The wee Glasgow street gang had gathered under the street lamp on the corner of Glasgow Street and Hill Place. This was our usual meeting place; this was also where we played all our street games, Football, hide and seek, leave-oh, kick the Can and many others. All of this activity would take place in wintertime, when it got dark very early, about 5 o clock. In summer when it didn’t get dark until around 10 o clock, we would be up Castle Hill, or down the Inches or somewhere looking for adventure.

When the girls wanted to join us in any of our street games, they were always told they could, but we would be playing hide and seek. At this remark they would always start giggling, before saying that’s Ok, we want to play hide and seek.

The tenement buildings across the street from Hill Place were a slightly better design than the one we lived in. (Ours had an outside staircase,) these tenements had an inside staircase at the back end of the Close. There was also a door at the back end of the close, and when this was closed it created the perfect hiding place. It would be very dark in this space at the bottom of the stairs as there was never a stair lamp, someone always stole the globe, and so after a while it just never got replaced.

When the game started, and everyone had to run and hide, while the catcher turned his face to the wall, the girls would always run and hide in the dark space at the back end of the close, and the boys would follow them into the same space.
 

Now the game was almost forgotten, as out of this dark corner came laughter, giggles, and squealing, as every one in the corner was squeezing and feeling. This would go on until a neighbour would come out yelling what the hell is going on here. Get to hell out of my close you bunch of hooligans.

This was our sex education, it was never taught in School in those far off days. Sex was considered a dirty word, and could earn you a good belt on the ear, if caught mentioning that terrible word. It was great fun learning the FUN way.

After the games were finished, and the girls had gone home, we would stand around under the street lamp and boast about our shenanigans in the corner, Each boy trying to outdo the other, and exaggerating every detail way out of proportion.

On other occasions we would race round "The Wee World" this was our name for the block of tenement buildings reaching from, Hill place, up Glasgow Street, turn right into Winton Street, then back down Winton lane, then right into Hill place. The round trip, in distance was probably about 500/ 600 yards.

First of all we would pick teams. This consisted of all the boys standing in a line with their backs to the wall. The Team leaders would stand in the middle of the road. From there they would each have a turn at picking, one of the boys from the line up.

We used this method of picking teams when playing Football or any other team game. It could be a bit embarrassing for some of the boys, as the fastest or best players were always picked first, but I can’t remember anyone getting upset over it. Maybe it affected them later on in life, if it did I never heard about it. I suppose in today’s world these boys would be having counselling.

So the teams are picked, the team leaders have picked their first runners and were all set to go. The rules were that the runners run in opposite directions, so you never knew how well you were doing until you arrived back at the start. To overcome this you just ran as fast as possible for all of the distance. It was great fun, but hard work. On the final straight, with the legs turning to jelly, and ready to give up, the rest of the team would jog along side the runner, and encourage him on to the finish.

On many occasions the runner had started off to fast, and nearing the finish, he would no longer be running, or some times not even walking, I think the action would be more accurately described as staggering, but they had to get to the finish before the next runner could start, so the encouragement could be quite harsh at times.

Quite often on those cold winter nights, the temperature would drop below zero, then we would get very heavy Frost. The rooftops, the streets and everything else would turn white. Although it was very cold, we looked forward to these conditions; this was our opportunity to make slides.

Glasgow Street is approx. one mile, straight and very wide. It was built with the rest of the town in the early 18 hundreds, by the earl of Eglinton, and was ahead of is time as far as town planning is concerned. All the streets are laid out in a square grid pattern, and are amazingly wide for the amount of traffic at that time; the old Earl was certainly looking to the future. Maybe he also knew these streets would make a great playground for us kids.

To make slides on a frosty road, you need a pair of Boots/shoes with leather soles. Next pick the spot were the slide is going to be, what you’re looking for is a nice smooth surface on the road. We were lucky here, as most of Glasgow Street had a very smooth surface. Great for roller-skating, but that’s another story.

To get the slide started, one of the boys takes a run at the chosen spot, sticks one foot ahead of the other and slides as far as he can. This leaves a skid mark about Four feet long on the Frosty road, the next boy does the same, followed by all the others, and in a surprisingly short time we have a slide, which could be anything up to twenty feet long, with a surface as slippy as ice.

It was great fun; we would try all different sliding positions and tricks. We could stand straight up, or crouch down till your bum was almost touching the slide, we would go on one leg, or try to reverse while sliding and go backwards, with this move you usually finished up on your back with a bump on the back of your head. One of the boys would lie on the road across the slide and the rest try to jump over him while sliding,

Then Mothers would start shouting from upstairs windows. It was nine o clock and time to go indoors. So we would all go our separate ways, hoping the slide would still be there in the morning.

In those far off days we didn’t have TV or computer games, there were no CDs or DVD s and I don’t regret that one little bit. We grew up fit and healthy, we learned to be competitive but fair, we learned to interact and accept the other person, no matter what differences there was between us, religious or otherwise. We were just a bunch of kids playing street games.

George Fleming ~ West Australia