22 August 2025 – I mean to walk right through Dude Chilling Park, en route farther east. Instead, I stop to admire a brand-new hopscotch chalked into the park’s northern pathway.

Squares a bit on the mingy side, true, but lots of them. And so carefully executed. With European cross-strokes for the 1s and 7s. And the flourish of two colours, not one.

Instead of walking on, I settle myself on the bench just beyond…

curious to see if anyone yields to the temptation, and starts to hop.

First up, a very young toddler and her mum. The child is clearly new to the act of walking, let alone leaping around. She does not attempt to hop. She stops, frowns slightly at this unknown design, and then, intuitively, gets the idea.

Very slowly, very carefully, she obeys the visual clues: just one foot here, but both feet there. And then one, and then two… Until she loses patience, that is, and a laughing mother carries her off.

Next up, by complete contrast, a geezer. (Being one myself, I can say that.) He also stops, contemplates. Then, with a grin, he tucks his cane under one arm and starts to hop.

Hippity-hop! And again!

Until… whoops. A wobble corrected, a tumble averted, and his cane is prudently back in use.

He grins at me, amused. “Maybe I’m a little old for this.”

My mind flashes to a particular cartoon in Searle’s Cats (Ronald Searle, Dobson Books Ltd., 1967)…

and its caption: “Acrobatic cat discovering quite unexpectedly that it is too old for the game.”

I grin right back at him.

We are complicit, he and I — fellow adventurers in this demanding but rewarding late stage of life.