Going out to play
Yours writer Marion Clarke feels sad for today’s youngsters who don’t enjoy the freedom we had
Children playing in the street or roaming the countryside are a rare sight these days, but was the norm when we were growing up. Needing to get on with the housework, our mothers turfed us outside and didn’t expect us to come home until we were hungry, tired or needed a plaster for a grazed knee.
Boys and girls favoured different games, as Chris Wileman remembers: “For girls, skipping was an all-year-round activity. Rather than a shop-bought rope with posh wooden handles we used an old washing line. Two girls turned the rope and the girl skipping performed the actions while everyone chanted a rhyme such as,
‘All in together, girls, never mind the weather, girls – when I call your birthday, please jump in!’.”
Hopscotch was another game that girls excelled at. Helen Evans recalls: “All we needed was a piece of chalk and a small smooth stone. There weren’t many cars around then so we drew the grid in the middle of the road, where it stayed until it rained.” Patricia Wood and her mates also liked hopscotch: “We marked out the squares on the pavement but an elderly neighbour,
Mr Yarrow, chased us away because we were making the street look unsightly. Another game we played was to link arms and skip round the block, singing ‘Sally go round the sun, Sally go round
‘We made stirrups from baler twine then sat on a gate pretending to ride horses’
the moon, Sally go round the chimney pot on a Saturday afternoon’.
“In the summer, Mum would pack some jam sandwiches and bottles of water and off we went to paddle and play in the nearby River Bollin.”
So what did the boys get up to while the girls were playing two-ball or practising handstands? Roger Hedges remembers a game called fag packets that would certainly be frowned on today: “We used to collect old cigarette packets and stand them against the wall. Then we used another fag packet to try and knock the ones against the wall over. The winner was the one who knocked over the most packets.
“After school my friends and I played a game in the stream that flowed through our village. Floating a couple of matchsticks, we ran alongside the bank to keep up with them and see which one was the winner.”
There were plenty of activities that were fun for both boys and girls. Jean Fagan writes: “We played marbles, kept in a bag made by my mum, and my beloved dad made a pair of stilts for me. In the garden we had a tent made from a wooden clothes horse covered with an old army blanket.”
We may have been rather short of toys but we were never short of imagination as Sheila Burrage’s story proves: “Near where we lived there was an old broken field gate. My friend Sandra and I made stirrups from baler twine then sat on the gate pretending we were riding our horses.”
I remember riding imaginary horses as well, Sandra – no wonder we slept soundly after all that galloping around and leaping over pretend jumps!
■ More fun and games in the next issue, out on April 7