by Paul Feeney
Five Stones (known to me as ‘Gobs’): This game was often played on doorsteps and involved five evenly sized small stones and one larger stone, with the player using just one hand. One person would play at a time by placing one of the small stones on the back of his or her hand and throwing it into the air, picking up the larger stone and catching the thrown stone on its way down. This was repeated, adding one small stone to the back of the hand at each throw until all five small stones had been thrown into the air and caught at the same time as picking up the large stone. Your turn ended if you dropped any of the stones or failed to pick up the large stone before the small stones were caught in the palm of your hand. In an alternative version, you would throw the five small stones onto the ground and place the large stone on the back of your hand. You would then throw the large stone in the air and pick up one small stone from the ground before catching the large stone on its way down. You would continue to pick up one stone at a time until you had all five small stones and the one large stone in the palm of your hand. This was called ‘onsies’. If you were successful then you would start again with five small stones on the ground, but this time pick up to two small stones at a time (called ‘twosies’). If you continued to be successful then you would then progress to ‘threesies’, ‘foursies’ and ‘fifesies’. You were allowed to throw the large stone up from the back of your hand and sweep the small stones on the ground together with your fingers, but if you used this tactic then you had to catch the large stone on the back of your hand in between each sweep.
French Skipping (also known as Elastics): This was a girl’s game, played using a very long piece of knicker elastic tied into a loop. Two or more girls would stand inside the loop of elastic, a few feet apart, with the elastic stretched around the outside of their ankles. The first player would then perform a series of skipping movements on, under, and over the elastic. Both feet under the elastic, both feet on top of the elastic, one on top and one under, one on top and one under and then swap feet. The player would then move around one girl to the next section of elastic and repeat the skipping movement. The skips or jumps were often done in time to a skipping rhyme. If the player successfully completed a round of jumps without tripping over or making a mistake, then the elastic would be moved up to knee level (called ‘knee-sies’), then thigh level (‘thigh-sies’), and then waist level (‘waist-sies’). The player would be out if she failed to do the correct jump, and then one of the others would come out from the elastic to have a go.
Frisbees: Throwing disc-shaped objects was always a popular outdoor sport, but when the Wham-O toy company in America launched this special flying disc in 1957, it became a proper throwing and catching game for kids. The Frisbee was also thrown for dogs to run, jump and catch in mid-air.
Handstands: This was an activity done by both boys and girls. Starting from an upright position with arms outstretched above the head, the person would bend forward and sort of tumble themselves forward onto the palms of their hands so that balancing on their hands supported their upturned body. The handstand would be complete when their body was held straight with arms and legs fully extended. Sometimes handstands would be done freestanding and sometimes up against a wall, finishing with the soles of the feet resting against the wall. Girls would tuck the hem of their skirt into the elasticated leg of their navy blue knickers to maintain their modesty while performing handstands.
He, It, Tag, Tig, Tip: Known by various names, this was the simplest and most basic game of chase for a group of kids to play. The person chosen to be ‘it’ ran around trying to touch or ‘tag’ one of the others. When touched or tagged then that person became ‘it’ until he or she touched another player. You could avoid being ‘tagged’ by lifting your feet off the ground temporarily by pulling yourself up onto a wall or a bar so that your feet dangled just above the ground. There were loads of optional rules for this game.
He Ball: Similar game to He, It, Tag, Tig and Tip except with ‘He Ball’ the person that was ‘it’ chased the other players with a ball. If ‘it’ managed to throw the ball and hit a player then that player would become ‘it’.
