Rebecca McDowell interviewed her Grandmother Marie.  When she was young she had different games to play for each season of the year.  In springtime she got their costumes ready for the Queen of the May and Valentines Day. She got a biscuit with a heart on it. She collected the wild flowers, especially wild bloom and put the petals in a pot of water with some eggs and boiled them. This coloured the shell of the egg and her mother put her name on them and she had these with her Easter picnic. In summertime she played all the street and outdoor games like skipping, rounders, and 'wee houses' with her toys and dolls. All photographs in books and magazines were in black and white so when she saw a flower or something in a magazine she cut them out and put them in a scrapbook. Everyone kept a scrapbook and it was a treat to have a coloured picture in it. Her uncle Sammy used to take her to the Glen at Cavehill and let her cross the river. She had competitions with her friends by telling him the names of the trees and the flowers. Her granny used to make them soda farls and they had these with fresh milk from the farm for the picnic. They did not have many sweets because it was not long after the war and everything was rationed so the family kept their coupons for Fridays. Then she would get a bar of chocolate.  In the autumn she played a game called Rally OK. You had two teams. It was like a hide and seek and everyone used to hide in gardens and alleyways because it was safe. One team would hide and the other team would find them. If you found someone you would shout Rally OK and your team came to help. They also did a few naughty things like tying a piece of thread to a letterbox and then taking the thread up the street and hiding in a garden and pulling the string. It was always good fun seeing her mum and dad come to the door and no one there. Her mum and dad were good fun and did not scold them. In the winter they used to have games at home, like snakes and ladders, draughts and jacks, paper cut outs and I spy. They used to sit by the firelight with no light on and her Daddy used to make shadows on the wall with his hands. He did rabbits and birds, and he used to make stories about the forest come to life on the wall. He could also make mice, rabbits, dogs and cats and other animals out of his handkerchief. He taught her to whistle the song of each bird. On rainy nights she used to sit and he would teach her songs and all the family would sing together. At Hallowe'en she got a bag of nuts and an apple and a dumpling and a bag of fireworks. They always had a party. When it snowed she always played snowball fights with the boys and girls against the mums and dads. At Christmas they sang Christmas carols to the people in the street. Her daddy used to take the family on Christmas Eve to see Father Christmas at his Grotto in the Co-op store in York Street. There was always a puppet show and a roundabout and a post box to post letters in and Father Christmas always replied to them. On Boxing day they always went to the Opera House to see the pantomime. When someone was getting married they always dressed as brides and threw some petals at the bride. Her favourite toys when she was young was her skates and her bike. She also loved her large scooter which had a brake on it. Some of her friends had tin ones with no brakes on them. Her brother used to go train spotting and she always went with him to gather hazelnuts and chestnuts with her dad and uncle. She also played a game called Perrie and Whip. This was a stick and a piece of cord or leather on it and a small wooden piece of wood with a nail down the middle. She always coloured the top of it with chalk. She stuck the perrie in the crack of the pavement and whipped it with a stick and it used to look lovely with all the colours spinning. They nearly always had some sort of pet to teach them to love animals and to look after them. They had a dog called Rinty, a tortoise, a budgie, a parrot and a goldfish, a ferret, bees and some rabbits. They also had chickens and they got eggs from them. In the summer her family had a holiday home and the farmer used to get them to stook the corn for him and they did this by putting bunches of corn together and the farmer tied them. They also used to jump in the haystacks when the farmer brought the hay to the barn. He paid them for the days work by either giving them a piece of cake and a drink of buttermilk, which she did not like or he let them fill their pockets with gooseberries. When she was nine years old the family got a television. The make was His Master's Voice. This had a horn with a dog beside it as a logo. The programmes then were Muffin the Mule when a lady played the piano and Muffin was a puppet of a spotted mule. Andy Pandy was also a children's programme. Captain Holiday was a pilot with a different story every week about his aeroplane. Before television they had an old fashioned wireless. Her favourite programme was Radio Luxembourg. 1953 was the year of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation and everyone in her street had a street party and everyone was given presents of pencils, sweets, pencil case and a mug. Her friends came to her house to watch the coronation on TV and the street was decorated with bunting and they all got new clothes. Chipperfields Circus came that year and her grandfather took her to see the big parade and they then went to see thirteen elephants coming off the boat. At Easter time they went to the Zoo but first they went into Hazelwood. It had a lake and you could go out in the paddleboats. It was a park and you rolled your Easter egg down the hill. Her daddy always had a key to the Waterworks on the Cliftonville Road. This had three ponds and a river and her daddy used to take them out on a rowing boat on a lake each night in the summer. Queen Mary's Gardens were beside this. It was a park with swings and they used to play in this and get an ice cream before coming home. You had to pay for the key each year and you got this from the water office. They also used to do doilly to pass the time. This was a spool with four nails in the square and you passed the wool around each nail twice to start. Then, with a nail or a pin you passed one thread over the other and it made a cord of wool down the centre of the spool. When the cord was long enough she would make a tea cosy and tea mats from it.   Another Story Return to Competition