I was wandering around looking for joyful, creative behavior in the afternoon. Then I bought a large sheet of paper and a pencil, sat in the last of the evening sunlight in a calle off Via Garibaldi and began to map the area. A boy came up to me and was asking me what I was doing, we tried really hard to communicate and the language difference meant that I started clowning and gesturing more than usual. He went off to the other end of the Calle and began playing with his tennis racket and ball against the wall of his house. I went and watched him and stood around awkwardly. After a while a window on the third floor opened and a woman ( who I later leanrt was his grandmother) leaned out and told him to try to hit the ball to her, she said again and again try! try! So he tried and he was a very good shot, he kept on hitting the ball into her hands. Once in a while the ball would fly in through the open window below, on the second floor, a younger woman (his mum) would throw it back and she would look annoyed and say something that sounded grumbly. He hit the ball once so that it lodged in the venetian blind and after this, his mum closed the second floor windows. The game with his grandmother continued for a while and another boy came to join in. There is something about the role of a grandmother that allows more patience and generosity than that of a busy mum. What is it about the layout of the streets and the social relationships here that make this inventive re-imagining of space happen? Does it happen in Whitechapel in East London? Could it?