What games did you used to play after school?

I come from Brighton, but don't remember that ditty. Does anyone remember stool ball. We played that at school and when I mention it, people look baffled. You had two large 'things' placed like cricket stumps (can't remember whether they had a specific name. The bat was a wood one shaped like a small tennis racket and you ran, like cricket, from one thing back to the other thing. the 'things' were posts with a square piece of wood at the top (facing each other), and stood about 5ft high. It was a hard ball rather like a baseball.

annika That must be a relation of French Cricket (your own legs as stumps and an old tennis racquet as cricket bat)

janthea I've heard of stoolball, but never played it. I believe it was said to have been played by milkmaids using their milking stools. I don't know what the cows thought about it, depends whether they were still waiting to be milked I suppose. I'll do a Google.

Ah here it is on Wikipedia. I was right about the milkmaids and look - it originated in Sussex. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoolball

Elegran yes did french cricket also forgot about that
I also spent a lot of my time doing handstands I would rest my legs up on our garden hedge making a hole in the hedge much to my dads dispare
Now my grand daughter spends a lot of her time up-side-down seems to be only girls do it. Just shows what goes around comes around !

Annika I used to do handstands too, at one time I could even do cartwheels. We used to dangle upside down by the knees from any horizontal bar we could find. What is it about being upside down? I also used to lie on my back with my feet in the air riding an imaginary bicycle. Freudians would probably have a theory about that.

Isn't it wonderful sharing happy memories of childhood....and remembering things you had long forgotten...
I love this site xxxxx

Grumpyoldwoman me too

was in gang we played with are dutch arrows.

elegran, I remember my grandmother teaching me the Queen Caroline ditty, but she was from the East End of London, not Brighton.

bunic I have never heard of dutch arrows how did you play that

to long to explain,please look up"dutch arrow"on google uk search site,thank

Hopscotch, played on a grid drawn from a piece of soft stone on the pavement, kicking a flat stone. Or skipping, with ropes made from old rope and spindles from the woollen mill. So many skipping rhymes! Skipping extra fast was called 'peppering'.

Then there was duffins. You followed and copied a leader who did increasingly dangerous things. You dropped out if you couldn't manage it, or the leader gave in if she ran out of ideas, then another leader took over.

Marbles, aimed at a hole, or a stonker, ie a bigger marble.

raggygranny - that is interesting as my grandmother was from the poorer end of Croydon, but Brighton and London have always had close connections.

Skipping to determine a likely future husband...Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief. Roller skating on noisy tin skates with leather straps and getting fingers pinched in the bit that adjusted the length of the skate. Hop-scotch. Making dens from hay bales. Fives. Chasing the dishy boys to steal a kiss. Cowboys and Indians. Gathering together a secret society in a friend's father's shed. French knitting with a cotton reel and oddments of wool. Having adventures in out-of-bounds derelict cottage [and getting into trouble with village policeman]. The only naughty rhyme that I remember..."Put a penny in the slot and see what Jayne Russells got..." How daft was that? It never failed to amuse me! Collecting pretty sweet wrappers, smoothing them out and putting into a little album. Making dolls from wooden pegs and dressing them in scraps of fabric. HAPPY DAYS!

Supernana, you`ve just reminded me with your remark about sweet wrappers, I used to collect the ones with tin foil in them, preferably coloured foil, then collect twigs and wrap the foil around them from top to bottom. They looked lovely arranged in a flower vase, I thought so, anyway!

Drains - there were MANY haha.

Supernana, I still make dolls from wooden pegs and scraps of felt for my GS. We've made noggin the nog, robin hood, batman and robin, pirates and policemen!

Joan, we played marbles aimed at a hole - they don't seem to play like that anymore - it's stonkers.... happy days!

When building started again after the war, the local builders got on with the remaining plots on our road. What a wonderful playground they made! We played in the piles of sand, jumped over the foundations and found hiding places galore. wonderful days those were, before health and safety were thought of. There were no night watchmen, no guard dogs. And, miraculously, no broken bones, as far as I remember.

artygran My most favourite dolls were made using wooden pegs. I love the sound of those that you've created .

On the subject of dolls...my parents and grandparents clubbed together to purchase a German made doll with real hair, pearly teeth and flickering tongue...very expensive. A special welcome home gift after I had been in isolation hospital with Scarlet Fever [1945]. My little friend had first push of the pram and it tipped up! Doll's china face was smashed to smithereens. Poor little friend! Poor doll! Poor parents! Poor me!

Knew the rhyme Queenie Caroline in Liverpool. Also played What's the Time Mr Wolf-involved being very quiet and creeping up to Mr Wolf before he looked round and then running away sceaming as Mr Wolf turned round.Lived in a small road where the children were very organised-big present was a game at Xmas and we all had to ask for a different one so children went through the winter going to a different house to have some variety-they all seemed to be Waddington's- did any one else have Scoop- with newspaper stories and a telephone-I still have it-my brother had something called Astroid which sounds painful-I think a bit like battleships but with spaceships and asteroids blowing them up-never really got the hang of it.

What's the time Mr.Wolf,two balls,Film Stars, tossing up against the wall
with your school skirt tucked into your nickers,roller skate's french skipping,
the cat's cradle, spinning tops, marbles when my brother would let me have a go and conkers

Gosh, how could I have forgotten about conkers! Everyone had their own closely guarded secret recipe for hardening them to a state of indestructability (mine was to soak them in vinegar and then put them in the bottom of the Yorkshire range oven overnight). Needless to say, none of them ever worked!

Talking of dolls, Supernana, there was a doll at our house that we weren`t allowed to play with because apparently it was "special", it came out about once a year for a few hours. I loved holding it, it was a rather large baby doll, made of celluloid. Why do others think that it was considered so special?

numberplease Do you think that the doll was an antique? I've seen dolls similar to my German-made doll, Penny, on Antiques Roadshow. The valuations make the eyes water! The BEST doll that I've ever owned was bought for a very modest sum at Colemans, a large toy shop in Northampton. I was about six at the time. My Nana walked around the store with me and I spotted it sitting in a cabinet. The doll was about 5" high and in a white knitted outfit. I BEGGED my Nana to buy it and after an hour or so, she finally gave in [as Nanas do] and we returned for the doll. I have never forgotten the magic of holding such a "precious" gift. This would have been in 1946. I so wish that I had kept Wendy...

supernana I too had a large china "baby doll" with sleeping eyes, which I cared for very gently. One day my cousin came to play and we put two dolls into the dolls pram - the china baby with its back to the handle. Cousin tipped the pram up a step, the doll fell out and her head was smashed......