Playing out

I never played out as I was quite a delicate child. We had a large house with a playroom as well as our own bedrooms and a lot of books and toys. I too lived in a Lancaster mill town and we often drive into the surrounding countryside for walks and picnics as a family- Mum , Dad and 4 children and visited castles and stately homes further afield. Happy days !

My friends and I played hopscotch in the street and we wrote on the flags with different coloured chalk for each child. In those days (1950s) it was the custom for people to wash down the pavement as well when they washed their front step.

One day a woman came and complained to my mother that my friends and I had chalked all over her freshly washed pavement. My mother made me fetch a bucket of water and a scrubbing brush and ordered me to scrub away all the marks I had made. I duly scrubbed off all the pink chalk marks I had made but left the rest.

Later the neighbour came back to whinge that I had left some of the marks. My mother told her "I punished my daughter for what she had done wrong but Im not going to punish her for what her friends did. You will have to speak to their parents." The woman then asked me who my friends were but my mother retorted "My daughter is not a snitch" and slammed the door.

Even in those days snitching was a big no no in Liverpool. If you snitched on someone (or even if you were suspected of it) you could get a brick through your window.

Celieanne86

I think my son still has it in his collection GD, I passed it on to him a few years ago. He has them displayed in a glass Jar along with others he played with as a boy. I do remember it was blue with white swirls in and no chips. I saw on TV Bargain Hunt some marbles can be quite valuable but mine was beyond price 🥰

We loved playing marbles, I had a little drawstring bag my nana made for them. The bigger marbles I remember were called Dobbers. I had some lovely ones but have no idea what happened to them. Such a shame.

I think my son still has it in his collection GD, I passed it on to him a few years ago. He has them displayed in a glass Jar along with others he played with as a boy. I do remember it was blue with white swirls in and no chips. I saw on TV Bargain Hunt some marbles can be quite valuable but mine was beyond price 🥰

My childhood spanned the 1060s and early 1070s in a small, Scottish town. We walked to school, Brownies, Saturday pictures, etc without an adult and played outside all the time. My sons are 26 and 27 and had a similar childhood as we lived in the countryside and refused to let them have computer games or tvs in their rooms. They played outdoors, built dens, guddled in burns, built go karts, had catapults, etc. Maybe we were just fortunate but my younger son and his wife are determined their two wee ones will have the same free range rural upbringing. I know it is different in towns and cities and do think it is sad that children miss out on the joys of childhood.

These days people complain when they see kids playing in the street, or in fact anywhere.

I hope it was a milk glass ‘swirly’, Celieanne! They were my favourites.

I remember playing hopscotch in the street outside my nans house in Battersea.
Don’t remember us being in the way of cars in those days.
Also, skipping in the street.

Those were the days.

I lived in South London and I could only play in friends gardens or did we? At the back of our houses was allotments which we would play in, pinching potatoes to make pretend meals but the best time was when the fruit season started there was all manor of soft fruit and then apples, plums and pears. I may not have play on the streets but I had so much fun.

I was lucky enough to live near Ullswater and we had a very tiny rowing dinghy. We used to deliberately capsize it and splash about in the water. There was a particularly large pine tree in the garden and we climbed to the very top and rocked about on a windy day. Other memory was whizzing about the village on my tricycle - no traffic.

My childhood was wonderful it was wartime but that never bordered us. I lived in a lane that was adjacent to the local cemetery, just 10 houses but there were about 6 children and these were my friends and we climbed over the railings and spent hours in there tidying up graves and pretending to hold funerals for our dolls to us it was normal life. All the things already mentioned were activities done every day including looking after the baby in the pram and shouting to mother when the knife sharpener or the rag and bone bond was on his way. I was running errands for neighbours when I was about 7 message and money in a purse and I would have a penny, no sweets but could buy a penny fizzy pop. When I was about 10 my dad made me a bike from bits he found on the tip and he bought me a shiny new bell that was real freedom. Off in the morning some jam pieces as we called them, a bottle of water and the world was our oyster. Trentham gardens, Barlaston, we never paid we sneaked through the hedges. I still have a friend from those days and we often talk about how happy we were. I let my children who are now in their 60s have freedom to play outside, we lived in a cul de sac so they were able to do all the things I had done. The park and recreation ground were close by so they could go there as long as they stayed together, that was drummed into them from a very young age. I sent them to the corner shop just as I had gone, and they learned road safety and cycle proficiency at school.
Sadly today we live in a world where parents are worried about their children and are over protected, they will never know the joy of finding a marble in the gutter and carrying it home like a trophy.

