Did you go to primary school in Suffolk in the 1970s, long before earphones and an iPad were standard schoolbag kit?
If so, then the chances are you will have whiled away your break-times playing some of these slightly less sedentary schoolyard games. This is my recollection of several of the most popular ones from the decade, although you may have different memories you can share.
1. Cat’s cradle
Cat’s cradle was the simplest of games to play, using purely a long continuous piece of string, looped over the fingers. It was played with two players making a sequence of string figures, each in turn altering the figure made by the previous player. There was much frustration when the string got into knots.
2. Skipping
We played this with a very long skipping rope – or sometimes even two – swung by a person at each end, while one or two of us jumped over the rope ‘simultaneously’. Arguments often broke out when one person tripped up. It was largely the popular sporty girls that excelled at skipping.
3. Hopscotch
Hopscotch dates back to Roman times but was particularly popular in the 70s – mainly because it was cheap to draw out a hopscotch ‘court’ with a piece of chalk. The object of the game was to toss a small object – we used a stone – into numbered squares set out in a pattern where you hopped on the single ones and jumped on the side-by-side squares to retrieve the stone.
4. Yo-yoing
Yo-yoing needs no explanation because most of us have had a go at some point. I failed to master the most basic of moves let alone tackling tricks including “walk the dog” which involved letting the yo-yo roll across the floor before pulling it back to your hand. Frustrating because as with many 70s games, yo-yos were cheap and I routinely got one in my Christmas stocking (every year).
5. Leapfrog
This is a simple game, where the first participant bends over, hands on knees, while the next player vaults over the top of them. I say it’s simple but there was always one ‘over enthusiastic’ child who took a flying leap at speed, resulting in some nasty bumps and bruises.
6. Marbles
We drew a circle on the concrete, placed a number of marbles in the centre and then used a ‘shooter’ marble – bigger than the others – which was flicked with the thumb in an attempt to knock the other marbles out of the ring. Those that you knocked out of the ring, you kept. Kids collected them, swapped them and bragged about them. And yes, I did quite frequently lose my marbles.
7. Oranges and lemons
You needed a lot of friends to play this – in fact it was a measure of your popularity if you had enough friends to play Oranges and Lemons. The game involved singing the song of the same name while players filed in pairs through an arch made by two of the players facing each other, hands clasped and arms raised above their heads. On the last word of the song, the arch would drop to catch the two children currently passing through. They then extended the arch until the last pair was caught. Terrifying for a small child as the last line of the song was: “Here comes a chopper to chop off your head. Chip chop, chip chop, the last man’s dead.”
8. Clapping rhymes
This is where two children clapped their hands together in various sequences while singing a rhyme. I recall one particular rhyme that went along the lines of “Cee cee my darling, I cannot marry you, my sister’s got the flu, chicken pox and measles too”.
9. Top trumps
Top Trumps was a card game launched in 1976 which was popular with children. Because the cards tended to feature things like cars, planes and weapons, Top Trumps was a more popular playground pastime for boys. The card packs were priced low enough to entice children to save and collect new ones.
10. ‘Swapping’ things you’d collected
The 70s was a great time for collecting items such as promotional coins, stickers or badges – and then swapping any duplicates you had with your schoolmates during break times. I have a particular memory of collecting coins and football club badges from the local Esso petrol station. My dad bought multiple gallons of fuel before I secured an Ipswich Town badge – and I couldn’t even give away the multiple ‘Liverpool’ badges I collected!
11. Elastics
Played with three people (or two and a chair), a long piece of elastic was tied in a loop and placed around the ankles of two of the players. The idea was for the third player to jump over different parts of the elastic in time to a riddle. With every successful jump, the height of the elastic was gradually raised from the ankles, to the knees, and then waist.
12. Tag
I was good at this because it involved running fast – something I naturally triumphed at. We played the game – which saw two or more players chasing the others in an attempt to “tag” them - on the playing fields or in the school gym. It all went horribly wrong one day when I was being chased up the gym wall bars, became too competitive and took a flying leap from 20ft up, rather than be caught. This resulted in a severely fractured arm and a very red face.
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