London street games

by Norman Douglas

Some of these games used to come in at fixed seasons, as TOPS and MARBLES and PICTURES and BUTTONS still do; they came regularly, like the ice-cream jack or the lavender-boy or the rate-collector or the measles or the hoky-poky man or the carol-singers. But things are changing. Skipping used to begin on Good Friday, and now they skip half the year round; HOOPS used to come in at Christmas sharp, and here they are already. Danged if I know the reason why. But there it is. Grottoes ought to be played on St. James’ day, and I’ve seen them in mid-winter. The same with these MUD-PIES. You would think they belonged naturally to the wet season. Not a bit of it! Not nowadays, at all events. If their clay is too dry in summer, they manage to make it moist again, even without waiting for the rain. Unseasonable, I call it....

What I said about paving-stones reminds me of MARBLES. We used to play them in the winter, on the pavement. But marlies are going down in the world, that’s certain. It’s a good while since I played, but I still remember the names of a few kinds—Toms, and Alleys, and Glarnies, and Miggies; and Forty-eighter and Twenty-fourer and Twelver and Sixer and Fourer and Three-er. You hardly ever hear of a Forty-eighter nowadays. The smaller stone marbles were called Tich; those you got out of lemonade bottles were Glass-eye; they also had names, which I’ve forgotten, according to the different coloured marks. We used to play at NOCKS (that is, KNUCKS: because your knuckles had to touch the ground), and MARBLE-BOARD, and SKITTLES, and GLASGOW, and THREE HOLES, and NIXY’S IN THE HOLE: I TAKE, and GUTTER MARBLES, and ROW MARBLES, and UP THE ALLEY, and SPICK AND SPAN, and DOB ’EM, and TIP, and FOUR HOLES, and NEAREST THE WALL, and PICKING THE PLUMS, and GOING UP, and BOWLING IN THE HOLE and HIT IT LEAVE IT and HIT IT HAVE IT and THROWINGS OUT and STAYS and HITS AND SPANS and FIVE TEN and PICKING NUMBERS and BAGATELLE and IN THE RING and PITCHING and FOLLOW ON and KILLING and PORKY and THROW THE FARTHEST and SOME OR NONE and BRIDGE-BOARD. Bridge-board was played with a diagram looking like a row of railway arches; and I might explain the game if I could draw diagrams, which I can’t. In BOUNCE EYE each player gave a certain number of marbles which were pooled in a ring. Then one of them held a marble to his eye and dropped it among them; if any others were knocked out of the ring, he kept them; if none, his own marble went into the pool. There used also to be games that you played with marbles in a flat iron ring—the rings cost 2d. if you bought them, but you generally got them off the barges for nothing—games like RINGUMS and CHIPPING OUT OF THE RING.

But, as I was saying, marbles are not played as they used to be. The police are getting more interfering every day; they tell the boys to move on and not block up the pavement, and that interrupts them in the middle of a game and makes them half wild; and if you don’t clear off at once, they kick your marbles into the gutter where they get lost down a drain, and that makes you altogether mad. Aunt Eliza explains things by saying that marble-games wear out boys’ clothes at the knees and that mothers are growing to be “more careful in such matters.” More fussy, I call it. And then she says—and I say what she says simply can’t be believed, though it would prove what I said—she says—and I say she says these things not because she knows them but just because she believes them, or believes she believes them, or believes she ought to believe them, like some people do; or perhaps not even that; because how is she to know them: that’s what I want to know?—she says that marbles—and I say it’s the worst of Aunt Eliza that when she says a thing you never know exactly where you are; and, upon my word, I don’t believe she knows either; nor does anybody else, for that matter; and, what’s more, nobody really cares; and it wouldn’t much matter if they did, which is just as well—she says that marbles—and I say it all comes from wasting her time running all over the place in a feather hat and silk garters, ever since she came in for that little bit and left off trying to be schoolmistress, and messing about the way she has done with children’s homes and a lot of old cranks, instead of doing some honest work at home—she says that marbles, and not only marbles but HOOPS, used to be played by the big boys at the public schools.

Hoops: that’s what she says. And I say: hoops be blowed. With all respect to Aunt Eliza, I might have swallowed marbles, but I can’t swallow hoops; not on this side of the year after next. I know this, at least, that if a big lad were seen playing, or ever had been seen playing, with a hoop, down our way, except, perhaps, an iron one—why, his own parents wouldn’t know him again, when he got home, if he ever did, which I rather doubt; and that’s all there is to it. His father would ask whether some poor loony had been trying to box with a traction-engine going at full steam, and his mother would want to know what on earth made somebody put a lot of something through the sausage-machine without sifting out all those buttons first. But that’s neither here nor there, except in so far as it shows what Aunt Eliza’s explanations are worth. Mr. Perkins, of Framlingham Brothers (a good old firm—and a nice place he’s got, too)—he’s an understandable kind of gentleman and he gets talking about things after his second pint of Burton and he says, speaking of marbles, that he’s noticed the same thing as I have. And when I asked him why marbles are going out of fashion, he says:

