‘You are an idiot! I have never seen such an idiot!!’ The woman is almost screaming at me. We are at the gate of a beautiful – as we will soon learn  ‘Victorian’ (!) – house in Grassmere. Grassmere is the village we pass through on our walk in the Lake District. Although the footpaths are a little slippery every now and then, it is cold, dry and we have an excellent view on the village, its lake and its surroundings covered in frost.

I am with Nigel and Christine, a British couple living in Bradford, and Bettina, a Dutch journalist in between jobs. I met them in 2007 when I moved to England for a year to do the Leadership Academy, part of Abundant Life Church in Bradford. There I also met Mark, a Dutch multimedia designer, who was in our class.

You may wonder why the woman is screaming at me. Well, essentially it’s Bettina’s and Mark’s fault. Mark is always trying new things, breaking the rules and turning things upside down, sometimes even literally… I remember one time when we were visiting a friend, Mark had us make as many changes to the interior as we could while our friend was preparing coffee in her kitchen, unaware of the frantic reorganisation going on in her living room.

Since I have read the book ’Play‘ by Stuart Brown and Christopher Vaughan, I am labeling the kind of behaviour that Mark displays as ‘play’ or ‘playful’. The book has inspired me to be playful, as did Mark. Like last week when I played squash against my squash partner. After being all serious for my first two games, losing them, I consciously sent the word ‘Play!!’ to my brain. All of a sudden in my mind I see these three clowns with colourful hats running around laughing at my mistakes. I cannot help laughing out loud and I feel my body relaxes. I break my routine, try a different service and start watching how my game partner reacts. I win the next five games in a row…

And here in Grassmere, on the second day of our visit in Bradford, Bettina is challenging me: ‘Let’s do some crazy pictures!’ Be careful if you say someting like that to me… I start sending the words ‘crazy’ and ‘playful’ to my brain. My brain is working hard to translate the gate to ‘crazy pictures’. I come up with the idea of putting my legs through the bars of the gate while doing a grinny face. Bettina joins me – as far as the grinny face part is concerned and Christine takes a picture.

Somewhere in the background I hear something that sounds like a person banging on a window. At first I pay no attention but when I hear a woman yelling ‘Get off that gate!’ my body goes into alert mode. I try to come out of my awkward position in the gate and the lady keeps on yellling. ’Do you know what house this is? This is a Victorian house! You are an idiot! I have never seen such an idiot in my life.’ I mumble some ‘sorries’ while I feel my heart beating.

The woman keeps on yelling: ’Even my grandson wouldn’t do something stupid like that and he is only three!’ I manage to release myself and while we are walking away, Nigel remarks: ‘Well, her grandson clearly does not have any fun then…’ I might send her a copy of ‘Play’…