What games did you used to play after school?

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!

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.

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!

Drains - there were MANY haha.

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!

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!

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

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.

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

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

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

was in gang we played with are dutch arrows.

Grumpyoldwoman me too

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

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.

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 !

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

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

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.

numberplease I remember french knitting you are right ,made miles ( wouldn't be miles now !) of the stuff . I wonder where it all went , bet we would have enough to go half way round the world.
Did anyone do french skipping ? we used lots of coloured elastic bands and tied them all together and then they were wraped around the ankles of two friends while the third friend jumped over it and as the game went on the band was put higher and higher up the friends legs oh happy days

I seem to remember making miles of french knitting too - my mother used to stitch them together to make hats for dolls and mats to stand teapots on. I found a Ladybird book when we were clearing out the loft recently on how to do french knitting and things you could make - I think it must have been my daughter's but I can't remember her making anything! I wish I'd kept the book now...

Loved those paper dolls.

Scared stiff of the rag and bone man though.

Does anyone remember the push out dolly at the back of a book that you then had to cut out the clothes for? The were affixed to the stand up doll by tabs. We used to make a whip and top out of a cordial bottle stopper and a leather shoelace.
Also, remember the excitement when the rag and bone man rang his bell? We used to run alongside his horse and cart and thought he was a very exotic figure.

That's stopped you in your tracks, hasn't it.

You all realise don't you, that these will all go in the next Gransnet moneyspinner book.

We won't see a penny.