Practical Jokes
Don’t the memories come rushing back.
There was the Old Barn, the Lock House, the Milk House, Smokey Bridge, the Big Trees, the Straight Trees, the Old Tin Shed, The Gap – oh we knew them all.
Strange’s Corner, that was a proper place that was - a proper meeting place that was, Strange’s Corner. Poor old lady, she seemed to be about 80 when we were kids, I don’t suppose she was but she always seemed an old lady to us. We used to get down there playing first and last letters – you know first and last letters, chasing across the road and tearing up and down that cellar. She used to come out with a riding whip or something, I don’t know what. She used to chase us kids, we were frightened to death of her, she seemed like an old witch to us in those days.
Then there was Parcel Post as we used to call it. We used to go along the backs there, course the backs aren’t there no more. We used to get an old shoe box, wrap him up in some brown paper and tie a long piece of string up on him. Course, we had to weight him down with something inside, a bit of dirt or something, place him down in the road, or on the pavement there, then up the back we did go and look out for somebody coming along. Then somebody would come along and that was it, the used to bend down to pick him up, thought they had a find see. The as soon as they got their hands on it we used to pull this string, we used to run like hell. Funny enough it always seemed to be Mr Druary. Old Mr Druary, lived up the street here. Course, he used to take it all in seriousness, I mean it was only a bit of fun for him, he knew what was going on but us kids didn’t know. Then he used to so say chase us. We used to run back up, we used to run for miles and he was still after us. Oh we had some fun. Jack show you a light out in the middle of the rec, perhaps raining and pouring sometimes, we was out there, sill little fools, had the torch stuck underneath somebody’s coat.
Never found us.
We thought that was good.
