Skeesh
Skeesh was a cross between football and squash, played with a tennis ball. Out the back of our house, there were two car park spaces (ours and next doors), surrounded on three sides by a fence. Our fence was the wall to be hit with every shot, players taking it in turns to hit the wall. There was a gentle slope from the houses further uo behind us down towards our back yard, which was useful. Sometimes, though, if you got the spin on the ball right, you could put the ball away far, out of direct sight of the fence, especially if the next player didn't get to it in time and it had rolled down the hill. Skeesh was something that we played pretty much constantly with our cousins, and was only stopped when Mrs Wallace's son came to visit her in his car, and parked on our court!
Cricket
Another summer favourite was cricket, using the dividing line between the two car park spaces as the crease, and the back fence as the stumps. An old tank would be left further up the slope, where the bowler would bowl from, and to which you had to make it to score runs. The bushes in front of granny' house were considered the boundary for fours or sixes, but if you got it that far, then there might be a pause while someone was brave enough to go into the bushes to find the tennis ball again! Stories abounded of rats living in them, but those bushes are all gone now, with some landscaping instead.
The funniest memory of cricket was one evening when dad was coming back from granny's and he wanted a go at batting. The game was on to try and put him out, but he was just too good for us, nicking the ball just above our heads; just out of our reach. Until that time when he was overenthusiastic, and the tennis ball struck the window of the bungalow directly behind us. Dad dropped the bat and ran into the house!
Bicycle Polo
We tried this once or twice, but it didn't really catch on, due to my injuries. The idea was simple enough - playing football on your bike, just like polo players on their horses. It was one Saturday evening, and me and my brother were playing. I might have been winning, but then disaster struck. The ball got stuck in front of the wheel of my bike, the wheel jammed, and I flew out over the front, landing squarely on my face on the bricked surface of our housing estate. Ouch!
What made it worse was that at the summer scheme we went to in the community centre, we were going to watch a film / movie later that week. The new blockbuster. The latest installment in the enterprise that is Batman. The movie? Batman Forever (1995), in which there was a character, whose name I quickly acquired as my nickname for that summer: Twoface!
These are some of my growing up memories of fun things we did. What about you? Any favourite activities or games you want to share?
No comments:
Post a Comment