the back street

The back street

We had a rough gravelly back street between the two rows of houses. This was one of our major playing areas and meeting place and resulted in quite few grazed knees over the years. Barry and I spent many hours, one at each end of the street kicking or throwing a ball to each other or playing cricket down it. At our end of the street was a tall, solid wooden fence that made a good goalmouth for the boys to play “three and in” taking turns to be either the goalkeeper or the striker. Once you scored three goals you swapped around. It was a bummer if the ball went over because behind it another house and the little man who lived there was slightly crazy and hated the infringement. Getting the ball back without him seeing us was like a commando exercise.

When there were more kids out, we used to play all sorts of games like “farmer farmer, may I cross your golden river in you golden boat”, “giant strides and fairy steps”, “black pudding”, “leap frog”, “French cricket” etc. The girls would sometimes do handstands against the stone outhouse walls. Skipping ropes came out there occasionally and you could send the gravel flying at high speed when the rope hit the floor. Sometimes we would climb onto the low roofs of the outhouses and sunbathe in summer. They were good hiding places too if you laid flat.

At the other end was an old green painted gas street lamp. It had two arms below the lantern part. We would shim up the post and try to reach the arms, grab one in each hand and then sort of dangle off them for a while. Dunno why, just a “boy” thing to do. The lamp was a focal point for us. We used to play hide and seek and whoever was doing the seeking would stand there with their backs to the houses and count to 100 while we hid, or sometimes they would have to grab it with one arm and sort of swivel around and around it a number of times. If you were hiding, that was the point to try to get back to before you were found. It was a meeting up point when the nights were dark. The light it gave off had soft warm, yellow glow that felt friendly and welcoming. When dusk came, moths would circle crazily around it.

I learnt to balance a two-wheeled bike for the first time along the back street. When learning, Dad would run behind me holding the saddle to balance me. Then one time I got to the end and looked around to see him still stood at the far end. He had let me go and I rode the whole length on my own. I was elated and that was the start of mobility and freedom to explore places further afield.