Childhood

Early Motoring
Childhood - Playing Out

A young David Pilkington test drives an old Austin.

Views: 16,872    Year: 1958     4 Comments

Not everyone wants to watch...
Childhood - Playing Out

...jumping, even at a horse show. While the rest of the crowd were wasting their time applauding the entrants this youngster found much more important work filling all the empty mineral bottles and tea containers he could find.

Views: 16,255    Year: 1958     1 Comment

Test Match Victories
Childhood - Playing Out

Test Match Victories may be won on the 'playing fields' off the Caledonian Road in North London, but it would be better for the children if the stumps were set in green fields.

Views: 16,719    Year: 1954     4 Comments

Play Street
Childhood - Playing Out

Forbidding traffic to use the streets helps to save life and limb, but the provision of some forty play streets in London is no real solution to the problem.

Views: 17,823    Year: 1954     2 Comments

Skipping
Childhood - Playing Out

Paving stones are a poor substitute for the green grass of real playing fields. Railings are useful for holding one end of the skipping rope, but passers-by interrupt the game.

Views: 17,522    Year: 1954

The Quiet Game of 'Tig'
Childhood - Playing Out

"And O-U-T spells OUT". Counting-out rhymes are often relics of tribal mumbo-jumbo, magical rites like casting lots. Sometimes they imitate numerals of forgotten languages.

Views: 29,634    Year: 1950     1 Comment

'O Then She Was a Lady and This is the Way She Went...'
Childhood - Playing Out

The imitation game, performed by the rising talent of the play-streets. Half-a-dozen smashing impersonations of really smashing people, completed in as many minutes.

Views: 17,738    Year: 1950     1 Comment

One of the Fixed Festivals of Town Life: The Opening of the Hopscotch Season
Childhood - Playing Out

As any girl will tell you; as any girl's mother will tell you; as any girl's grandmother - it has to be early in spring. How to play the game, and when, descends as a tradition from generation to generation. Where to play is never a problem.

Views: 15,172    Year: 1950     1 Comment

The Spring Game of Leap-frog
Childhood - Playing Out

Sunshine siezes the children in the street with an urge to get their feet off the ground. This is the time for hopping, leaping, vaulting, frog-jumping, and skipping.

Views: 14,127    Year: 1950

Trainspotting
Childhood - Playing Out

Photo taken on Christmas Eve. Note the young lad on the railings at the back, Health and Safety would have a field day!

Views: 10,477    Year: 1936