Marbles come and go like a super brief fashion trend. A few trendsetters start it by bringing marbles to school, and then for a few weeks during spring, all the kids at Ingrid’s schools are playing with marbles during breaks. And then they’re not.

For some reason, marbles are a spring thing. Autumn weather may be the same as spring weather but the kids don’t play with marbles in autumn. Except this autumn for some reason marbles have made a comeback.

Ingrid has so many marbles that they don’t fit in her marbles bag. (Yes, there are special marbles bags, in sturdy cotton with a drawstring closure.) She spent this evening sorting them by type so she could decide which ones to take with her to school.

The types all have names. The most common ones are cat’s eyes. The milky white ones that look like porcelain are Porsches. There are planets with bands around them and speckled sausages (i.e. salami) which are speckled of course and disco balls which have some other kind of speckles, and so on.

Some types are more valuable than others: the larger ones and the rarer ones are worth more on some kind of generally agreed Marble Value Scale.