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I wonder how many children these days would know how to make a daisy chain, or that holding a buttercup under the chin would show if someone liked butter, or tell the time with dandelion clocks by counting the number of puffs it took to blow the fluffy seeds off?

Do you remember putting itchy seeds from rosehips down friends’ backs and sticking long pieces of goosegrass or the burrs from the burdock on other people’s clothes, much to the amusement of sadistic onlookers? Or how about blowing through a piece of flat grass placed between your thumbs to make a shrill enough sound to annoy even a saint?

The more gentle of us would have been occupying ourselves by taking petals off a flower one at a time and saying ‘he loves me, he loves me not’ to find out how a chosen boy felt about us, and counting cherry stones left around the rim of a plate chanting ‘Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor…’ to give us the occupation of our future husband. It doesn’t work of course, and I have had more than one go at it!

Playing conkers, which used to be great fun and very competitive, and seeing who could scramble furthest up a tree have now been forbidden in many schools; what a load of rubbish!! And whatever happened to the good old forked stick used as a catapult? There’s another idea or two for the festival...

Wouldn’t it be comforting to think that some of these games could be taught to young children before they are lured to the computer screen!

Perhaps rural traditions wouldn’t then die out completely!

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