Memories. 10 Games We Used to Play

Image by Silviu on the street from Pixabay

I wrote a post about my memories of my early days at school. That set me to thinking about the games we used to play.

At dinner time, we walked about 300 metres to the Church Hall where dinner was served. It was brought in, I think. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t cooked there.

After dinner we went outside to play.

There was a variety of games that we played.

First, there was what was commonly called ‘Mummies and Daddies’, or sometimes ‘House’. Someone would be Mummy, someone, Daddy and someone the baby. The baby would walk around in a crouched position. I can’t really remember what we actually did!

Other games involved larger groups of people. Here are some of them.

1. The Farmer’s in the Dell. Someone was the farmer and stood in the centre of a ring. Then people would circle around singing a song in which the farmer chose, from the ring, a wife, a child, a nurse and a dog. Then ‘We all pat the dog’ and everyone would pat, in various degrees of hardness, the person who was the dog. The dog would then become the farmer.
2. Down by the Waterside. Another ring game. The people in the ring would sing, ‘Down by the water where the green grass grows, There sits ——– washing her clothes. She sang, she sang, she sang so sweet and called for her playmate across the street.’ The person in the ring did actions according to the song, then called ‘——-, ——–, won’t you come to tea? Won’t we have a jolly time at half past three.’ The ‘friend’ then became the next person in the ring.
3. What time is it Mr Wolf? One person would stand a distance away and turn their back. Everyone else was a few yards away. They would shout ‘What time is it Mr Wolf?’ and Mr Wolf would say a time. Suddenly the player who was Mr Wolf would say ‘Dinner Time and try to catch one of the others, who were all running away. If caught they would become Mr Wolf.
4. May I? Similar to Mr Wolf, except the person was facing the others. He/she would tell each person in turn to do something to advance their position. 3 baby steps. 5 skips, 1 giant stride, etc. Before complying, the person told to move had to say ‘May I ?’ or go back to the beginning.
5. Of course, there was the usual game of ‘tag’, which we called ‘tick’. And Chain Tick, where, when caught, the player joined hands with the others who had been caught, forming sometimes, a long chain that was difficult to avoid when it stretched over most of the playground!
6. We also played a version called ‘Off Ground Tick’ where you cold not be caught if you were off the ground.
7. We also played skipping with a long rope. I was hopeless at ‘running in’. Sometimes we had an elimination game where if you failed to run in, skip and run out, you were ‘out’. But we also had mass skipping in the rope.
8. Playing ball against the wall, or catch, with a variety of ball games.
9. And there was always ‘Jacks’ that could be played with stones as well as bought metallic 3D cross things. Bounce a ball and pick up the jacks before catching it. I think that was the general gist.
10. Finally, marbles. There were two games we played with them. One we had to try to hit other people’s marbles. Any hit were yours. Then there was a game which involved getting the marbles into a hole. Someone won all the marbles in the hole, but I can’t remember how that went.

Image by InspiredImages from Pixabay

Did you play any of these games? Or did you play others. there may be some that I’ve completely forgotten, or maybe people in other countries played different games. I would be fascinated to find out what games you played.

Answer in the comments please.

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