The general discussions about games on this journal and in the Shire office have made me realise how much memories of our childhood are focused around the toys we played with: a space hopper, roller-skates, duplo, Scalextric and others. On television last night I am reliably informed that James May was discussing his love of Scalextric, generating the impulsion of a friend to call her Dad and ask him to retrieve it from the loft. My main concern with spontaneous actions such as these is that when reusing something so steeped in memories from the past, it won’t ever be as good as when you first used it.
British bulldog is a game that I dearly miss playing, and one that I played daily at primary school. This year, at the Shire summer party, a few of us played a serious amount of British bulldog. One-by-one the invalids staggered into the office the next day with pulled muscles and limps (actually one member of staff appeared on crutches after tearing some ligaments), which was a reminder of why the game was eventually banned at my primary school. Games from childhood such as stick-in-the-mud, hide-and-seek and 52 bunker also engender the sense of freedom felt as a child when groups would come together to play in way that doesn’t appear to happen today.