Simple childhood was just so much fun

I WAS recently explaining to a young person of my acquaintance how little we had by way of toys when I was a kid compared to kids today.

She was shocked at being told there was no such thing as a calculator. So I quickly asked her ‘What are 7x8s?’ and was met with a blank stare. But we were made to chant our ‘times tables’ over and over till we knew them all off by heart. It’s 56 by the way.

As for toys, we made a lot of them ourselves. My skipping rope for example had once been a clothes line strung across the back yard.

A large, heavy coat button from the family button box could be threaded onto strong string, then once tied in a knot could be looped over the middle finger of each hand, then when twisted and pulled quickly backwards and forwards made a satisfying whooshing sound that would go on whilst ever we pulled and relaxed the spinning button.

I once recall putting my ear close to the sound and getting it caught up and it gave me a painful bald spot and it took a long time for my hair to grow back.

Playing street games like rumstikka bum, tinny lurky and statues would keep us entertained for hours and it was not unusual to have the whole street playing cricket or football with the Wembley end goal mouth being the front door of old Mrs Ryan, who being as deaf as a post didn’t hear us slam the ball into her goal and so never shooed us away.

Empty food tins were threaded with string and we clattered the streets walking on them or pretended they were phones.

Our parents would each hold one end of a skipping rope across the whole street and we would skip for hours.

Broken chalk rescued from the classroom floor would be used to draw hop scotch grids on our pavements and they’d be there till a rain storm came and washed them away.

A gully was a round well in the cobblestoned road wherein marbles were aimed. I was quite a good player in my day and still have a jar full somewhere.

Oh they were such beautiful objects shiny like jewels in reds blues and green glass.

Of course there was no such thing as cars parked on the street back then. (Now THAT she could not get her head round).

Our best day of the week though without doubt was Saturday for then, once we’d done our chores and earned our sixpence pocket money, we got to go to the ‘threp’ney rush’ at the Cavo n St Ann’s.

We spent thruppence on sweets or in my case a colour changing gobstopper and with the other thruppence we got to sit through cowboys and Indians, the Perils Of Pauline, serials like racing driver Burn Em Up Barnes, and side splitting comics Laurel and Hardy.

I tried to make sense of how we saw Pauline being tied to the railway lines and run over by a train last week.

I saw it, we all saw it yet miraculously she got away yet again without a scratch.

And where did that man on the white horse come from anyway?

We didn’t have electronic games, or X-boxes and even without a watch between us we still managed to get home on time.

There were barely any street phone boxes and what was a mobile phone anyway?

Yet, as I look back at my deprived yesteryear, would I swap my childhood for the one kids have today? Never in a million years....