Spring is such a lovely time - to be able to lay in bed and listen to the birds singing…
No, I do not mean flaming pigeons, I mean the lovely little tweety birds that sing sweetly.
The spring makes everywhere look bright and new somehow. Flowers are shooting up and the daffodils are in abundance; everything in the earth is waking up after its winter sleep.
It’s not just the plants that are making an appearance - kids are venturing outside again to play on the street. Yesterday I was sat with a cup of coffee in the sunshine, watching the kids playing on the street.
They were chasing each other up and down - ‘tigs’ we used to call it. As I recall I somehow always used to be the one on, the one who had to chase the others.
Soon the kids on our street got puffed out and decided to sit on the curb and talk. Then one came out with a ball. Now, there isn’t any room on our street for the kids to play football for all the parked cars, so they all went onto the only spare bit of green left.
I watched as they kicked the ball to each other but it didn’t look anything like a game of football to me. Then they decided to just throw the ball to each other.
I was dying to shout out and give them some ideas as what to play, but one of them came up with hide and seek. Obviously one of them had to be ‘on’ - to my amazement they all put their fists in the centre whilst one of them said the ‘one potato, two potato’ as one by one their fists were put down.
I couldn’t believe that kids still did the potato thing. All the kids but the one who was left counting with his eyes closed ran off to hide.
It wasn’t long before he shouted ‘ready or not’ and started his search for them, but he didn’t look far or for long before he plonked himself down and retrieved his phone from his pocket.
‘What the heck,’ I thought. I could hear him talking to the recipient, obviously one of the few that were hiding. He was actually asking him where he was and then finished the call with ‘well, I’ve found you, so you must come back’.
Then he proceeded to call one of the others, and they were summoned back. I was absolutely gobsmacked. How lazy - what happened to kids running about.
This was such a cop-out. When they were all back, there was a small discussion about the rules of the game and that he wasn’t allowed to phone them up and ask where they were.
The discussion didn’t last for long before they all seemed to agree to disagree and then all sat down on the grass to produce their phones.
Oh, how times have changed, I thought, and I felt so glad that when I was a kid we didn’t have technology. We had to be physical and sly when playing such games.
As I finished my drink, I closed my eyes and enjoyed the warmth of the sun whilst listening to the cooing of the flaming pigeons…
