Researching, writing and publishing my first book, About Jenga, has opened both new and old doors. Some so old and so long unused that I had assumed their locks & hinges rusted tight and rendered useless.

So it has been with considerable surprise, and great pleasure, that About Jenga seems to have prised open so many creaky old doors into my past.

For example; as a result of coming across the book, John Durham of the Camphill Village Trust  has made contact, and will be coming to visit me later this month. In 1982, then living and working in Camphill’s Botton Village, John was instrumental in manufacturing the first ever sets of Jenga.  John and I had continued to bump into each other for many years at gift fairs, (he with Camphill’s range of wooden toys and I with Oxford Games Ltd) long after Hasbro had acquired the license to publish Jenga. But since Lagoon Games took over the Oxford Games Collection in ’99, I had not been to a gift fair in the UK until this year. And, in the lazy way we all allow these things happen, I had lost contact with John.

I’m thrilled that he has made the effort to push open that old door.

And I’m delighted, too, that as a result of About Jenga, I have reconnected with other old friends, Peter & Tessa Sulston. As I mention in the book, Peter, then working for Oxfam, introduced me to Camphill.

Now running their own art college in Cornwall, the Callington School of Art , I hope to drop in on the Sulstons later this year on my way down to visit my daughter, now at art college in Falmouth.