I well remember the table-tennis (“ping-pong” we called it) tournaments being played on the big dining-table in a fast and furious fashion. Played with plywood bats covered on each side with glass-paper (sponge rubber covered bats hadn’t arrived yet), and nearly always interrupted by somebody treading on the ball (necessitating dunking it in a cup of boiling water to try to remove the dent, sometimes even successfully!), or else by the ball landing in the fire with a quick “whoosh” (fatal for the ball), or frequently by the ball colliding with the gas-mantle, (fatal for the ball and the gas- mantle), plunging the room into firelight glow until the mantle-holder had cooled sufficiently to enable a new mantle to be fitted (15 minutes or so). We went through a hell of a lot of balls and mantles!

There was a small billiard table which was very popular once the tedious business of levelling with a spirit level had been sorted. We had a set of snooker balls but never played snooker; everyone seeming to prefer billiards. Other table games were Bagatelle, played on a baize covered board using the snooker balls, and Corinthian, which had a sloping board stuck with nails in various patterns and was played with steel balls and a little cue, a sort of forerunner to modern pin-ball machines.

Bombardo was another great little game played with a spinning metal top. The top had a small projection on its rim which clouted a suspended ball in an arc, which in turn dislodged numbered, tethered balls from wire holders on the board’s periphery. Each person bet on which ball they thought would be the last one left in its holder. I believe Maggie bought it at Hamleys in Regent Street, but it was made by the Lord Roberts Memorial Workshops for disabled ex-servicemen, and very well made it was too.

Draughts and chess were indulged in by most of us although it was quite some time before I really understood “en passant” and the mysteries of castling. I recall Sonny enquiring as to why I hadn’t castled during a game with him — he was a very fair chess player and would always try to encourage me to improve my play — and me, not wishing to admit that I wasn’t very sure of the procedure, saying that, “I wanted to try something different” (ending up sacrificing my queen for no good reason) .

We enjoyed card games quite a bit with whist, hearts, beat-your-neighbour and Pelmanism being the most often played.

My father was a good boxer and did his best to give we boys a bit of tuition in the “noble art”. We had a couple of sets of l8oz. training gloves and many were the little set-to’s I had with my brothers in the garden. Needles to say, Norman and Sonny found it all too easy to keep Angus and me at bay but just occasionally we managed a decent clout at them, especially as we got bigger.

The old house and garden lent themselves to good games of hide-and-seek, with many cupboards to hide in and plenty of beds to hide under. Personally I was never over-keen to conceal myself in cupboards, especially ones that snecked from the outside. I had a horror of ending up like the young bride who hid in a self-locking trunk at the mansion of Minster Lovell, described so vividly in the Christmas song The Mistletoe Bough, one of the family’s favourites.

A completely idiotic game called Mr. A and Mr. B was played in the dining-room — one person would be underneath the table attempting to grab the ankle of one of the other participants, who would all be running around and vaulting as fast as they could, using the edge of the table and the sideboard, sewing machine, chairs, bookcase etc. — the object being to keep their feet off the floor as long as possible, since the only time an ankle could be grabbed was when a foot was touching the floor. When a capture was made, the prisoner and the capturer changed places and the mayhem started again. A quite horrific game for noise and people falling over, but young friends of ours who joined in thought it was absolutely marvellous, as until they entered the Sharpe’s household, they had never heard of it. I believe sister Dorothy thought it up but why Mr. A and Mr. B I haven’t the faintest notion.

Jump-Jimmie-Knacker was played indoors or in the garden – several people would bend down in line to make a “back” and the rest took it in turn to leap straddle-wise as far up the back as possible, the leaping usually being performed by the younger ones to the shout of “Jump-Jimmie-Knacker, one, two, three, allee over!” — sounds even more ludicrous now.

Rounders, cricket (of a sort) marbles, five-stones, peg-top, whip-top, conkers, football and boxing were all good garden games and indulged in frequently. We had a very good garden tent (not a camping type) which could be erected quite speedily and was extremely handy for playing in, if the weather was none too clever. It was also useful for little tea-parties in the summer.

