Category: indoor games

I was ten when my parents left me in a hall I’d never visited before; with kids I’d never met; playing games of which I’d never heard.

Was this some sort of punishment?  Had I been awful in a previous life?  Was this Karma for not tidying my room once too often?

I stood (and wished it was a burning deck, such was my desire to be somewhere else) by the entrance of this hall near Tooting Broadway. 

“Ok, Michael, have fun, we’ll see you in a few hours”.  

Was this what it was like when you joined the Foreign Legion?  Being in the British Legion club was clearly the first step.   My parents had signed a document ensuring I’d be in Marseilles before sunset.

The other kids clearly all knew one another from their schools; Cubs/Brownie packs or the Balham & Tooting sub aqua club for under tens.   I knew no one.  Even my imaginary friend was away for the weekend.  This was one of the few times I regretted being an only child.  If I had known, I’d have bought a sibling off the Freeman’s catalogue.

The pain went on for several hours.  I took part in none of the games.  I spoke to no one.  I hid in the toilet so many times, one of the adults asked if there was a urologist in the hall?

After four hours my parents returned.  I was given a piece of cake.  I did say thank you, but also told the organiser – thrusting my Victoria Sponge towards his face – “this is how revolutions begin”.

As an only child, grandchild and nephew (not that you can tell!) it was my parents, grandparents and great aunts and uncles’ job to entertain me. One uncle decided he would introduce danger into playtime within my Balham flat.

There was always a pack of cards lying around when I was a kid (my mum always wanted to be a croupier, but never got further than the church whist drive); my uncle would build towers with them. My uncle was a heavy pipe smoker, so his pipe was invariably on – nothing like going to school smelling of your uncle’s finest shag (insert your own gag here).

He’d inhale and blow the smoke through the bottom of the cards. The smoke would drift up and eventually exit through the hole he’d made in the top. The first time I ever saw the election of the new Pope on TV I thought, once the decision had been made, my uncle had been in the cellars of the Vatican blowing smoke up the Papal chimney.

We would lie down on the carpet of my flat (which wasn’t shagpile, so no running gag this week) to get the best effect of the smoke rising – and it is only now, with my mental health & safety handbook going cray, that I realise how dangerous this would have been!

Highly-flammable carpet, burning tobacco embers, child who wasn’t allowed matches until he was twenty-six – what could possibly go wrong?

Either we’ve elected a new Vicar of Balham, or the Fire Brigade needs calling.