Off to play

Our gang consisted of Brian and Barry Thomas from next-door, Brian Smith from next door but one, Shane Higson from the next house and his next-door neighbour John Davis. Girls were not allowed in the gang but Rosemary and Elizabeth Thomas were allowed to hang about with us as their brothers were in. Angela Scragg was their friend and so she came too. 

Brian was the leader even though Barry was older, he would take us across the fields to the pit where it was reputed a four foot pike lived under the tangles of brambles and willow. He would take us up to the wood where the wild watercress grew and there were the abandoned pig sties. We walked for hours along the canal bank with a bottle of water and a jam butty. We could leave the house at 8 o’clock in the morning and not come home until six or seven at night and no-one would be worried. Six or seven of us having the adventure of a life time walking in the countryside with not a care in the world. We could be in the American prairie with buffalo and red Indians everywhere or we could be in the African jungle with lions and elephants. We would walk across the fields to the aerodrome with the abandoned hangars and the control tower. It had been a training aerodrome for the fleet air arm and now ten years later it was derelict and a real adventure playground for us kids. We would play war games or imagine all sorts of amazing things that had happened in the buildings. Concrete pill boxes were open for us to run through and play hide and seek. We would light a camp fire and sit around it putting newly picked spuds in the embers. They never taste the same today as they did then with gritty ash stuck to the skin. There was the abandoned pig sty in the little wood up the  road. A cool clear stream ran through the wood and wild water cress grew in the stream. It was a real treat in midsummer to pick the fresh cress and chew on the crisp green leaves. I still love the peppery taste of water cress.

Corrugated iron sheets were left lying all over the place from where the aircraft hangers and nissen huts had been demolished. If you were quiet and lifted one end carefully you might catch a glimpse of a mogey (mouse) or a vole as it scurried off when the light struck it. There would be frogs or toads curled up in the damp where they were safe from predators. Skylarks would wheel about in the sky singing at the top of their voices, watching over their nests making sure that no danger was coming to the eggs or chicks. If you lay down in the fields and looked up at the clouds you could spot the larks against he fluffy white background.

The barn on Travis’s farm was an adventure playground and we would make dens in between the bales. We were not supposed to go into it but it was as near as our front gardens and we didn’t do any harm really. I could be a cliff face to climb or the battlements of a castle we did not care it was just fun and if we fell, it was soft to land on the hay bales.