Day 36 #100DaysOfOldDays

It was great growing up on a terrace along with dozens of children. There was always someone to play with. Everyone has their own favourite games that they played as children. Here’s mine;

Hopscotch

The boys has no interest in hopscotch. Too easy-going and quiet for them I suppose. It wasn’t a highly competitive game either. All you needed was to be able to hop and have good balancing skills. People never minded the chalked squares on the footpaths; it was all about the children.

Queenie-eye-o

Everyone wanted to be Queenie—the person who stood at the top with their back to the others. Queenie threw the ball behind her back, and she had to guess who caught it. Every player kept their hands behind their backs and Queenie had to guess who had the ball. It’s the song I remember most about this game.

Queenie-eye-o, Queenie-eye-o, who has the ball? Is he big or is he small, is she fat or is she thin, does she wear a wedding ring?

French Skipping

I don’t remember the boys skipping although I’d say they would’ve been great at it. French skipping was one of my favourite pastimes. Some girls played with a very long length of thick elastic, but mostly we used old nylon tights. This may be a game from the past but it has made a huge comeback. French skipping kits are available to buy; it includes a 3 metre elastic rope, a songbook and instructions.

Baseball

It was actually rounders but we called it baseball for some reason. We used a tennis racket and jumpers as the markers. It was usually easy enough to round up enough players for this game.

Hide and seek

We usually played this in teams, rather than have one child searching the neighbourhood for about 30 others. We had so many places to hide; gardens, sheds, ditches, or sometimes you just kept running round the block until you got back to base without being caught. A certain amount of team members had to make it back to base for the team to be declared the winners. We shook this up a bit in our early teens and called it, ‘Catch a girl, kiss a girl.’ No explanation needed!

Of course there were many rows and arguments during all this playing, but it was harmless—most of the time!