Musical chairs

As I grew up in a South Yorkshire mining village parties and chapel socials were highlights. Neither was complete without a game of "musical chairs". Participants walk to music round a circle of outward facing chairs. When the music stops you sit on a chair. One person , each round, will be unsuccesful as there is always one chair less than participants. The end comes when only one chair with one occupant remains.

Here at Dulverton the dining room, where the whole community meets for meals three times each day, has 7 tables which by expansion can vary from 4 to 8 chairs. We could sit anywhere each meal, we could have settled places, but change at agreed intervals, but most seem to prefer finding a place where you feel comfortable and then staying put unless visitors, newcomers, or other issues indicate a change. This system tends to provide a basis for a kind of cell system for friendship and support within the larger community but sometimes there are unexpected changes which completely affect everyone else and the dynamics of each table and the whole community, especially when moves have been negotiated with staff but in secrecy and the outcome only emerges at the first meal at which the new seating is put into operation. Imagine the private conversations, and sometimes public confrontations, which might occur if e.g. a man from one table and a man from another table move simultaneously and end up seated beside each other at a third unexpecting table.

I have always argued that the dynamics of community life revealed by such matters do not vary much whether the context is the Big Brother House on TV or a residential complex for retired clergy and church workers. It's all very interesting - though sometimes people get hurt.