Yesterday afternoon I overheard my six year old granddaughter invite her small brother to play a new game she had learnt about at school: hopscotch! I think they had been doing something about games children used to play but, as for me, I was whisked off down memory lane.
When I was in primary school - not infant school, I don’t have very specific memories about that bit of my schooling - boys and girls had separate playgrounds. Heaven forfend that boys and girls should play together - the very idea! The two playgrounds were even separated by the school building, just in case we might accidentally mingle! Funnily enough we all played together after school without problems!
So I have no idea what went on in the boys’ playground. Presumably they played a lot of football and running around games. Or maybe, they walked about sedately discussing philosophy and politics. You never know.
But hopscotch was one of the activities that cycled around in the girls’ playground. It seemed as though there was a season for everything and at certain times of the year everyone was equipped with chalk to draw the numbered hopscotch patch on the ground and a slider stone or a ball to slide or roll onto the relevant number according to the stage of the game.
The balls, of course, also served for simple catch or piggy in the middle or just throwing the ball against the wall and catching it. The really proficient showed off their skill at playing two-balls or even three-balls! And the suitably skilled would also demonstrate how they could do cartwheels, or handstands against the wall. Especially in the summer time. Proper circus skills. But maybe that’s why we had segregated playgrounds, so that exhibitionist girls would not show their navy blue school knickers to the boys.
At other times skipping was all the rage, either individual skipping ropes or longer ropes for communal skipping, with one person at each end to turn the rope. Failing that, you could tie the rope to a post or drainpipe and have one person doing the turning. And then there was the complicated business of running in and running out, trying to join in the skipping without tangling up the rope and spoiling the rhythm for everyone involved. I was pretty hopeless at running in, better at running out. Sometimes this communal skipping involved up to five or six people skipping at the same time. And always there was a skipping rhyme, regulating who was to run in or out:
“On the mountain stands a lady,
Who she is I do not know.
All she wants is gold and silver.
All she wants is a nice young man.
So run in …….. dear
and run out …… dear.”
Or there was:
“There’s a party on the hill,
Will you come.
Bring your own bread and butter
And a bun.
……… will be there,
Kissing ……. on a chair,
O U T spells out.
So already there was an awareness of interest in the opposite sex and an element of teasing and embarrassing your classmates.
And suddenly skipping ropes and balls disappeared to be replaced by the whip and top. Overnight everyone acquired a short stick with a hole at one end, through which was tied a string, or better still a fine leather thong. And, of course, to go with your whip you had to have a top, a wooden top with a nail or stud at the base so that it could spin properly. Learning how to set the top spinning, using your whip to do so, was a skill in itself. And then you had to keep it spinning with judicious application of the whip. Another aspect of this was decoration of the top. You had to have a plain wooden top which you decorated with patterns of various colours, vying with your companions to see whose top created the best effect once spinning. And, naturally, you had to have a new one each year. Last year’s top would simply not do!
And then that activity was equally suddenly out of date and we all moved on the something else. Quite who decided what was in season when remains a mystery. No doubt it had something to do with what was available in the shops at any one time.
I don’t remember hula hoops being all the rage at my school, although I remember them being around outside school This was the 1950s and I suspect they became fashionable after my cohort had moved on to secondary school. We were too cool and sophisticated to “play” during break-time - the name says it all, no longer playtime!
We did, of course, still indulge in fortune telling, folding and refolding a square of paper, embellished with choices - North, South, East or West, red, blue, green or yellow - until you lifted a final flap and discovered what fate awaited you.
Simpler times! No need for tamagotchi or Pokemon, but yes, swapping information cards from packets of tea or, even better, picture cards of pop stars from packets of bubble gum - even if we had no record player at home and thus no idea of who some of the singers really were.
A little bit of nostalgia.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
No comments:
Post a Comment