Kids At Play

A popular game we played was conkers, and trips to nearby woods often turned into a search for good horse chestnuts to make into conkers. In the game, one kid had a horse-chestnut threaded on a string, and another kid tried to smash it by hitting it with their own. We often spent weeks preparing our conker by drying it near the fire to harden it, only to have it smashed in the first challenge!
But then, a big part of the fun was the collecting and preparing of the conkers.

The first day of May was called Mayday. It celebrated the start of spring and on the day maypoles were constructed in many school grounds or open spaces. These were wooden poles usually 3 or 4 metres tall, with coloured cloth or paper streamers hanging from it. Children each took hold of the end of a streamer and danced around the maypole singing the Maypole Song - "Dancing round the Maypole, merrily we go, tripping tripping lightly, dancing to and fro...". Alternate kids went in each direction, weaving in and out as they went, to weave a pattern on the maypole. Another very popular and traditional town activity.

We didn't have much in the way of toys - or cash - so many of our playthings were home-made. Nearly every boy had a catapult (ging, or shanghai). We sometimes had shooting contests to test our accuracy and range, with great prestige to be gained from these. I guess they were pretty dangerous toys, really, but I don't recall anyone being seriously hurt by them, although windows sometimes were. Our catapults were made from a forked stick, a strip of car or bike inner-tube rubber, and a leather pad to hold the stone. Bows and arrows were also made from the willow trees down The Lane.

Kites were an exciting passtime. There were two basic designs that we built: simple trapezoidal ("kite" shaped) ones, and box-kites, which were more difficult to build but were much more buoyant and stable to fly. Young kids like me usually only had the simpler design made with two thin sticks, some brown paper, and string. The tail was made from a piece of string with strips of paper tied to several places along its length. A longer tail usually meant more stability. The long anchor-string was attached to the point where the two sticks crossed.


Marbles were very popular, and came in various sizes, materials and appearance. The most common were "glassies", glass balls about 1cm in diameter, either clear or in one flat colour. Similar were the "catseyes", the same shape but clear glass with a small slit-shaped colour in the centre that gave them their name. These were considered more valuable than normal glassies.
Next in importance were the Tom-bowlers. These had similar patterns, but were larger, from about 2cm to 3cm.
At the bottom of the scale were the "clayeys", which were about the same size as glassies but made of clay and painted in various colours. The clay material was quite soft so these could sometimes be crushed or broken by a Tom-bowler, or even a glassy.
The ultimate marble was actually not a marble at all: it was a steel ball-bearing, usually from a car or truck! They could range from "normal" 1cm to impressive 3cm balls that could destroy a glass or clay opponent!

We also collected bottle-tops from soft-drink ("pop") and beer bottles, which we used instead of marbles. Drink manufacturers "played along" by making differently coloured tops. Over time, some colours became more valuable than others, depending on how "rare" they were. Red, gold and black were all "special" at some time. Many had a cork insert that could be removed and the bottle-top could then be attached to the shirt as a badge by replacing the cork inside the shirt, proclaiming the wearer to be a bottle-top champion.

Most of the above games were male-oriented, although some girls also played them. Girls mostly seemed to enjoy less-competitive activities like rope-skipping and hop-scotch, both of which were played in a similar way as they are today..

Rope-skipping had two forms, single and double-ended. In the single version, the player held a short piece of rope at each end and swung it repeatedly over their head, jumping over it each time it came down. There were tricks to be learned, such as double-skipping (two passes over the head for each jump), high-speed skipping, and reverse skipping. Sometimes a friend would join in jumping the same rope. In double-ended skipping, a longer rope was used, and was swung by two players, while the other players skipped over the rope together. Sometimes two ropes were swung in opposite directions, making it much more difficult.


Hop-scotch was played on a set of squares drawn or scratched on the ground. Players took turns to throw a small stone or tile into one of the squares, then hop on one foot from one square to the next until the last square was reached, then return, picking up the tile as they passed, still balancing on one leg. This game suited our area well, as most families were pretty strapped for cash, and this required only a flat stone to be able to play.

At night, we played in the streets. They were much safer back then, with no traffic, and much less "predatorial" activity.
Our favourite game, played almost every night was hide-and seek. The rules meant you could only hide in our street or the adjoining one. A variation of this was "relievo", where one person was "It" and had a "Home" base, usually the base of a lamp-post, and the others scattered around the area. "It" had to try to touch each of the others, and they would then have to return to Home. But the tricky part was, those who were not caught could sneak back around It and if they managed to reach Home they would call out "relievo", and all those already caught would be released. When all were caught, the first caught would become It.