KEEN-EYED observers will have noticed the weather hasn't been up to much recently. Indeed, after what seems no time at all, the stage has been reached where summer appears to be on the point of sloshing out, while winter stands grimly in the wings waiting to slosh in. I don't know how the excessive dampness is affecting anybody else, but I'm starting to feel a bit paranoid about it. In an effort to catch some sun – albeit at a distance – I switched on the telly on Saturday to take in
Soggy days, it seems, breed soggy minds and so it was that mine turned to something said by an acquaintance, recently returned home after a lengthy sojourn abroad, something to the effect that these days there seemed to be a distinct absence of child
ren playing in the streets or, for that matter, anywhere. I didn't thing much about this at the time, reasoning that anyone playing in the streets in this weather would have to be weak in the head, but on reflection I began to wonder.
It might seem strange in these days of playstations and so forth, but there was a time when sitting at home was anathema to anyone around the age of ten and the weather didn't come into it. It could be pouring, but once you'd read the Dandy or the Beano or whatever publication satisfied your lust for literature, you'd be off. Sometimes it involved lengthy negotiations and pleading with reluctant parents, but after a period of sustained girning they were usually glad to see the back of you and once they'd salved their consciences by insisting you put on a coat, the world was your oyster. Of course, it wasn't always wet, but it didn't matter whether it was or not, for there was always so much to do. It was non-stop. If you were sent to the shops for something, you took a tennis ball with you and you went at a trot, kicking the ball against walls as you went, and taking the rebound with skill and aplomb. For as long as it took to reach your objective, you were Gordon Smith or Willie Bauld or Stanley Matthews. In seriously inclement weather, you went up a close and played heiders.
Girls played feverish games of peevers or hopscotch on the pavements. I didn't go in for this much, because I never really understood what exactly was happening. Things were marked out with chalk and lots of controlled leaping went on, sometimes accompanied by weird chants, the significance of which I couldn't fathom. There was a lot of skipping too, with ropes, which was also strangely ritualised so that whoever was about to do the skipping had to wait until an appropriate moment to step in and go to it while two others held the ends of the ropes and swung. I found it difficult to get the appropriate moment right and constantly ended up being half strangled. As a consequence, I didn't skip much either.
Came the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness and chestnuts fell from trees to be drilled and threaded on to hairy bits of string. The conker season was upon us. It should be remembered that those were barbarous and unenlightened times and it was not required that conker players should wear helmets, goggles or suits of armour. They simply cracked away and struck their opponents' conkers, their opponents' fingers and sometimes their own knees with painful regularity. Much time was spent unravelling the strings which got tangled up from time to time. First one to scream was a cissy.
Marbles were rolled anywhere and everywhere and with great gusto. It was not necessary to have a perfect playing surface, which is just as well, for there weren't any. I once saw a group of children playing a keenly contested game in a gutter in Edinburgh's historic High Street. It was a bitterly cold night and as the play raged on, traffic swished close by, adding to the drama, and patrons of the Black Swan public house, as it was then, lurched, sang and muttered on their way to their next point of refreshment. The health and safety teams would have had their work cut out there.
Speed came in the form of bikes and roller skates. As far as I can remember, the skateboards now favoured by grown men hadn't arrived yet and the fag-end of technology in those far-off days comprised girds (metal hoops) and old car tyres, which provided a sort of illusory speed, for they could only go as fast as their owners, unless they got out of control. The tyres were propelled by hand, the girds by metal hooks which allowed the rim of the gird to run freely.
An uncle of mine used to tell of an Aberdeen football supporter who travelled all the way to Easter Road by gird before suffering a heart attack as he tried to gain access to the ground by climbing over the wall. I laughed when I first heard that story, but it palled after a few years.
The full article contains 867 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
