General Chat

Games that were played as youngsters when we had to make our own entertainment....Handstands up the wall tucking your skirt in your Knickers so the boys didn't see them.Two balls up the wall while we sang , one two three O'leary my balls down the airey,don't forget to give it to Mary early in the morning.another game was putting a ball into one of your mums old stocking and standing with your back to a wall,and swinging it hard from one side of you body to the other(times I got hit with it).Playing marbles,and cobs.(little square coloured peices of chalk),and jacks.Sometimes all the kids from the street would come and play skipping with a long rope.....must have been someones washing line..or just sitting on the doorstep with friends learning how to knit ....or doing a knitting nancy...those were the days, and I don't ever remember ever being bored

I agree, Linda - we were never bored! Sometimes half the village children were jumping in and out of the long skipping rope! We also used to play "I Acky" and "Tin can copper", which were variations on hide and seek. We progressed from two balls up the wall using both hands, to one hand, and then to three balls! "There lived a little princess, princess, princess, There lived a little princess, long, long ago" etc. I see you mention "cobs". I would like some more information about this please, if you wouldn't mind. I'm involved in local history research, and the first time I came across this was mentioned in the memoirs of a now deceased villager who had the foresight to write down memories of his childhood a few years before he died. He mentioned playing "cobs", but no living person has any knowledge of this game. I'd be really grateful if you could explain this game to me. Thanks for the memories! Janet

Me, my sister and a half-cousin (who lived over the road) were the envy of the street and everyone wanted to play with us......Why????? She had a long drive with a low wall either side, and we had the longest skipping rope 'in the world' (Also known as my dads tow rope). What with the extra height gained from the walls and our heavy thick rope that gave you huge burns and bruises if it hit you - we were the best skippers around!! We also loved clackers - to this day there are still a set wrapped around the phone wire in the back lane at the top of my mams street!!

I'm a London girl. I remember the little square coloured "stones", but we called them five-stones, not cobs! From what I remember, the game was similar to jacks (which were metal and had pointy bits). You held them all in one hand, tossed them in the air and tried to catch as many as you could on the back of your hand! I remember playing fivestones in the street one day, squatting on the pavement. One of the five stones went under a parked car (and there weren't many of those around in those days)! My sister reached under for it, came up and gashed her head so badly on the bumper she had to go to hospital!

Hi again. message to janet in northamptonshire and Dierdre.Maybe the games that we all remember from our childhood were called other names in other places.Diedre called them five stones but I came from Islington London and there they were called cobs and even my grandmother called them this.maybe it was an old name that for me was a new game. I think an example of this is when I talk to my 8 yr old grandson about marbles and what we used to call the larger ones, he looks at me as if I'm mad as he calls them names I have never heard of.Cobs were played by holding five coloured squares in your hand and throwing them in the air while quickly turning you hand over to catch as many as you could on the back of it.To start the game you must catch one,then you throw this one up in the air and pick up one from the ground catching it before lands.You repeat this with the other 3 left.You then start from scratch this time catching two on the back of your hand(if you catch more than the amount you should have then you shake them off) repeat for 3,4, then the big one 5. Hope this explains a bit about the game although there were if I remember a part of it we called crabs...have to put my thinking cap on for that one.To Kay in Washington I also remember clackers....what about the good old hula hoop..cant seem to keep it up nowdays excuse the pun but you know what I mean.

Linda So - 'cobs' is another name for five-stones/Jacks? Well, I never...! I think you're probably right, Linda, and that it was probably an old name. I'll have to look into this one further. We called them Jacks, and the metal star ones Deirdre mentioned were called Star Jacks. My mum was a Londoner, born and bred, and she called the little coloured ones five-stones! But - there was one difference, as she told me that when she was young, instead of throwing one in the air, they had a small ball which they bounced while trying to pick up as many of the five-stones as they could before the ball came down. I've been trying to remember how we played Jacks, but can't remember all the details. I know we would choose one, throw it in the air, and pick up one jack. We would throw the stone in the air again, and pick up two, and then three, etc. We would then throw one in the air, pick up as many as we could, throw them all in the air and try to catch them all on the back of our hand. Then we put four jacks down in a square, and said "This is the House that Jack Built", pointing to each stone in turn, as we said it, and as we got to the word 'built', we would throw the other stone in the air and pick up that one, keep it in our hand, and repeat the process until all the jacks had been picked up in our hand. (Small hands were a disadvantage for this part of the game) It had certainly never occurred to me that 'cobs' would be another name for Jacks/Five-stones! Well - you live and learn!

Up in the North East we called this game Chuck Stones!!!

Kay That's interesting - good name really for this game! I find regional variations on language, etc. really fascinating. Everyone:- Just found this site From www.gameskidsplay.net Haven't had time to have a good look round it, but it looks good!

Karen, we used to call that french skipping, i loved it!

In the East End in the Sixties and Seventies we called it 5-stones. My sister had coloured 5-stones and silver pointy jacks. She was very good at it and I was rubbish! (She's 8 years older!) We used to play french skipping at school - if there were only 2 of you then one end went round a bench or something else heavy with one person's legs in the other end. The 2nd person could then do the jumping. We also used to play Kiss Chase in Junior School. No-one else has mentioned this yet ...... Maz. XX

Pen and paper games such as: Consequences Battleships And the one where you folded up paper into triangles and then wrote numbers, colours and fortunes on them (did it have a name)?

Has hopscotch already been mentioned?

I remember very well when we got our 1st colour telly. I had just come home from work, (a department store) after a very busy saturday, dad being unusually gentlemanly says to me, sit down love and I,ll get you a cup of tea, and pushing me into HIS chair. I sits there trying to get my breath back. Dad comes back with cup of tea and says, see anything different. I look around the room, erm no says I. OH hang on a mo, the GRASS IS GREEN!!! I had sat there for all of ten mins watching the saturday afternoon sports results and not noticed a thing. Maggie

We played Bulldog, the more people the better for this one. Played it more when I was at scouts than school, but it required running from one end of the hall to the other without being caught. If you were caught then you had to become a catcher and stop someone else making it from one end to the other. Don't think there was ever a winner, seeing the likelihood was that everyone would end up getting caught!