General Chat

I missed it! Had someone phone me for a natter and I couldn't even get to switch it on to that programme!

Lizx

I think I would have recognised a lot of the games lol

Them were the days when kids could be sent out to play all day, with no harm.....
kids were more streetwise then I think......but its the times we live in now, now that make it so sad......

I loved the bits where the kids were skipping and playing two up the wall ...and the rhymes that went with the games......
I remember some of them well.......
Bob

Am watching right now lol

n

I will tell all my friends on the Childhood Memory thread. Thanks for that.

n

n

This looks interesting and could cause some nostalgia!

Our carefree days of play

DEREK JAMES
08 December 2009


Simple pleasures: Children play on a improvised swing in the street in days gone by. Top left, children practising their handstands, and, below left, trainspotting at Norwich Thorpe station a little wh
A former Norwich bank messenger will be a television star tonight at the age of 93, talking about growing up in Norfolk between the wars.

Edmund Mitchell, of Rackheath, a man with a twinkle in his eye and a rich local accent, adds real colour to a new two-part documentary called Hop, Skip and Jump: The Story of Children's Play on BBC4.

Ed grew up at Chedgrave and is the “country bumpkin” side to the story rather than the “city urchin”. Bird-nesting, playing tricks on grown-ups on St Valentine's Day, known as Old Mother Valentine, swimming in the River Chet with no clothes... the memories come flooding

back as Ed looks back on those years playing in the Norfolk countryside, watched over by the village bobby and the gamekeeper.

Bird-nesting

“Every boy had a collection of birds' eggs in them days,” said Ed. “But we wouldn't take more than one egg out of a nest because the bird wouldn't come back and lay another if you took the lot out.”

They put the eggs in their caps for safe keeping. If they were very unlucky they would bump into old Amos, the gamekeeper, who had a habit of smacking the boys on their heads - he knew what they'd been up to.


Playtime memories: Former guardsman and city bank messenger Ed Mitchell. PHOTO: JAMES BASS
Old Mother Valentine

This old Norfolk custom was more eagerly awaited even than Christmas.

“We'd go to where the posh people lived and would sing: 'Old Mother Valentine, draw up your window blind, you be the giver, I'll be the taker,'” recalled Ed.

“We would jazz it up, going quicker and quicker. Then they would heat up ha'pennies on a shovel over the fire and then throw them in the road and us kids would scrabble for them. Because they were hot we dropped them, which caused a laugh.”

Outside the local shop, the owner would throw at them the sweets he had left over from Christmas.

Swimming

Ed taught himself to swim in the Chet with his mates.

“We didn't have no clothes on: couldn't afford a costume. It was a big cut so the wherries could turn round,” he said. “Old PC Hall, he used to come down there and hide in the nettles, 'cause the nettles grew about 5ft high and his job was to catch any boy over the age of 14 swimming down there. If you were over 14 he'd book you and you'd be up Loddon Town Hall and you'd get fined five bob (25p today) for that.”

Ed went on to be a Grenadier guard - his bad back reminds

him of sentry duty outside Buckingham Palace. During the second world war he served with the military police in various parts of the world including Basra, Aden and Bombay. He returned to Norfolk and worked as a messenger for the Midland Bank in London Street, Norwich, for more then 30 years.

Hop, Skip and Jump: The Story of Children's Play is on BBC4 tonight at 9pm.