What games did you used to play after school?

After school I was too busy laying and lighting the fire, doing my homework and getting the evening meal ready for when my mum got home from work!
[virtuous smirk emoticon]

The big ship sailed through the alley alley oo?
Has anybody read the 'lore and language of schoolchildren' written by the Opies?

During the summer weeks when the nights were light, my best friend and I would muck out and clean tack at the local riding stables. Anything to get a free ride at the weekend.

I remember the hula hoop craze,we could keep it going for ages. It wasn't unheard of for kids who had been overdoing it to be carted off to hospital with suspected appendicitis as they had strained their tummy muscles!
The hospital called it 'hula hoopitis'!
Did you see Grace Jones strutting her stuff at the Jubilee celebration? Have to say I was impressed with the way she kept the hoops going. The last time I tried it again I was hopeless. Completely lost the knack!!

Annika, was it a Pifco bicycle horn, I had one on my bicycle and it was one of my favorite things. I loved jacks, and my scrap book, I remember lots of brightly coloured scraps you bought in pages, lots of angels and fairies! You stuck them on with glue, I suppose they were the forerunner of stickers.

I used to have a lovely red Tri-ang ( who remembers Tri-ang) scooter I remember one day almost running into our neighbour as I was comming around a bend on it. She was not amused at all and went straight to complain to my parents about it.
After a few wise words from them to me , dad made sure it didnt happen again..... he got a horn and put it on the handles of the scotter with instructions to use it when coming around corners. No more complaints !

Bowling a wooden hoop and later hoola hoop with a plastic one.
Playing horses with my dad's walking stick and also using the banister as a horse with a cushion for a saddle. Yet I've never riden [ridden?] a real horse in my life!!!
Sliding down the stairs on our tummies and if we were very brave, head first!

What the heck is crab football?

crab football anyone?

Elastics, and "high up tig"

I never had them either, but only because I didn`t want any, tried my friend`s and hurt myself, it put me off.

numberplease - my story's even worse than yours! I was only allowed to use one roller -skate at a time in case I fell over...! That's true!

Sadly, I was never allowed a 2 wheel bike, everybody say Ahhhhhh!

Knock knock ginger,five stones,jacks, dutch skipping and my first two wheeler bike with gears Happy Days .

nutmeg and numberplease We used to put a knee on the top until the string had been pulled.

I can beat you there Greenmossgiel, I managed 3 balls!

Whip and top - we coloured in the top of the 'top' itself with chalks, and started off the top with the lash of the whip tightly wrapped around it and our knee pressing on the top before whipping it away! Skipping - even on the dark nights with the rope tied to a lamp-post, if there weren't enough of us to take each end of the rope! Another game that I played when I came up to Scotland as a child was 'paldies'. This was a type of hopscotch, and the best thing to use for this was a piece of tile or even an empty shoe-polish tin filled with stones, as long as it was flat. Two-ball, handstands against the wall further and further out, so that you ended up more like a crab by the time you'd finished! Oh the joys! All gone now, I suppose, because unless attitudes change quickly and quite drastically, these pastimes will be lost forever.

Nutmeg, we didn`t need to stand our tops in a crack, we wound the string from the whip around the top, placed it on the ground, and very quickly pulled the string off, and the top would start spinning straightaway, oh happy days!

I had a whip and top ,too. We used to colour the tops with chalk or crayons to make them more interesting when spinning,You had to have the right sort of pavement, slabs with cracks in between to stand the top before whipping. I had roller skates and was allowed to go to the park with them.. Oh, the freedom!

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......

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...

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?

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!

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

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.