I lived in the middle section of a long street. These were all 'family' houses consisting of three bedrooms, either semi-detached or in small terraces of four houses. All had small front and large back gardens.
From the ages of five to eleven, I knew twenty one other households in my part of the street. Oddly, these can be exactly grouped into three equal and distinct categories. First, those kids whom I played with most days of the week and in whose houses I was welcome (or gardens if their parents did not let me over the threshold!). Secondly, the other kids whom I didn't play with, some of whom were mortal enemies. Lastly, people who mostly had no young children or who lived so privately that we were excluded from their lives. Of this last group, the most notable were Mr and Mrs Grimm.
The Grimm's kids had grown up and left home long before. Mrs Grimm was an unsmiling and hatchet-faced woman in her late fifties. Her husband was a shipyard worker who, it seemed, always wore a brown corduroy flat (or 'Fred') cap and shirts unbuttoned to his navel. Mr Grimm was a dedicated and passionate gardener, who put most of his leisure time into growing his marrows, leeks, carrots and other vegetables. He was the most foul-tempered man I had then ever encountered, and even the boldest of the local street urchins would quail at the sight of his big, red and purple, bespectacled, angry face.
We saw quite a bit of this particular visage because our favourite collective game was street football, using either our jumpers (pullovers) as the goalposts in the middle of the street or, more usually, various garden gates as goals. Each of our own gates were our goals and, if four or five of us were playing, that meant we were haring up and down the street and crashing the ball back and forward for hours. One of us, little Benny Fenwick (no relation), was unfortunate to live next door to the feared and hated Mr Grimm. Too often, and despite our best efforts not to, we would boot the ball over Benny's gate and into Grimm's front garden.Mr and Mrs Grimm must have kept permanent sentinel when our footie games were in progress for, no sooner had we drawn a collective sharp breath when the ball landed in their garden, then one or both of them would shoot noisily out of their house.
Mr Grimm was the most fearful of the two. He would hold the ball aloft in one hand and a wicked-looking sheath knife in the other, his face becoming even redder and more purple, his black glasses at an odd angle on his nose and his brown corduroy cap seemingly screwed onto his head. He would instil complete dread into every one of us, even though we had the advantage of a closed gate between us and far swifter legs.
Always he would shout: I told you, you little buggers! I'll put this knife through it. I told you!" And with that he would bear away the ball and we would never see it again. I guess to the Grimms, though, we were like a never-ending biblical plague of flies.
Next day, someone would produce another ball and off we would go again.
Street games and playground games were an essential part of being a kid. In the street we played 'Us versus Them' games, such as Cowboys and Indians, British v the Germans (still popular with the media), Cops and Robbers and Zorro v the Baddies. These were great 'shoot 'em up', noisy games and (if your parents weren't in to stop you) could be extended into the house. Also, it allowed you to fashion deadly weapons from string and bamboo canes, such as swords, spears and bows and arrows, the last with nails tied into the end (I told you they were deadly!). There was also 'Kick the Can', knocking down cigarette cards (by a deft flick of the wrist) and marbles (or 'muggles'), played along the gutters in the street. We also played a limited number of joint games with the girls, such as hopscotch and hide-and-seek.In the boys' school playground - a concreted expanse bordered by a thin strip of grass and trees - we played tig (or 'tug'), 'Kingy' and piggy back jousting tournaments. Some also played 'Who can pee the highest?' in the unheated toilet block, (wisely) set apart from the main school building. This tended to be (I seem to recall) mostly a boys-only sport.
In the girls' playground, the consuming pastimes were skipping games (long rope and short rope) and ball-bouncing games, with two or more balls - all to the accompaniment of repetitive and (sometimes) intricate rhymes, to synchronize either with the skipping jumps or the balls bouncing on the school walls and concrete ground,and under the girls' legs and behind their backs, and being caught, thrown, patted and juggled in a whirl and twirl of co-ordinated action that was far in advance of anything the boys could achieve.
Sometimes the rhymes were simple ones, such as "One, two, three, O'Leary
Four, five, six, O'Leary
Seven, eight, nine, O'Leary
Ten O'Leary stop."
or more personalised (and ruder) versions, such as
"There goes our Auntie Mary
Doing the necessary
In the outside lavatory
One, two, three."
Talking of 'Auntie Mary', I wonder if it's the same one who featured in the equally rude ditty, part of which is
"Auntie Mary
Had a canary
Up her knicker leg."
Perhaps it is. Perhaps it isn't. We'll probably never get to the bottom of it. Unlike the canary.
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