WE PLAYED WAR IN THE GARDEN AND DRANK TIZER

Lockdown means I can spend a lot of time in the garden now its Spring. I can't see my Grandkids so I've got to thinking about what I did as a kid lucky enough to have had a garden. It certainly wasn't the gardening that I do now! My Mum and Dad would have done all that boring stuff!

Looking back, like many kids in the Sixties and early Seventies, I spent a good deal of time outside in Spring and Summer. After long winters stuck inside playing with every toy I had to destruction it was great to spread wings wide and get out in the Sixties sun with the family dog Shandy.

What went on outside changed as I got older. As a small nipper I will have stayed near the house taking my toys outside in the garden. I remember playing with Action Man with a mate called Vincent. We would spend hours dressing and re-dressing our 'men'. A favourite of mine was the German Stormtrooper. I still feel the 'click' as the stick grenade pushed into his hand.

Another favourite was the Airfix wonder called Flight Deck. This was basically a flying plane that landed on part of an aircraft carrier. I'd attach the nylon line to the washing line and watch that fighter zoom across the lawn onto the deck, where I think a hook stopped it dead. It was inspired toy by Airfix. Did you have one?

Sometimes we made up outdoor games. Grass slides were fun. We'd slope old planks in between bushes and send tons of grass clippings down them. It was even better with water from the hose. I don't know why but it was just fun. Like farming!

Sometimes I'd geek out and make a ghost train for friends and family to scare themselves silly in. The 'train' was really a group of old doors leant up against a fence to form a tunnel. Victims had to stoop and crawl through it whilst I dangled rubber spiders onto them from holes and made wailing noises. For some reason they always asked for their money back! Just kidding!

Robin, my best mate back then, really did charge for going in his garden. I think it was more his Dad than him. They'd set up various fun fair type stalls like pulling matches from sand and hook a duck and charge a penny for the privilege! I can't remember what happened if you won. Probably a kick up the Arsenal!

Robin and me did everything together. You know what its like with bezzy mates. Besides driving round the streets on our bikes, we played 'kick the can' a lot in the road and as we approached our teens we went up town on a Saturday morning to the Top Rank disco, where we discovered, girls!

I then discovered Bruce Lee. I'd seen Enter the Dragon circa 1973 and I became obsessed. Robin just didn't get 'it' and when I joined a local Wing Chun club it was the final straw and we weren't mates after that. A shame really because the next few years were huge fun with all mates kicking the hell out of each other!

Our garden came into its own during the King Fu craze. It was a big oblong lawn with hedges round and flower beds. It was big enough for decent war games. We mixed things up between large scale western battles, using deckchairs as barricades and wooden rifles sporting gate-bolts and big Samurai skirmishes.

These skirmishes were something else. Armed with bamboo wooden 'swords' we'd attack a sleeping band of enemies, who always woke up in time to give us a decent fight! Proper skin contact was avoided but stick on stick fencing was what we were after, the longer the 'fence' the better! Fatal blows meant falling to the floor and counting to twenty before resuming the fray!

The real ronin action took place when we made Japanese bows and arrows. Somehow it all worked and we even had fancy arrowheads like true Samurai! In reality these where tennis balls so we could feel safe firing them at each other. To gain authenticity we also made armour out of carpet and string chicken wire for the the head and torso. I can still feel the thud of that tennis ball arrow as it hit my chest plate from the other side of the lawn. God, those were good times.

So as I got down to some grown-up gardening and made a veg bed today I threw a surviving shuriken against the shed like I did so long ago when I was 13!

Did you play outside as kids readers?