Hopscotch: Usually played in the street. A set of eight or ten equally sized joined-up squares was chalked onto the pavement in a hopscotch pattern and each square was then numbered. The first player would stand behind the starting line and toss a stone into square number ‘one’ and then hop over square ‘one’ and land in square ‘two’ on one leg, then continue hopping through the hopscotch, landing on one leg in single squares and two legs in double squares. At the end you would turn around and make your way back down through the hopscotch until you reached the square number ‘two’. You would then bend down and pick up the stone from square number ‘one’, hop into square ‘one’ and back to the start again. You then threw the stone into square number ‘two’ and repeated the hopping process as before only this time hopping over square number ‘two’ as you made your way through the hopscotch. You repeated this through all the numbered squares, always hopping over the square with the stone in it. A player was deemed to be out if the stone failed to land within the lines of the correct square, he or she stepped into the square where the stone was, put two feet down in a single box, stepped on any of the chalked lines, or lost his or her balance while bending over to pick up the stone. If you managed to complete the whole hopscotch successfully then you hopped through the whole hopscotch again without a stone in any box, and out the top of the hopscotch to finish.
Girls and boys each had their own preferred ‘must-read’ comics and annuals.
Hula hoop: The hula hoop craze hit Britain in 1958 with the arrival of the American Wham-O toy company’s lightweight tubular plastic hoop, made from a recently invented durable plastic, and called the hula hoop. It was a toy hoop that you twirled around your waist, limbs or neck for as long as possible, and you had competitions between friends to see who could keep it going for the longest time. It was most popular with the girls, and grown-up women also enjoyed it as a way to keep fit. It was a short-lived craze that only lasted for a few months. Wham-O relaunched the hula hoop in the late 1960s.
Jacks: This game was very similar to Five Stones except it was played using a small bouncy rubber ball or a table tennis ball, and between five and ten small stones. You would bounce the ball once and pick up stones, catching the ball before it bounced again. As with Five Stones, you played ‘onesies’, ‘twosies’, ‘threesies’, ‘foursies’, ‘fifesies’, ‘sixies’ etc., but again, there were several versions to the game.
Kiss Chase: There never seemed to be any rules to this ‘it’ game. Girls chased after boys to kiss them, and the boys ran away. If the girls caught a boy and kissed him then he would be ‘it’ and he would have to chase the girls for a kiss, but it never seemed to happen like that. The boys were always running away – although they did slow down a bit when they got to about ten or eleven years old!
Knock Down Ginger: A game that was mainly played after dark and could get you into serious trouble with your mum and dad. In its simplest form, you knocked on street doors and ran away without being seen. Everyone had knockers on their street doors in the 1950s. More advanced players would quietly tie cotton to a street door knocker and then reel the cotton out to the other side of the street, where you would hide and then pull the cotton until it broke, thus lifting the knocker and dropping it back in place to create a loud knock on the door. Sometimes you would do three or four knockers at the same time, but that was risky because there was more of a chance that one of the victims might come out and chase after you.
Leapfrog: Players vaulted over each other’s stooped backs. There could be any number of players. The first player stooped and the second player vaulted over him or her. On landing, that player also stooped, a few feet in front of the first stooped player. Then the third player vaulted over each of the two stooped players. The game continued like this with each player joining the line of stooped players. Once all of the players were stooped th
en the first player stood up and vaulted over all of the other players, and so on.
Lolly Sticks: Played with a bunch of used flat wooden lolly sticks. The lolly sticks were held a few inches above the ground and dropped into a heap. You then picked up all of the sticks that weren’t touching any of the others and used one of these to move or flick each stick off the pile without moving any of the others. If you moved another stick while flicking then one of the other players started a new game. The winner was the player who had picked up the most sticks during their turn.
The Beano and The Dandy were the two best-known and most popular ‘must-read’ comics for both girls and boys – all those fabulous comic strip characters, like Dennis the Menace, The Bash Street Kids, and Desperate Dan – just to mention a few.
Marbles: There were many different versions of Marbles and usually the rules were agreed before the game started. In its simplest form, players took turns to roll or flick their marbles at their opponents’ marbles, and if they hit one then that marble became theirs. Sometimes the game was played within an agreed area or circle, in which case you had to flick your marbles from the edge of the circle without encroaching. The aim was to either hit one of your opponents’ marbles that had already been placed near the centre of the circle at the start of the game, or to knock one of their marbles out of the circle. If you were successful then your ‘shooter’ marble remained where it had stopped and you could shoot again from that spot. If you were unsuccessful then the next player began his or her go from outside the circle. Loads of different versions and rules!
