Stupid Things I Remember about Growing Up (Part 8 - Playing out, gingers and dicing with death)

Playing out was cool.  It was much cooler than playing out today.  Generation X, the poor bastards, don't know what they're missing.  Instead of having your playing out controlled by over-protective parents, or just over-zealous parents, or just misguidedly dutiful parents, no one controlled our playing out beyond being told to go out and if you were young (like under 4) you had to stay within shouting distance from home.  That was when your mum shouted your name to say it was time to come home, about 10 hours later, and you'd hear her from anywhere.

'MICHAEL! DINNER!'

That gave us a playing-out radius of about 2 miles from the house.  And you'd climb out of a tree in some nearby park, missing some of the branches on the way down due to the encroaching darkness of the evening and sprint home.  Yes, 'sprint'.  You youngsters try sprinting after playing out for 10 hours.  I don't mean that sort of sprint you do from your parents car to the McDonald's queue.  I mean, a 2 mile sprint in the twilight towards your house, because you're eager for some spaghetti bolognaise or a tin of chicken in white sauce on toast.

The best games were when you watched a film the night before and spent the next day recreating it with your mates.  Action films, obviously.  Like 'The Dirty Dozen' (which needed improvising when there were only 4 of you playing out); or 'A Bridge Too Far' where the garage roof substituted for a bridge.  Some films were a bit harder to recreate.  'Jaws' lost its essence when translated to the Green outside the house.  'The Omen' was an interesting one to do.  I think the apocalyptic Biblical symbolism and nuances of plot exposition were lost on Philip, our neighbour.  He was a bit thick.

Less imaginative or complex - and therefore more appealing to Philip - was when we played 'Knock Down Ginger', where you'd knock on a stranger's front door and immediately run away, hoping they wouldn't see you.  The generation before us called it 'Knocking Dolly out of Bed', but we were less derogatory in terms of objectifying women as 'Dolly birds' so we picked on 'gingers' instead.  Nowadays, you wouldn't even say 'ginger'.  Nor would you knock on someone's door and run away.  Both of these now cause offence.  But that was always the point.  I suppose a modern version would be called, 'Knock down whatever the occupant chooses to self-identify as.'  Doesn't have the same ring.

Next to our row of houses was a very small, walled wooded area, with a few bushes and trees and an electricity generator.  There was a sign on the fence saying, 'DANGER' which in the 1970s meant, 'PLAY HERE.'  We loved playing in what we called 'The Danger', climbing on top of the generator, trying to open its doors, shoving metal into it in an effort to make it explode.  You'd get these public information films on TV in those days that showed kids the possible consequences of doing shit like that, or playing on railways, or climbing electricity pylons.  Great films, which gave us lots of ideas for what to do.  Public information at its best.