We could be little rascals, playing ‘knock down ginger’, which usually resulted in one of us getting cuffed about the ear by a neighbour. Of course our parents didn’t get heated up about us being manhandled by the neighbours, more likely than not we would get a snack on our legs if we reported being cuffed about the ear. Of course is a good thing people now know this is not permissible, I mean if one neighbour or parent had gone too far we could have been badly hurt.

Hopscotch, whip and top, Two balls, skipping. Damed streams to paddle, made dens in the woods. Roller skating and cycling.
Also hand stands up against walls and singing games. Never indoor in the summer.

I wasn't allowed to "play out" I had never heard the expression.

I never found out why my parents were so against it, as it was plain to me, even as a child, that they had both been allowed to do so, and neither of them, or their sisters, brothers or cousins had come to any harm.

I was frightfully envious of the children who were not under their mothers' eye all the time and finally at the age of 11 or 12 was allowed to go for walks by myself, even without the dog.

I think it is dreadful not allowing children to stand on their own two feet. Obviously, what we let children do must be suitable to the age, but right now, three year olds cannot even use the toilet on their own.

Frankly, if the fear of sexual abuse is what is riding their parents, you would think the earlier a child learned to use the toilet alone the better, wouldn't you?

I feel blessed that I had the childhood I did. I feel sorry for my grandchildren growing up now.

My sister and I would wrap up sandwiches and go off on our bikes. We would often be gone all day and our mum had no idea where we were.

We used to stand on the swing, and work our way up to "the bumps".
That meant the chains would start to sort of buckle...

My mum would have had a fit, considering I wasnt even supposed to be in the park.

Shinamae

Remember…

We had a large playground with a roller skating rink opposite our house, opened on coronation day.
I got bored with using the swings the ordinary way so I would hang my body over the seat.
One day I got it wrong and put my teeth through my tongue, 7 stitches.
The worst part was my mother had a terrible fear of blood and there was a lot 😱

Played in the street just like you described. Also in woods, burns, seaside, building sites, coal bings, yes coal bings, used them to slide down getting absolutely covered in black dust. All with no adult supervision. Stranger danger has been going on for a long long time but now it's an absolute obsession. Given the increase in population wonder what the percentage increase in cases is now compared to in the 40/50s. At times, it seems there is a greater risk from teenagers with knives nowadays.

Remember…

We had huge, hairy caterpillars here, and they bought you out in a rash if you touched them, so we left them alone.

I can remember blackberry bushes with writhing clumps of black and white caterpillars on, though.

Lizards were more my thing.

Did anyone ever collect caterpillers in jars? Looking back it was terribly cruel because they almost always died. But it was something that both boys and girls did. I dont recall collecting frogspawn but there were no ponds where I lived.

Playing out was the greatest thing about being young.

Eating dinner, then fidgeting around until you were allowed to get down and go and play out for a while longer

I lived near Loch Lomond and spent loads of time there with friends or parents in the summer. Or we used to go 'up the burn' and play on rope swings, dens, sand tunnels and eat what we had been taught was safe. During summer holidays we left home in the morning and only came back when we were hungry and our parents never came looking for us. Life was a lot safer in the '60's.

Cressy

Tanith I too remember playing on bomb sites and it was only as an adult that I realised what they actually were.

Same here! We knew the site as 'bomb buildings' and it never occurred to me at the time that that was exactly what it was.