Roller Skating: In the 1950s, children’s roller skates were still quite primitive. They were simply four ball-bearing metal wheels attached to a foot-shaped flat piece of metal. You put your foot onto the flat metal plate, with your heel pressed against a small ridge at the back. There was a leather strap attached to the back of the skates, which you would wrap around your instep to hold the skates on. At the front, there was an adjustable metal grip on each side, and you tightened these against your shoe to hold the front of your shoe in place. They were absolutely useless! Impossible to keep attached for more than a few minutes at a time. You would often see a lone skate hurtling down the road having escaped its wearer, and sometimes the skate would still have a shoe attached to it! Lots of twisted ankles and grazed knees, but you always went back to have another go!
Run Outs: The person that was ‘it’ would close his or her eyes and count to an agreed number, usually between ten and one hundred, while the players ran and hid. ‘It’ would then go in search of the players and each one he found would join him to search for the remaining hidden players. The players could change their hiding place during the game as long as they weren’t seen by any of the searchers. The last player to be found would be the winner. Seekers would often call out the names of hidden players in the hope that they would answer, and sometimes they did!
Scissors, Paper, Stone: A simple game that was usually played to determine who was to go first in a game, or who was ‘it’, or who should do a dare. Best played with up to three people, but when played with more than two people there were lots of drawn games, which meant playing again. Being a very fast game, you sometimes played best of three. The players would form a circle and each player would hold out their arm and make a loose fist. You would then shake your fist up and down counting ‘one-two-three’ and on the downward stroke of ‘three’ you would open your fist to reveal either a ‘scissors’ – two fingers open, ‘paper’ – flat open hand, or ‘stone’-clenched fist. The winner would be determined as follows:
Scissors cuts Paper – Scissors wins
Paper wraps Stone – Paper wins
Stone blunts Scissors – Stone wins
Skipping (with rope): Very popular, mainly played by girls and usually done in time to a skipping rhyme. A skipping rope, often adapted from mum’s washing line, was never too far away to bring into use when someone suggested it. Girls would often skip alone but it was best played as a group competition. Depending upon the number of players, the rope would be turned by one girl at either end, or one girl would turn the rope with the other end tied to a lamppost. The turners get the rope to slap the pavement in time to a skipping rhyme being chanted by the skippers. There were loads of rhymes with key words and phrases that prompted the skipper to do a trick in one turn of the rope; like jumping extra high with both feet together, hopping the rope very close to the ground, kicking one foot out, crossing and uncrossing feet and legs, and turning to face the other way. Boys were always fascinated by the skill of the girls and the tricks they could do. The skipper would run out from the turning rope, around one of the girls twirling it, and back in time to the beat of the skipping rope hitting the pavement. Certain phrases in the rhymes would invite other girls to join in with, or to take over from, the skipper on the next turn of the rope. Double Dutch was really difficult, with two turning ropes for the skipper to negotiate. There were names for all the tricks, like Kick (kicking one foot out), Sizzler (crossing and uncrossing feet) and Split (opening legs wide apart). There were so many skipping variations and so many rhymes, with several different versions adapted around the country.
Tin Tan Tommy: Played with an old tin can. One person was chosen to be ‘it’ and a place was designated to be the ‘home’ point, where the tin can would sit while the game was played. To start the game, one of the players would throw the tin can as hard as he or she could away from the home point. Whoever was ‘it’ would chase after the can to retrieve it and return it to ‘home’. Meanwhile, all the others would run and hide. Once the can was back in place on the ‘home’ spot, the person who was ‘it’ would go and search for the other players. When one was discovered, ‘it’ would run back to the can and bash it up and down on the ground while shouting ‘Tin Tan Tommy, I see Mickey behind the wall’, or something similar. But if the discovered person could get back to the can and bash it on the ground before ‘it’, then he or she was ‘home’ and safe, otherwise that person became ‘it’ and another game began.