“Marbles are going out of fashion”, he says, “because they’re getting unpopular. That’s why. And I happen to know this”, says he, “because our little Percy he tells me that shopmen don’t stock them the way they did because they know that boys don’t ask for them the way they did and boys don’t ask for them the way they did because they know they couldn’t get them the way they did because shopmen don’t stock them the way they did. Which proves what I said. Trust me”, says he, “when things begin to lose their popularity, they are sure to become unfashionable sooner or later, whether it be games, or clothes, or drinks, or religions. For instance”, says he, “take Nonconformity”. But I wasn’t taking Nonconformity just then, and when I tried to keep him to the point, and asked why marlies, and just marlies, were getting unpopular, he scratches his chin which hadn’t been shaved for the inside of a week, and has another go at his tankard, and puts it down with a bit of a bang, emphatic-like—a sure sign, with Mr. Perkins—and then he looks at me and says:

“Marbles are getting unpopular”, says he, “because they’re going out of fashion. That’s what’s the matter with marbles and with a good many other things as well. Take Nonconformity”, and when I told him I was only taking bitter that night, he has another pull at his Burton, and at last he says, casual-fashion:

“Marbles are not stimulating enough for modern life. It’s the same with religions, don’t you see? Now take Nonconformity”—and God’s truth! I had to take Nonconformity for the better part of an hour, after all.

But Mr. Perkins hit the nail on the head, all the same. For I feel sure that boys need more excitement than they did. Or perhaps I ought to say they want it. That’s it: they just want it. And thinking it over, I believe the cinematograph is to blame: it makes them want more excitement, and then it gives it them; and then it makes them want still more, and then it gives them still more; quite restless, in fact, it makes them, and I shouldn’t be surprised if sooner or later it weren’t responsible for a new kind of boy altogether. And that would mean the end of a number of these old games. Because nowadays the bigger lads, those who used to do most of the inventing—they prefer to go to picture-shows whenever they get a chance, instead of larking about the streets as they used to do. (They get some games out of the cinematograph, by the way, such as COWBOYS—INDIANS, which has lately been re-christened GERMANS—ENGLISH). So the playing-age is growing to be younger and younger, and these small boys are not so good at discovering fresh sports; it’s quite true they do make up new ones every day, but I think, on the whole, they forget more than they ought to remember; and this is the reason, if you really want to know, why I’m making up this catalogue: to see whether the next lot of children knows anything about these sports, or even their names.

The “organized games” they make them play in the parks nowadays—they work in the same direction; so does the regular county council schooling; so does the scout movement. The fact is, boys are not left to themselves the way they used to be; everybody goes fussing about and telling them to do this and that, when they want to be doing something else—something of their own; that’s why many games are being forgotten. I don’t know a single boy who really cares for “organized games” the way a man does; even Aunt Eliza can’t bring herself to believe in the system over-much, though she likes to think it keeps the youngsters out of mischief. And it all comes from thinking that boys think the same as we think—which they don’t; or ought to learn to think the same as we think—which they oughtn’t. Because the right kind of boy thinks differently from the right kind of man about games and everything else. And so he ought.

To prove that they still can invent, you need only watch them at their picture-games—played with cigarette-cards and all of them, of course, absolutely new, seeing that these cards were quite unknown up to a few years ago. These picture games have helped to do away with marbles, for two reasons: firstly, the boys are keener on them because they’re more exciting; and secondly, they’re cheaper. You have to pay for marbles. But you don’t pay for fag-pictures: you mump them, see? And here the difference between our games and those of richer people comes in. The more expensive their games are, the more they like to play them; they don’t seem to care about sports that are played with nothing at all—the dearness is what makes everybody want to go in for them; whereas with our boys a game can only be played if it’s cheap, and if it costs nothing at all—why, then it becomes really popular, or fashionable—as the case may be. Now fag-cards are cheap, and no mistake. That’s why you can play so many games with them—EGGS IN THE BUSH, and SNAP, and BANKER (or BANK), and NEAREST THE WALL TAKES, and NEAREST THE WALL SPINS UP, and SEVENS (quite a new kind), and SCALING UP THE RING, and SCALING UP THE LINE, and UNDER THE HAT, and GETTING IN THE RING (that’s a paving-flag, and the game is also called IN THE SQUARE), and OVERLAPPINGS, and IN THE RING FARTHEST, and POKE IN THE HOLE, and DROP THEM (or DROPS), and SKATE THEM, and PICTURE OR BLANK, and WALLIE (or UP THE WALL), and PITCHING IN THE BLOCK (or PITCHER), and PITCHING UNDER, and SLAP-DAP, and SCRAPINGS, and TIPPING IN THE HOLE, and BLOWINGS (also called BLOWS or BLOWUMS: you need an outside window-sill for this), and TOUCH-CARD, and GETTING ON, and INNERS AND OUTERS, and THUMBS, and SHOWS-UP, and KNOCK ’EM DOWN, and DICINGS, and WATERFALLS (or SNOWFALLS) and SPANS (or SPANNERS)—there’s thirty of them, anyhow.