A hard day's play. I write this exhausted from hopscotch, skipping, throwing, catching, jumping and imagining with the first members of PLAY SWAP - which started in full creative force today. As Janet observed, our faces now 'ache from laughing'. Not a bad first day.
I began by hijacking Daniel from the Lunch Club, along with Janet and Joan who both taught me a whole hoard of games last week with their stories from their childhood in the local area (which you can listen to in the previous post), and with enthusiastic help from Steve - fellow resident of the house and Lunch Club volunteer.
Armed with chalk, marbles, balls, ropes, lollipop sticks and plenty of other play paraphernalia we began to discuss which game we should play first. As it was drizzling outside we decided to stay in the hall and begin with 'Two balls' - a throwing game with (yes) 'two balls' against a wall where you juggle the balls whilst singing a song (will have to ask Janet to tell me the lyrics...) using two hands, then one hand and various other rules to make the game progressively harder. My hand-eye coordination is not fantastic to begin with so even the first level was a bit much, but Janet was a natural (or well practiced!) and could even get to the end of the song!
We then played Piggy in the Middle and other catching games until the rain stopped when, keen to test out our new chalk, I encouraged everyone to venture outside to play Hopscotch. Due to concerns from the group about vandalism we initially stayed close to Pembroke House, drawing our Hopscotch grid on the pavement outside, but soon a local resident saw us playing and kindly allowed us to draw on the proper paving slabs by his fence. There was much discussion about the different rules of the game, and even brilliant contributions from passers-by - it seems there are different versions from Ghana, Scotland, France and England - but all with the common grid, throwing a pebble (or 'peever' - a shoe polish tin packed with mud in Scotland) and jumping into the squares.
Sadly the rain started up again and drove us inside, giving us that fond childhood memory of being 'cooped up' and wishing for the rain to go away and come again another day.
Pembroke People
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