meish dot org: life, unfolding

I spent a good chunk of time recently reminiscing about childhood playground games (notably the wonderful if slightly obscure ball and floor-marking game CHAMP – was it just a London thing? No-one else seems to have heard of it…) when I was reminded of the exceedingly bizarre game Please Mother May I?

Now, I’ll willfully concede that the majority of childhood games require an element of playful imagination or class A drugs to make them make sense.

Take, for example, POLO, in which players shout out the names of types of flowers (“Daffodil! Tulip! Begonia!”), or houses (“Flat! Semi Detached! Maisonette!” – everyone wanted to be maisonette, by the way, although none of us knew what it meant) in order to run a short race with the caller. Utterly cracktastic.

But Please Mother May I? beat them all.

Described here is a rather pedestrian version of the game that we played. One person stands at the front, others take it in turns to say “Please mother may I?” and then “mother” gives instructions – “take 4 baby steps” and so on – and the first person to reach “mother” wins. Easy, simple, and fairly dull.

Going to an inner London primary school, we played the extreme rules. In our version of things, as I remember, there were a whole variety of alternative steps on top of the usual “giant steps/baby steps” set. Some that I remember:

• Watering Can: spit as far in front of you as you can. Move to where it lands.
• Round the world: Spin around with your arms out and move forward.
• Worm: Lie on the ground and wriggle forward
• Roly-Poly: roll horizontally forward.
• Nuclear Bomb: run around hitting everyone on the back of the head. If they yelp or squirm, you take their place.

So a typical game would go like this:

Mother: Lisa, take three watering cans
Lisa: Please mother, may I?
Mother: Yes, you can.
Lisa: [hawk, spit, hop, hawk, spit, hop, hawk, spit, hop]
Mother: Meg, take ten worms
Meg: Please mother, may I?
Mother: No you may not. George, take four nuclear bombs.
George: Please mother, may I?
Mother: Yes, you may.
George: [run, smack, slap, wallop]

Children under the age of eight in inner London primary schools were not nice. In fact, they were positively vile.

And still are – or at least may very well grow up to be, judging by the cacophony of toddler shrieks experienced in Nando’s on Saturday lunchtime. What is with that noise that only small children can make? The one that is kind of like a high-pitched shriek, and which can signify anything from “Give me attention” or “that hurts” to “I’m babbling, please listen to me” or “that’s fun”. Whatever. Man, it’s irritating…

There is no better contraceptive than other people’s children.