel better to. He suggests that we go to the Rat Research Institute to find his dog. At the same time I get my first mission (or at least the first that I am aware of). My computer screen judders and a text appears saying that I must get some dogs out of the Institute. Meanwhile BARNEY asks me how I ‘gave him’ the scampi. Of course I have no idea. I discover that I am still poorly and we set off to the Institute. I also wonder who BARNEY is, whether I know them, for instance. Somehow I think not.

On the way home, I receive another flurry of messages. Both BARNEY and I arrive at the Rat Research Institute and I notice that yesterday’s ladder which HASSAN thought I should take is no longer there. I now realise that I should have listened to him. FRL AGATHE is here too but is very quiet. I ask around if anyone knows where to find a ladder and BARNEY wonders how I even know that we need one. I realise that I now begin to have a past in the game (i.e., yesterday HASSAN asked if I wanted the ladder to get inside and so today I remember that I need a ladder to get inside), but also that this means I now know what ladders are for – bearing in mind that the first time I encountered a ladder in the game I was at Kath’s Café and QUEENIE, I think, was trying to pass it on to someone. I also realise that although the fact that I have a past allows me to build on my knowledge, it also creates the possibility of false memory and confusion (Did this really happen? Where did it happen? Did I understand correctly? If only I took more notice in what HASSAN said. If only I picked up that ladder yesterday. Where might the ladder be now?). This reminds me of Peter Handke’s play Kaspar but more on this shortly.

I arrive home. I need to tidy up, sort my email, prepare dinner, and work through some e-science papers in preparation for a meeting with Steve Benford in Nottingham tomorrow. The phone keeps on ringing and I wonder what it will be like playing the game tomorrow at the Lab, while discussing the documentation of the game with Steve. In the meantime, BARNEY and I have lost sight of HASSAN who we think might know where ladders are and decide that our best option is to go to the product barn.

Later, I open some mail. Lynn Hershman’s second cut of her film about Steve Kurtz is here and I have no time to look at it tonight although I am really keen to see it and know that Lynn is waiting for me to get back to her. A good friend, I had heard nothing from for years, has sent me her first novel. I remember our dreams, our hopes and first loves of over twenty years ago. I remember late nights out, the politics of those difficult years (the famous anni di piombo) marked by terrorism and political corruption. I remember what it was like finding our way through University and life, between ambitions, passions, amazing visions and first, awful, and unforgettable disappointments. As I start packing my bag for tomorrow’s visit to Mixed Reality Lab, my mother rings to say my aunt has died. I decide to write no more for today but carry on playing the game while changing all my appointments for next week, booking flights, hotels, remembering loved lost ones and wondering about the future.

To follow my game tomorrow go to Day of the Figurines 4/10/2006