Make Sure You’re Back Home When The Street Lamps Come On

We went out after breakfast and nobody saw us again until dinner time.

No one questioned us about where we were going, and I couldn’t have told them if they had, because we didn’t know ourselves.

We had the whole day, a street full of mates, and no plan at all. That was more than enough to take care of about nine hours of whatever mischief we could get into.

One overriding rule was as soon as the street lamps came on, we had to be back at the house.

No texts, no phones, no calls and no instructions before we went out.

Even if we were in some fields somewhere, which we often were, you could see the glow of the lights from there and off we scampered back home.

Woe betide you if your mum ever had to come out and start looking for you, well, you only let that happen once.

She had no idea where we were, I say we because I had to take my little brother everywhere.

He was three years younger than me and what a pain it was. Especially the stick I got from mates when they saw my brother.

We could have been ten miles away for all my mum knew. She wasn’t neglectful in any sense of the word, just the same as every other mum in those days.

Dads went out to work, and mums had the housework and shopping to do. We were out and that’s about as far as the thinking went.

Shooting each other was our favourite pastime, not literally of course, we just loved to play cowboys and Indians or reenact the latest war movie we had seen.

Either way it came down to running about pointing a stick or even a toy gun if we had them, at your mates and telling them they were dead.

Nobody was ever dead, we wouldn’t accept that we’d been got. You could get a kid square in the chest from three feet away and he’d carry on running around like nothing had happened at all, and then the whole fight had to stop while we argued about it.

“I got you.”

“You never.”

“I got you in the chest.”

“You missed.”

Half the day went on that sort of thing, two of you behind a wall having a proper row about an imaginary gun. I can’t remember a single one of those arguments ever being settled. We’d just get bored of it and found something else to do.

We had bikes, well some of us did, we’d double up if anyone didn’t have a bike. Of course my brother was always on the back of mine.

Naturally they were always a bit too big on the understanding that you’d grow into them. No one got a new bike every year because they’d outgrown the old one. Unless a younger brother was big enough to get your hand me downs.

That was one of the few good things about being the oldest.

Anyway, you spent a good couple of years riding a bike you couldn’t actually sit down on, until you could sit on the saddle and reach the pedals.

Nobody had a helmet because helmets weren’t a thing back then. I don’t think I ever saw a helmet, not even in the shops. Not that I looked, my mates would have taken the piss mercilessly if I had turned up with one, anyway.

Then there was the canal.

We weren’t allowed anywhere near the canal, which is exactly why we went down there most days.

The water was as black as anything back then. With all kinds of rubbish people didn’t want thrown in there. Old bikes, prams, tyres, you name it.

Every business up the way used it as somewhere to pour whatever they didn’t want, and it had oil slicks floating on the top of it.

We didn’t understand any of that. It never entered our heads. It was just water, and it was the most interesting thing within walking distance. I don’t ever remember being frightened or worried about playing around there.

We came back at dinner time, because by then we were starving hungry and thirsty. Some of us needed a pee. The others would have peed in the canal if no one was about, I wouldn’t let my brother pee in the canal in case he fell in. So that meant I had to hold it as well.

In and out of the house in about fifteen minutes. Just as quick as it took my mum to give us some beans on toast and for us to gulp it down and get back outside.

It seemed like every streetlamp on every street came on at the same time.That was the signal for all of us to take off and get home as fast as possible.

I hated those streetlamps because it meant the day was over. For me and my brother it also meant a quick dinner and bedtime.

Our mum could let us take off into thin air every morning without a second thought because she knew that streetlamp was coming on as soon as it started to get dark and it would bring us back.

I watched one come on outside my house last night.

I didn’t see any kids scampering home though.