Memories playmates and lies

My very first experience of a playmate was a bit of a disaster although it began well enough. Close to the bottom of the Big Hill, next to the library, there was a big house and in the huge grassy front garden was a beautiful little Wendy House. It was my first ever experience of house envy. Whenever Pappy and I passed by I’d look at it and wish it was mine. Sadly, it’s long gone and flats have been built on the site. One day, as we were on the way to the chemist, a little girl of about my age with short cropped mousey hair, reminiscent of Mia Farrow at the time, came up to the wall.
“Do you want to play in my Wendy House?” she asked.
Of course I was desperate to. Pappy wasn’t all that keen on the idea but, with a little pleading from me, said I could as long as I stayed in the garden and only until he came back from the chemist.

He didn’t need to tell me twice, I was off, running across the grass before he’d even taken a step. “My name is Annie,” the little girl said as she opened the door to her pretty little house. She then proceeded to warn me it was full of big spiders. Up until that point I’d never considered spiders something to be worried about but she very soon put me straight on that by telling me they would bite. This spoiled my enjoyment a little and set me up for a fear of spiders I’d never even entertained until that point. She also told me she had a horse called Bunty but I was too interested in the spider filled Wendy house to go and have a look.

All too soon Pappy was back and it was time for me to leave.
“Can I come and play with you?” Annie asked as we prepared to leave. She was a very forward little girl for a three year old.
“You could,” Pappy said, “but only if you ask your Mummy if it’s alright first.”
Annie ran off into the big house and, after a few minutes came back with a coat but no parent.
“Did you ask your Mummy?” Pappy asked.
“Of course I did,” Annie said, “why do you think I’ve got my coat?”

Annie and I spent the afternoon playing in my garden where she told me lots of stories about her horse and all the wonderful toys she had. It was nice to have a playmate, even one that seemed to be rather bossy and dissatisfied with my little garden. Close to teatime Pappy took Annie back home. This was when the trouble started. It turned out that Annie had not told her mother where she was going at all. The poor woman was frantic and had even called the police! Annie, it turned out, was rather precocious and didn’t always tell the truth.

That summer Pappy built me my own Wendy House in the back garden. It was painted cream with green windows and had a red roof with painted tiles and a chimney. Inside there was a table and a bench seat with cupboards underneath. It was the best Wendy house in all the world and there were no spiders either.

It was around this time that my world expanded a little. When I was about three I was allowed to play ‘out the front.’ Of course there were very strict rules. The limits of my wanderings were confined to the tree on the corner where the boundary of our front garden ended and the lamppost outside the house next door. There was also to be no crossing the road, no talking to strangers and most certainly no going into anyone’s house without telling Mother or Pappy. Mother was not a woman to be argued with and, unlike Annie, I didn’t tell lies so I stuck carefully to my boundaries.

There were other children living in the crescent so suddenly I had playmates. Unfortunately, they were all boys, which could explain my lack of pink frilly girly ways as I grew older. All but one of them was called John. There was John C across the road at number fourteen, Johnny B at number eight, Jon B at number eleven and Johnny F at number two. The one non John lived next door to me and was called Nicky. He was a year older than the rest of us and I developed a terrible crush on him.

Being boys they played lots of games based on the popular TV shows of the time, Thunderbirds, Stingray, Cowboys and Indians or war games. As the only girl I had to take the boring girl parts. Either I was the squaw who was captured by the brave Cowboys and tied to the lamppost or Marina, the mermaid character from stingray who couldn’t talk. If I was very lucky I would be Lady Penelope. There also seemed to be a long list of things girls were not allowed to do and all those things seemed to be fun ones like climbing trees or shooting cap guns.

The best times were when there was only one boy out playing. Then, for lack of anyone better to play with, I’d be included. Some of my favourite memories are of playing jacks or marbles or lining up rows of toy soldiers and rolling marble cannon balls at them. Once, when Nicky was the only boy out playing we went into his garden and climbed one of the apple trees onto the roof of his shed. From there I could look into my own garden. “You mustn’t tell the others,” he said, “because girls aren’t allowed to climb trees.”

Children can be cruel and the John’s and the Nicky were my first introduction to this. For the first time in my life I heard the word fat and it was directed at me. With hindsight I know I wasn’t fat back then but Mother was, Nannie was and so was Alex, not that that thought had ever occurred to me before. As far as they were concerned I was fat by association. Those few cruel words set me up for a lifetime of worrying about my weight.

The first time the word was bandied about was when Nicky got a go cart. when I asked if I could have a go I was told, “girls aren’t allowed, besides, you’re too fat, you might break it.” I was, however, allowed to pull it up the hill so the boys could take turns getting on and whizzing down with me running behind them. Looking back I wonder why I bothered going out there at all?

All the boys were frightened to death of Mother. This could have had something to do with the fact that she was almost six foot tall, heavily built and very loud. One day Nicky came whizzing down the hill just as Mother came out of our front gate to call me for dinner. The hill is steep and he had gathered too much speed to stop. With a look of abject terror on his face he hurtled towards her. At the last minute he decided hitting our front wall was preferable to hitting mother. The go cart was broken, never to be seen again.

There was one little girl in the crescent in those days but she lived just around the top corner and wasn’t allowed as far as my house. Even so I did meet her once or twice when she was out with her mother. Her name was Lizzie, she was the same age as me and had a cloud of curly blonde hair. How I wished she lived nearer. I Can see her in my mind’s eye as clear as day and I wish with all my heart that I could see her today to laugh over all the adventures we got up to as we got older, but that is another story…