Did you get a "play piece"

I used to get a buttered roll in a brown paper bag for my play piece. It went in the small front pocket of my satchel so it was invariably squashed flat by the time I came to eat it!

I love that Jeely Piece Song!

Paddyann
A Jilly piece (jam) for the Bairns.

My Gran's potted meat for my grandpa's work piece.
All wrapped in a Plain loaf wrapper.

Happy days

Calledonai14 that made me laugh so much about you trying to pass the chocolate digestives off as home --made! Priceless. Thank you for sharing.

I've never heard of a piece, but this topic reminded of my Dad who used to get an apple or biscuits for morning snack because they were comfortably off. He used to cry because he wanted cold toast wrapped in newspaper like the other children.

I started school in 1959 and we didn't get sweets except on a Friday when my Dad brought them home for us all ,mum included, hers were Newberry Fruits .It was normal for children to have bread and jam or even the cold toast and as I read about it I could smell it when the greaseproof came off it .I'm almost tempted to make toast and butter it and leave it to go cold just to see if my sense of smell is accurate.

I didn’t have snacks for school, no doubt my mother would have looked on it as breaking the rule , not between meals.

I'm Scottish and we never had "pieces" (might be more a Glasgow term?) but always had a sweetie for play-time. Granny came on a Monday afternoon and brought us Milky Ways and Fudges to last us all week ... now I'm wondering what we took on Mondays!

Cal

I had heard the word 'piece' from my friend's mum who was from Yorkshire.
Our school sold trays of delicious currant buns at morning break, they were really cheap but fresh and delicious.

Nowadays the children are allowed a piece of fruit which the children can buy in school.

I haven’t heard of the christening piece but I do know about the tradition of putting half crowns into a baby’s pram.
My play piece was a roll and butter in a brown paper bag. I sat on it to make it bigger!
My grandchildren call it ‘snack’.

I've never heard of a christening piece paddyann - it's a shame these things are all dying out. I had money (coins) put in my childrens' prams when they were babies, I loved that tradition.

then theres the "christening piece" two biscuits sandwiched with butter or buttercream icing a silver coinin the middle decorated with white icing.Given to the first child of the opposite sex of the baby being christened on the way to the church.It was a 2 shilling or half crown in the fifties and sixties but a 50p nowadays .My daughter and son both carried on the tradition with their babies

The best-known part of The Jeely Piece Sang by Adam McNaughton

Oh ye canny throw a piece oot a 20-storey flat.
Sivin hunner hungry weans'll testify tae that.
If it's butter, cheese or jeely. If the breid is plain or pan.
The chunces o it reachin earth are ninety nine tae wan.

www.roblightbody.com/jeely-piece-song

Traditional children's song dating from when the tenements were cleared and families went to live in high rise flats in Castlemilk, Glasgow. This was about the then-lost tradition of throwing sandwiches out to children who had played outside all day

Jeely piece is a Glasgow (or roundabout there) term - do you know if she was from that bit of Scotland? There's a very famous song called the 'jeely piece song' www.youtube.com/watch?v=8A7SAPmcwXA

My brother once had a Scottish girlfriend who had used the term ‘jeely piece’, meaning bread and jam, when she was a child, and yes, that is jeely, not jelly.

We didn't have break time snacks but, as others have said, in Birmingham a piece was a slice of bread and butter. Unfortunately when I went there as a teenager I had no idea what they were talking about when they asked if I wanted a piece. I wanted to ask a piece of what but was too shy!

Thanks Squiffy. I do too.

On a lighter note, when I was 3, my nursery playpiece was usually two Rich Teas with butter. Mary Smith, who sat next to me, always had a piece of delicious-smelling home-baking with coloured sugar decorations.

To add insult to injury, every playtime we had to clasp our hands, shut our eyes tight and sing "Thank you for the world so sweet etc...." when only one of us was about to eat had anything remotely sugary.

After I'd complained about quality at home, one day my mum gave me two chocolate digestives squashed together and I tried to convince Mary that my mum had baked these specially.

Mary was briefly impressed (she rarely got chocolate and I was managing to make the most of squidging it and eating it slowly) until she asked how my mum had got the writing on the outsides, whereupon two others at the same table pointed out that their shop-bought plain digestives had exactly the same "marks" - we couldn't read of course, but I was rumbled.

To the snorts and laughter of others at the table, Mary pointed and yelled: "MISS! Cale's telling FIBS about her playpiece. That's very naughty, isn't it?"

I should just have kept on silently wishing she'd choke on a lightly-baked wodge of cake, but I was a bit firey at three.

Face aflame, I did the straight-arm, pointy thing back at Mary so we were both in the pistols-at-dawn-but-not-close-enough-to-thump position and yelled the only thing I could come up with that was worse than a lie ... disrespecting God.

"Well MISS," I yelled, "SHE kept her eyes open ALL the time we were singing Grace!" ... Take that Maryblabbermouth, I thought to myself with a smirk.

As the teacher enquired gently how I could possibly have known such a thing, I realised I'd just had my first lesson in the art of stopping digging when you find yourself in a hole.

We had a play piece in the late 70s/early eighties but it was fruit, biscuits or crisps rather than a sandwich. I’d moved up from Kent to the NE of Scotland and having a snack at play time was a new concept - we didn’t have one down there

A jammy piece! Heaven!

In England this isn’t ( or wasn’t) done.Although at morning break teachers sold small biscuits ( like a few Ritz crackers)
To any child with a penny ( four biscuits) and those without a penny went without.There was the small bottle of free milk though.

I knew my childhood was deprived!

Thanks for that information Caledonai1. I love learning snippets such as that, they're fascinating.

I had marmite sandwiches and an apple, every day. It was called ‘lunch’, although it was eaten at morning break and a proper meal came later.

My grandchildren aren’t allowed to take sweets, chocolate biscuits, crisps or any other packet snack food into school. No such rules in my day!

In the Midlands, when I was girl, a "piece" usually meant a slice of bread and butter (or bread & marg!) or a sandwich. But I don't recall these being brought to school for a playtime snack. That was usually a biscuit or two.

Oh yes, I had a play piece! One of my earliest memories is of crying on my first day at school in the “baby class”, nowadays know as reception class. My mum had carefully wrapped a slice of her home made apple pie in grease proof paper and put it in a poke (paper bag). It was safely tucked away in my coat pocket for playtime, but when we got into the classroom we were all told to sit on our coats. By playtime the longed for apple pie wasn’t that appetising and I just wailed with disappointment!