MORNING SERIAL

SOMETIMES they played with double skipping ropes, seven feet long, whirling at high speed as they maintained a clacking rhythm, the ropes and the girls’ shoes tapping at the road. The rope swingers whirled their ropes and chanted rhymes as those doing the actual skipping danced first into the bewildering blur and then out again, the aim being not to miss your timing or hit the ropes:

‘Keep the kettle boiling, miss a beat you’re out’.

How they managed this, time after time without mishap, flummoxed me completely. The ropes were swinging far too fast to be seen. So I decided that this skill must be something taught solely and secretly to girls, passed on from one generation to the next in clandestine conversations. It was for girls, I reassured myself, so I needn’t worry about it anymore.

If not skipping, the girls played hopscotch, chalking numbered boxes on the pavement and sliding a stone with their shoe, hopping from box to box, or they plaited cats cradles of ever increasing elaboration with stretchy strings of huge length made with dozens and dozens of joined-up elastic bands, stretched between two sets of ankles. Or they would juggle against the slaughterhouse wall with two old tennis balls, fuzzy coatings long since worn away, the balls tapping, keeping time with the rhythm of their chanting: ‘Nebuchadnezzar the King of the Jews Bought his wife a pair of shoes When the shoes began to wear Nebuchadnezzar began to swear When the swear began to stop Nebuchadnezzar bought a shop When the shop began to sell Nebuchadnezzar bought a bell

When the bell began to ring Nebuchadnezzar began to sing…’

The street was alive, always, with people. First to call in the morning was Jacky-the-milk, his horse and cart recently updated to motorised transport, silver top and gold top milk bottles chinking.

Orders clunked on doorsteps, empties collected, and tat-tat-tat on doors once a week for payment.