If we wanted to fly kites or sail model boats or ride around on the big red, pedalled engine, we were taken to the park — most enjoyable. On some Sunday mornings at one of the parks, there would be a model power-boat meeting at the large pond. Speed trials and competitions with hydroplane type boats tethered to a central pole belting round at high-speed were popular. Brother Sonny was a member and had his own flash-steam hydroplane, which he entered into competitions ( I don’t know if he ever won anything, I can’t remember seeing any cups or medals!) . Steering competitions, in which the boat concerned was set to journey across the pond to try and end up between sets of flags on the far side and score points for accuracy, had a strong following — these boats were usually slower, more conventional types than the speed merchant’s, all tremendously popular nonetheless.

Amongst the games we played in our quieter moments indoors were I Spy and Boxes (for which dots set out in a matrix on a sheet of paper, with someone starting the game by joining two adjacent dots with a straight line, not diagonally, and everyone following in turn, the object being to complete a joining of four adjacent dots to form a square or box. The person completing a box would put their initial inside and have a further go. The person with the most completed boxes at the end was the winner. Hiding an object in the room for the little ones to find, to the clues of “Hot” or “Cold” from the audience — another nice peaceful game.

Special games and preparations were called for at times like “Halloween” which was celebrated by the family and was a great night for we younger ones. I don’t recall being involved with any of this “trick or treat” affair, or mischief night, which seems to be the thing nowadays. We spent ages making turnip-lanterns with very imaginative faces carved on them. Norman was a wizard at fashioning turnip-lanterns. We had indoor fireworks such as “Mount Etna” and “Pharoah’s Serpents”. We played “dooking” for apples — leaning over the back of a chair with the handle of a fork in your mouth, and dropping it to try and spear an apple from the dozen or so floating in a big tin bath of water, or trying to catch an apple suspended by a string with your teeth. Then there were “snap-dragons”, big raisins floating in a dish of flaming brandy which were picked up quickly and popped in your mouth. Many other games were played and the evening would end with stories of witches etc. Altogether a good night with a large family and possibly the odd friend.

Christmas preparations were another exciting period in the calendar. It would start with paper-chain making, always yards and yards regardless of the many “bought” decorations. It was all considered part of the fun. The scores of coloured and silvered balls that had been stored since the previous holiday, were resurrected and checked (the ones we had were of French manufacture and very strong, not like the thin variety of today) . Balloons were inflated and sprigs of holly and mistletoe distributed around the walls.

The Christmas cakes and puddings had to be made and stirred. Mamma always made several puddings for use after the holiday, so there was plenty of pudding mixture for us to stir and make the appropriate wishes. Silver threepenny pieces were washed, and included in the particular pudding to be eaten on Christmas day, and mince-pies, jellies and trifles prepared.

Christmas Eve would see the ham being boiled, the sinews being drawn from the turkey legs and the huge bird stuffed and trussed. My mother usually had to rise at sometime during the night to attend to the basting etc. Eventually the mountains of potatoes were peeled, bags of peas de-podded and pounds of sprouts cleaned and made ready for cooking. The preparation of the vegetables could not be left until Christmas morning as there was quite enough to do with the table to organise, glasses to check, cutlery to clean and places to lay with napkins and crackers. Wine to uncork (and sample), the side-board to burden with pyramids of red and green apples, mounds of oranges, tangerines, bananas, grapes and cheeses, walnuts, filberts, almonds and brazils in baskets, raisins in bowls and washed sticks of celery in long glass boats. Then there appeared the pot-bellied jars of preserved ginger, boxes of dates and figs, little rafts of sugar-frosted, crystallised fruits and round, wooden boxes of Turkish delight, Crème-de-Menthe and marshmallows.

Tureens for the vegetables, sauce-boats for cranberry, bread and custard, and dinner-plates would be set warming on the kitchen range, and suddenly, so it seemed, all would resolve into cracker pulling, paper-hat wearing, motto reading, and stuffing huge helpings of food into hungry mouths. My father issued dire warnings of “You will suffer from a distended stomach when you are older, Douglas!” and quite right he was too!!

I didn’t care – I loved Christmas.

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