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It was just about the end of summer. We were back in school, holidays over. Our old enemies, the Catholic school kids were as eager as us to carry on the battles from where they had temporarily halted at the beginning of the holidays.
These lunchtime wars were the highlight of the day. We would meet in the park, a sort of no-mans land between the two schools, and there we would fight. We did have a loose set of rules of combat. In these conflicts it was fists only. No weapons or feet to be used. Both sides would deal anyone breaking these rules. It was very rare for anyone to break these rules; the consequences were not nice.
The strange thing about all this was that out of school hours we were all in different gangs, and fought side by side against the other street gangs of the same religious mix.
There was an expression used to describe the kids on our estate.
They play tick with hatchets.
There was a modicum of truth in this, although the hatchets were home-made. We would flatten a bean can, or something similar. Find a reasonably straight branch of a tree, split it part way down, fit the tin blade, then whip string around the top and bottom of the split to make it secure.
They sound fairly lethal, but they hardly ever cut you, gave more of a nasty bruise than any real damage.
The weapon that gave the most trouble was the bow and arrow. Again these were home-made affairs, most not very good, but some were excellent. It all depended on the choice of the wood used and the skill of the maker.
Mostly the arrows were fitted with blunt heads, clay was one of the best things, and again this would inflict pain but only bruise.
Unfortunately, someone discovered that if one placed a nail on the tram track, (Streetcar in America, I’m told).
The weight of the tram would flatten the nail into a reasonable arrowhead. These were then spliced into the shaft of the arrow and there you had an efficient arrow.
I still have a scar on my thigh where someone got lucky.
Now that the nights were drawing in and the weather turning colder we started to look forward to Christmas.
However, unlike today, when Christmas seems to start in September ours started in December.
Up to now things had been a trifle bleak as regards to Christmas presents. If memory serves, the previous Christmas presents had comprised a few unpainted lead soldiers and a wooden castle that my father had made in his spare time. Plus the usual apple, some sweets, and if we were really lucky, a real orange.
We did not hang up a sock, we had a clean pillow case at the foot of the bed.
The memory of the absolute thrill of burrowing head first into this still moves me.
We always hoped we would discover the thing we had dreamed of, and written to Santa for, but it was usually a vain hope.
Christmas day would dawn, we kids of course had been awake for hours, full of excitement waking up our parents to show what Santa had left.
Then it would be breakfast, a genuine English meal. The one time of the year we would have it. It did make a change from Porridge with salt, mother was a Scot.
Then we would be scrubbed up till we shone, then dressed in our Sunday best, sometimes even new clothing.
Then it was off to visit our relatives.
What a time we had.
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