Well it's the last day of a four day Royal 'Holiday' here in the UK. The economy will suffer they say and struggle to re-boot tomorrow. Then again, the boost to the nation's spirit could apparantly double our effort once were back at work! Such are the witterings of the talking heads on today's News.
Watching the News is a comparatively recent thing for me, only earnestly seeking it out each day since I was about 40. At one time for me it was the symbol of everything 'old' and stuffy, the faggy fash TV my Mum and Dad watched. The Saturday Pools and World of Sport [especially the Wrestling] came a close second in the 'crap grown-up telly' stakes!
Before any of this though there was just play. Playing in or playing out. I think I was happy doing either. I have a feeling I played 'out' mostly in my mates' and my own gardens, which all seemed to be huge for some reason. Sometimes playing out spilled over into the street, where we 'kicked the can', rode our Choppers, played pitch and toss with pennies and tanners and generally wandered through ginnals and snickets chuntering away about nothing much at all.
Mostly I recall playing at my home or my mates', either in or outdoors, which didn't matter as the 'game' just carried on regardless. For some reason it always seemed to be sunny so hours and hours were spent in the garden playing action man, space, monsters, cars or war with toys strewn about everywhere. I can see me now sat in the garden with my friend Vincent dressing our action men in the ubercool German infantry uniforms we'd just been bought. Later a whole platoon of us advanced to full-scale garden warfare with deck chair barricades, safe zones and a small field 'hospital' stocked with bandages my mate got from his Mum who was a nurse! Our rifles were either plastic Tommy guns or those planks of wood with gate-latch bolts Dad's loved to make in the shed. We must have had grenades but I just can't remember what they were - apples? I do remember much shouting and battle-crying, running, jumping, leaping, falling, dying, counting to twenty and running again! Phew! It was hard work all that play!
Where and what did you play as a kid?
In a pre- health & safety world, I played in abandoned warehouses, railway stations and building sites (the sort of industrial wasteland you see in episodes of 'The Professional'), they were never guarded or even fenced off oddly (it was the early 70's).
ReplyDeletesounds fun kevin, characyer biulding. Did you go on and join the SAS! hee hee. I rememember going newting on the local canal basin and bringing them home in jars. My bedroom stank of newts! Once there was a dead dog in a bag that had been chucked into the canal. It reaked. Us kids just wanted to poke it! Now all I can think about is how it got there in the first place. I recall that we loved to biuld dens, usually out of old doors and planks of wood. I once biult an entire walk-through 'ghost train' out of old doors leaning against a fence. I dangled loads of rubber snakes and spiders through holes and charged my mates a penny to go through it!
ReplyDeleteYep, it was fun, we sometimes used old railway brake vans as dens, oddly enough, there was one that was half buried, it would have made a reasonable bomb shelter!
DeleteGood point that the the gardens and yards seemed HUGE back then...being 1:4 or 1:2 scale human had its advantages.
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