SW12 Balham
Playtime in Balhamby Chris Davy |
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The Balham of the late 1950's early 1960's had much less traffic than today. We were able to play in the street quite safely I lived in Ramsden Road. At the top of the road was a department store called the Co-Op. There was a wide area of pavement outside where we would sometimes play ball games, never worrying about the large glass windows of said shop! Never breaking them either! On the opposite side of Ramsden Road was The Balham Club, a sweet shop and a hairdressers. Between the club and the sweet shop was a wall - very high to small people - and I can still remember the tingling in the feet after jumping off it. No wonder the man from the sweet shop was always telling us to get down! Only in later years does one realise just how much you could have been hurt. Another daring pursuit was to roller skate round the frontage of a furniture shop on the High Road. We never once considered that we might fall on the tiled floor or indeed break the windows when we crashed into them. A further great, but forbidden, place to go was in Grove Road. It was a derelict site. We called it the bomb site. Maybe it was! Looking back that was a very dangerous place to be, but fun at the time! Most of our playtime was spent in the street, near to our houses. Door steps became houses, schools, whatever the imagination could conjure up. Dolls prams, marbles, roller skates, skipping ropes, conkers all had their season. Arguments ensued but were quickly forgotten. I went to St Mary's School in Balham High Road. The 5th Balham Brownies met there in the school hall one evening a week and I can remember getting 1d chips in paper, from the chip shop in Chestnut Grove, to eat on the way home. At school there were two playgrounds. The main one was for the girls and younger boys while to the side was another one for the older boys. Again imagination made great games for playtime. The skipping ropes, balls and marbles all had their times throughout the year. Other past times included 'What's the Time Mr Wolf?', 'The Big Ship Sales', 'The Farmer's in His Den' and ‘Oranges and Lemons’ Wet days meant indoor play and drawing materials. Friday was Toy Day and everyone brought in their own toy to play with on Friday afternoon. It sounds as if we did very little except play but we did work hard as well. I still lived in Balham in the 70’s when I had the first three of my four children, the eldest being old enough, while we lived there, to occasionally play out in the street. Times were starting to change then and I can’t imagine letting my grand children play in the street now as we did all those years ago. It’s a shame because some good friendships were forged out of school that way. Now a lot more parental organisation has to go into the children’s social lives – we, mostly, made our own social lives. |
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