I grew up in a crescent and what was so great about my crescent, it had a big field in the middle. As kids we spent most days and many hours playing on that field and I have some amazing memories of fun times and lots of laughter.
We had the field set up to cater for our needs, i.e. there were two areas/patches with a small hole where we would play marbles, there was a small 'no ball game' sign on each end of the field, which we used for one side of the goal post (come on, big field in front of our house, loads of kids, 'no ball games' council sign ignored, who can blame us?), and finally in the middle of the field we would have a ring of posts/patches where we would play rounder's. It stayed like that for years.All the children that lived in the crescent and around the area would gather together most days and play all sorts of games, mainly marbles, a bit of British bulldog, rounder's another day, play football or many other games and fun stuff.
As we were very lucky to have a playing field right on our doorstep, we spent most of our time outside, therefore most of my fads and crazes as a child were all outdoor ones.
My first craze has to be marbles: We would all meet in the field with our box of marbles, most of us used to keep our marbles in a small tackle box, we would have a compartment for each family of marble: one for allie's, one for the cat eyes, glass marbles and so on. I really was not very good at marbles, and I would loose my 'best' ones often in games, but we would concentrate on collecting them and swapping them, especially in the playground with school friends.
My next fad has to be our fold up bike:We would also play in the alleys and on the path/road around the field, a lot! Especially with our fold-up bikes, which we thought were the coolest bikes ever. We would give each other rides, one friend would sit on the back and we would bike around, however, unfortunately, the bike used to sporadically fold up on itself. Ohh the accidents we had on those bikes!
Then there was the pogo ball - every child in the crescent had a pogo ball, and we spent many hours challenging each other, who could do the most bounces without stopping or falling off. Also who could do the highest jump (not me), or the coolest stunt.
Finally, this one we used to make ourselves: we would 'borrow' our mum's tights, and shove a tennis ball down to one of the feet and that is it! We would put our backs up against a tall wall, and then with the self-made tennis ball in the tights, we would swing it left and right, so the ball would bounce of the wall, mixing it up slightly, we would bounce it between our legs. This was popular with the girls in the crescent, and also in the school playground.
There were many other crazes to pick from, skates, skipping rope, etc.. however the above ones are my favourites. Please let me know what you favorite childhood fad was?
Disclaimer: This post is for a competition run by Oxford Open Learning for bloggers.
