Summertime, and the living was exciting – especially if you were a youngster in the Forties and Fifties.

No TV in those days, computers were unheard of and the X-box was probably something the Martians used in the adventure comics you bought.

There was also the fact that you entertained yourselves, usually with other kids from the neighbourhood with games on the street.

For those were the times when the sight of a car down your road was a rarity, when most folk went by bus or by bike and when health and safety rules were unheard of. The street was probably your only playground.

And what good times youngsters had.

Young lads swaggered around toting cap guns shooting ’em up in wild games of cowboys and Indians, everyone a Roy Rogers or Hopalong Cassidy. The marvels of big screen adventure enjoyed at the pictures on a Saturday morning came imaginatively down your way. Wonder why no one ever wanted to be an Indian.

The “marbles season” arrived just after Easter with kids everywhere carrying round bags of treasured little balls of intense colour, some glass, some ceramic. Those whose dads worked in factories would come out with bags full of ball bearings – what a prize they were.

Stilts caused endless amusement for a few weeks a year at least. How we enjoyed it staggering down the street two foot higher than usual. Every tried dancing on them? Bet you came a cropper.

Girls liked skipping games, chanting various rhymes as they dodged the turning rope which was often several feet long, allowing several of them to skip at once.

Others went in for endless games of hopscotch. There was hardly a street anywhere which was not adorned with those numbered squares they jumped in and out of.

Roller skates preceded skate boards and kids searched the neighbourhood for the streets with the smoothest surface.

Houses across the street would be connected by lengths of string attached to empty tin cans which formed a primitive form of telephone.

And on the street hide and seek became known by other names, not least of them being block.

Whoever was “It” (where did that name come from?) hid their face, counted to a certain number, and bawled “coming ready or not” while the rest secreted themselves away, racing from their hiding place to touch the place where “It” did the counting and live to see another game without taking “It’s” role.

Lads collected snails, fished for sticklebacks in local parks, took home jars of frog spawn and fought with home-made swords baddies supposedly from Nottingham in games where to be Robin Hood made you top dog for an hour an hour or two least.

At the local Cubs pack you went on “wide games” which entailed leaving a trail for you to be tracked. With the pack usually meeting in the evening these games often went on for hours across fields and through woods. No-one bothered, your safety just wasn’t a problem.

How times have changed.

These and many other games are now part of history.

Isn’t that rather sad?