More games ..........

We often played out in the street when I was young because it was a side road and the entrance to the Bakery became an exit so nothing left during the day. Also the railway siding was always interesting, with trains and workmen. And then there was the Park! So my playground was anywhere and everywhere but my parents never knew where I was half the time …. only the general direction.
Games in the street consisted mainly of ball games, skipping and hopscotch. I loved hopscotch but not when Sarah Macklewham played!! There were two types of layout for Hopscotch,
1 (I did have the two layouts here but can't find how to upload, perhaps another day!)















The first layout meant that you threw the slate into square one, hop scotched up to it, picked it up and hop scotched back. You kept repeating this so long as you managed to get your slate into the square, if you missed the square then you lost your go and it was the next person’s turn. After you had completed all the numbers, you could then play again but this time any square you landed on you could claim as your own by drawing a line across the corner with your initials in. No-one else could tread in that square and had to hop over it.

(another diagram here!)

I loved to reach the top of the first layout, although it took me some time to get there as I wasn’t very good at aiming the slate so when I did complete it was a real win for me, and to get my initials in a square – a rare happening!!! How I loved that game!
Sarah would always play the second type and I hated it, basically because I didn’t have much sense of balance or how to kick the darn slate!!! Whenever I fell over or kicked the slate out of the square you could guarantee that Sarah was yelling the loudest ‘out’ and sometimes I am sure she would yell just to make me fall over. You started off the same way throwing your slate into square one but then you had to kick it round the hopscotch back to the start. I hated this one mainly because I could never, never kick the slate back out of the hopscotch, it would keep going into adjacent squares to the one I wanted!!! Nightmare time and as I said I am sure Sarah picked this one so she could make more fun of me. Sometimes the game would be finished by all of them and I was still struggling to get from number four!!
Occasionally the road was re-gritted and this meant that the gutters had runny hot tar in them and also round the drains. We would find lollypop sticks or twigs and sit on the kerb stones and collect the tar on the sticks and then ‘write’ along the kerb stones. Our mothers hated us doing this and when we got into the house we would be sent outside again to strip off our outer clothing. Then the butter would be rubbed over all the tar patches on our skin, and how they were rubbed!!! We would be left with red patches but all the tar would be gone. After this we had to get back in the house to wash all these patches to remove the butter and then get dressed in some clean clothes. I never knew how my mother removed the tar from our clothes, but looking at what I have written and having had my own children, I know now that it is a nightmare time for mothers – I can remember the first time one of mine came in after playing with the tar – horror of horrors!! But then I remembered the butter and made the same mistakes as my mother, and countless others through time, concentrating on removal of tar one forgets that there is a child underneath!!
When I moved to Hall Green, most of the children were older than me and were boys, so the hopscotch became a rarity and instead we played ‘Hot Rice’! ugh!! Although us girls joined in we soon left the game and formed a little group a short distance away and sometimes, only sometimes, played hopscotch.