For kids growing up in the 60’s, everywhere was a playground. If I wasn’t out with my brothers and the kids from our street I was out with friends from school, exploring and learning. Street games like kerby and hopscotch were okay for killing an hour before tea, but there was always an incentive to roam and in arrow chase, we had a ticket to freedom that stretched our boundaries and introduced us to short cuts and alleyways all over Twydall.
On Petham Green I picked
buttercups in the sunshine and passed the do-you-like-butter test. On Woodchurch Crescent
I played on the swings and got sickly dizzy on the roundabout. On the huge
mound of earth that became Harbledown Manor I scrambled to the summit; King of
the Castle and a dirty rascal in shoes full of soil.
I knew the thrill of finding
free rhubarb on something called an allotment, off Lower Pump Lane. And the joy of running through
the daisy field, on Broadway. And the excitement of playing in the newly built
Benenden Manor, until a glance over the balcony sent me on a wall hugging
retreat to the staircase.
And sometimes I picked the
wrong company, as happened down the Lower
Rainham Road one summer evening when I, along with
some big kids I’d tagged along with, came across some a gypsy camp. From a crouched
position behind a hedge it was suggested we each grab a handful of gravel and
on the count of three, let them have it. So we did, but in the milliseconds it
took for the hail to clatter the caravans, I was already up and running.
On the grass facing the bottom
of Hawthorne Avenue,
the Battle of Rorke’s Drift was fought with cardboard shields. On the mountain
of rubble where the Tech was built, I got my head lumped in a stone fight. When they built a catholic school on Romany Road, I
played in the foundations. Sharps Green? Yes. The chalk pit? Yes.
Scrumping in the orchard on Pump Lane? Scavenging at the back of Twydall shops? Getting up to rude things with girls in the wasteland opposite the golf course on Beechings Way? Yes, yes, yes, between 1962 and 1966 I did all those things. And I once strayed beyond the forbidden zone, crossing the top road to visit the glorious Darland Banks, where I whizzed down its slopes on an upturned car bonnet. Happy days.
Scrumping in the orchard on Pump Lane? Scavenging at the back of Twydall shops? Getting up to rude things with girls in the wasteland opposite the golf course on Beechings Way? Yes, yes, yes, between 1962 and 1966 I did all those things. And I once strayed beyond the forbidden zone, crossing the top road to visit the glorious Darland Banks, where I whizzed down its slopes on an upturned car bonnet. Happy days.
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