Best days of our life, they say

We enjoyed street games as children, games such as Kick the Can and Rallio, both a variant of hide and seek but with the added excitement of a crafty ‘hider’ being able to ‘free’ those caught. It was a wonderful pitting of wits; the seeker had to leave the precious can or wall where his ‘prisoners’ were lined in order to find those hiding, but he or she couldn’t stray too far knowing that any moment someone might dart in from a bin, bush or alleyway and touch the wall/kick the can and thus free the prisoners. There was a distinct Colditz flavour to it all, fusing Nazis and the Resistance to an otherwise ordinary game of hide and seek. 

There were other games I was less proud playing, ‘How many miles to Fairy land?’ being one of them, along with Queeny-eye with its childish chant that to my shame, I still remember. In this game a person turned their back on the other players, one of whom had a ball hidden behind their backs. Then in a peculiar sing-song we began:

Queeny-eye, Queeny-eye, who’s got the ball?

I haven’t got it.

It isn’t in my pocket,

Queeny-eye, Queeny-eye, who’s got the ball?

As I remember the person had three guesses, pretty pointless if only three people played. 

My favourite game was British Bulldog. There, one person stood in the middle of the street as the rest of the gang charged towards him/her with some force. If he/she managed to catch and hold onto one of those charging, there would be two people standing in the middle of the street – and so on – and so on until only one person was left to run through a wall of bodies. 

And now to the worst game of all, Shin kicking – 'Britain’s stupidest sport 'as one newspaper put it. 

We took for granted it was a Liverpool game, a pastime peculiar to Aintree. But apparently it originated in the Cotswolds and is a feature of the Cotswold’s Olympick Games. As stupid sports go, it has a long history, its first pictorial recording being in the Annalia Dubrensia 1636. The noble sport of shin kicking is to the right. The hill in the middle is ‘Dover Hill,' named after the founder of the games and shin kicking in particular. 

So, what are the rules? Two competitors face each other with their hands on each other’s,  and you are allowed to kick anywhere between ankle and knee. The rules changed a little time later when steel-toed boots were banned. And in Chipping Campden, a small Gloucester village, where the Cotswolds Olympicks are held, straw is allowed—stuffed in long socks to cushion the blows. We in Ribblesdale Avenue, of nobler stock, eschewed such namby-pambyism. We didn’t even have a Cotswold’s stickler – a referee with a long stick to separate us shin kickers if or when the occasion demanded. We just gritted our teeth and got on with it, kicking in turn until one or both gave up yowling in pain.  

Best days of our life, they say.