I am, at last, able to have a long playful day with my four-year-old daughter. We build an ‘upside down castle’, with a heavy roof and a light interior structure. The point of the exercise is to see when exactly it will fall down – already at this age children seem to develop a sense of pleasure in watching something which is about to collapse. This is of course about boundaries, testing what is possible, early attempts at sophisticated social negotiation. Unexpectedly, our castle does not fall down. ‘Actually…’ she smiles ‘… actually mum, it does not always have to fall down.’ Since she was three, she has always used the word actually a lot. She says it with profound gusto, always followed by a little pause, as if she was just about to utter some fundamental truth about the universe. As the phone rings, I find myself at the Rec. The fete has been successful and I am feeling run down. I am still wearing my wristband. ANNABELLE is here. Nobody talks. I loose interest and carry on playing with my daughter.

I love walking down a beach. Any beach. Anywhere in the world. It does not matter too much whether the beach is beautiful or not. It’s the sea I really long for. Here, I can absent myself from everything and just walk. The game rings. I arrive at the Internet Café. It’s the usual scene. I have been missing company and so decide that I should try to find BARNEY but he is not here. There are scampi fries and a drum kit, plus a sick dog. I drop my wristband, which seems totally useless anyway, and pick up some scampi fries, so I can share them around again. I then decide to pick up one of these sick dogs I keep on encountering and take them to the Blue Cross, which, I am told, looks after sick animals. I realise that I now feel that I am in a waste land – T.S. Eliot again – in which I follow traces of previous encounters, mistake signs for directions (or wonders), in the hope that I will, once again, find something or someone.

As I carry on walking, I arrive at the Blue Cross. CONSTANCE is here but does not reply. I put down the sick dog. I decide to go to the hospital after all, just to see who’s there. Maybe BARNEY is in trouble. Or maybe I’ll find JOHN MORGAN, or HASSAN again. I suppose that I feel, whoever I will encounter, that I should try to help someone today. Instead, I find myself staring at some rock formation by the beach. It reminds me of the Eisenman memorial. I decide that today will be about hopping, from stone to stone, destination to destination. I’ll try everything. Talk to everyone. See if I can exchange anything. Perhaps I’ll learn something in this way.

The hospital is full of ‘Save our Hospital’ stickers. Blood everywhere. The beech on the other hand is fantastic – here I feel that I can recover from everything. Then I hear a sudden cry for help. CLOUDYSUNNY, whom I had met earlier in the game, and NUMBERICS, whom I cannot remember meeting before, are both here. CLOUDYSUNNY is almost dead. He is desperate. I try to get him to come out of the hospital to Kath’s Café so I can encourage him to drink a cup of tea, but he stops replying. I don’t know what to do. Shall I wait? What if hospitals are dangerous? Should I get out? I remember Blast Theory and Mixed Reality Lab talking about players becoming incapacitated and fear for my already precarious health. I decide that I must go – if I become incapacitated I might not be able to continue with this documentation. Then I realise – the chronicler fears for their life not in relation to the battle but the document.

I arrive at the end of the walk and also Kath’s Café. LOREDANO is here. There are many cups of tea. There is no sign of SUNNYCLOUDY. I decide that I need a cup of tea myself. I feel guilty about SUNNYCLOUDY. Maybe I need to get back to the hospital. I do not have many friends here and I need to look after them of I’ll spend the remaining game on my own. There is someone here called EMINAEMRE who needs help from CINDY who has a defibrillator. This is a scene of devastation.

I need something new and relaxing and so head off for the Video Zone. This is a good place to be, but nothing seems to happen. I am feeling peaky. My daughter’s best friend arrives with her neighbour Rose and a gift from her garden. The two girls play happily upstairs while I cook dinner. I love listening to their animated chatter. In the meantime, nothing seems to be happening at the video zone and I feel like meeting some long lost friends again.

I suddenly realise that some of the dynamics of trust and social exchange in the game really are uncanny. Marcel Mauss’s The Gift can be useful here. The word gift, like the word uncanny, is one that, etymologically speaking, folds back upon itself. Gift, of course, means present. But in German (and thus in all old Germanic languages) Gift means poison. This shows how, as Mauss so ingeniously pointed out, there is always a trace of poison in a gift. In fact ‘to accept something from somebody is to accept some part of his spiritual essence, of his soul’ (1990: 12). Likewise, to retain the object without a return would imply the absorption of what is contained by the spiritual essence, i.e., it would imply the absorption of the Gift (the poison) in the gift (the present). All gifts are charged. I will tell you more on this, the uncanny, and Day of the Figurines over the next few days.

I have some more work to finish off before I leave tomorrow for Hamburg. As the game rings again, I go through my notes, stained in coffee and remember stimulating conversations. I send off one last email to do with our new project. I think how strange it is that I am now engaging with Blast Theory and Mixed Reality Lab at five levels at least – the game, the article I am beginning to sketch on this project, two new project bids, and this documentation. I have never before dedicated so much time to the work of just one company. This only shows how rich their work is.

I arrive at the dance hall and feel that it reminds me of a strange place I saw when I was 12 in the Langhe, the beautiful and sensual hills just outside my home city, Turin. I remember the song I chose for Tim Etchells’s installation – ‘Alle prese con una verde milonga’ by Paolo Conte. I think of someone who is not here. But I play the song and so I feel safe.

To follow my game tomorrow go to Day of the Figurines 9/10/2006