All of a sudden there was this hand on my shoulder; it was the policeman, 'if you do that again you're in trouble'.
There were no telephones, no videos, no radios and no television when I was young. We played skipping, marbles, cut the block, cricket, hopscotch and all the children in one street used to play together and sing songs as we were skipping. You had individual ropes and one long one for “all in” and a short one for “pepper” and when you wanted to skip on your own.
My grandmother used to skelp me if she caught me chalking the pavement outside our house. She used to say “go down the road and chalk on someone else’s”. Sometimes we were naughty; there were always two doors together and we used to get a piece of string and tie both ends to the knobs of each door, knock and run away. It was just a little bit of devilment. One day I was tying these two doors together in Grey Street; all of a sudden there was this hand on my shoulder; it was the policeman. I always remember he got hold of me and said “if you do that again you’re in trouble”. I was terrified and there was the two doors tied together and I’m knocking at the door and they couldn’t open them. Yes, he stopped me, he frightened the life out of me. That was about the only bad thing we used to do, we didn’t hurt anyone. All the children used to gather round lamp posts. We used to put ropes on the side and swing round and round the lamp post. The person who’s house the lamp post was outside of was always shouting!