Two-Balls (juggling with tennis balls): A girls’ game that was usually played by juggling with two balls in the air or against a wall, but sometimes the girls would use three or four balls. It was a skill that was mastered by most girls at a very young age, and although boys admired the skills, they saw it as a girl’s game and usually steered clear of it. Playing two-balls was always done to the beat of a chanted rhyme. There were lots of tricks that were described with words like plainsy, upsy, over, dropsy, bouncy, legsy, twirly. Such words were inserted in the rhymes to indicate when to do a certain movement with a ball … One, two, three and PLAINSY; four, five, six and PLAINSY …
Over the garden wall
I let my baby sister fall;
My mother came out
And gave me a clout,
I told my mother
Not to boss me about;
She gave me another
To match the other,
Over the garden wall.
Juggling two balls against the pavement was usually done to the rhyme One Two Three O’Leary.
Up the Wall: Usually played with cigarette cards or other collecting cards from packets of Barrett’s sweets or Brooke Bond Tea cards. Teenagers sometimes played it with coins (farthings, halfpennies and pennies). From an agreed spot, a few feet away from a wall, you would flick your card or coin forwards as accurately as possible. The player who got nearest the wall won and took all the cards or coins already along the ground.
What’s the Time Mr Wolf?: One person was chosen to be ‘it’ and a place was designated to be the ‘home’ point. The player who was ‘it’ was called Mr Wolf (sometimes Mr Fox or Mr Bear), and would either stand with his or her back to the other players or be walking slowly away from them. The players would slowly creep up on Mr Wolf chanting, ‘What’s the time Mr Wolf?’ The wolf would stop, turn around and reply, ‘It’s one o’clock’. The players would continue to ask, ‘What’s the time Mr Wolf?’ and the wol
f would reply, ‘it’s two o’clock’, ‘three o’clock’, until eventually the wolf would reply with a growl, ‘It’s DINNERTIME!’ Mr Wolf would then chase the other players who had to try to run back to the ‘home’ point without being caught. The first person to be caught became Mr Wolf.
Yo-yo: Various adaptations of the yo-yo have been around for centuries, but the modern yo-yo was only developed in the 1930s, and remained popular throughout the ’50s. Basically, it was a toy consisting of two equally sized and weighted small discs connected with an axle, and with a long piece of string tied around the axle. The rest of the string was wound around this axle until only the end piece, tied in the shape of a loop, was still showing. The end of the string was looped around the player’s forefinger, and the player performed various skilful tricks with the yo-yo by rotating it along the full length of the string. A very skilful game, with lots of tricks, often played as a competition among friends. Sometimes there were yo-yo competitions held during Saturday Morning Pictures at the local cinemas.
Five
ENTERTAINMENT, MUSIC AND FASHION
Sandwiched between the horrors of the Second World War and the excitement of the Swinging Sixties, the 1950s was a period of calm but also a time of exhilarating new experiences in entertainment, music and fashion that would start to prepare 1950s kids for the revolutionary changes that would be part of their teenage years. In the early 1950s, Britain saw the arrival of ‘rock and roll’ music and teen films from America, and for the first time ever, you witnessed teenagers being arrested for dancing in the aisles at the local cinemas. You had your first experience of the great theatre musicals and saw all of your Wild West cowboy heroes on the big screen. Horror and science fiction films became very popular, as did science fiction comics. The first drip-dry, non-iron clothes made from synthetic materials went on sale, and Levi jeans became trendy for the first time. Teenage girls tried to outdo each other with their backcombed bouffant and beehive hairstyles, and they celebrated the introduction of the long-awaited seamless nylon stockings, while boys delighted in the newly arrived bikini two-piece swimsuit for girls!