You're It!

Plinky wants me to remember some of the games I played when I was a kid. Trouble is, i can barely remember the rules to most of them. And I mix up which rules went with which games.

British Bulldog was a game in which kids lined up on opposite sides of the playground, forming a human barrier. We'd take turns to run and try and break through. I remember that if you failed to get through, you joined that team, but I can't remember what the reward was for getting through.

Off-Ground-He was just a massive game of 'It' or 'Tag', except you couldn't be tagged if you were off the ground. This game always started off sensibly enough, but as time went on and more people were tagged, it got much harder to find places to get off the ground. 8 year olds would become eloquent playground barristers, arguing that they were off the ground because they were balancing on a 1/4" asphalt pebble.

Some games were very specific, geographically. My Nan lived in a cul-de-sac in Bournemouth for a few years and the kids in her road had a game, the name of which escapes me, which involved hiding and then sneaking back to touch the home base without being caught by the person who was guarding the base. I remember it very well as the base was always the cast-iron, Victorian lamp-post at the end of the street. It was a very tactical game. The guard could just hang around by the lamp-post, but then we wouldn't come out of hiding. Or he could try and find us to flush us out, taking the risk that he left the base un-guarded for too long. Whenever I was guarding, I'd go and look for people, seemingly for only 30 seconds and when I turned round I'd discover that every single other player had made it back to base without me noticing. Doh!