Hare and Hounds was the game of my youthful summers when every kid that could be rounded up from the street convened in the early morning to play the mammoth chase game in which the rules were exceedingly fluid – usually culminating in the ‘hares’ suffering pain, indignity or, more often than not, both – and the game itself extraordinarily wide-ranging. The smallest kids were the hares who, after having been corralled by the bigger kids were told to get going if they didn’t want to find themselves on the receiving end of a bigger kid’s toe-cap there and then. I was a small kid, and the ‘get going’ consisted solely of getting as far away as possible as quickly as possible, whilst the bigger kids gathered up drinks, sandwiches and, if their dads weren’t looking, half a dozen Park Drive Filter-tipped. The ‘game’ itself generally covered almost all the daylight hours, several miles of countryside and more outlying villages than you could shake a stick at.
It was a great ‘Yahoo’ for the ‘hounds’ who shared the ‘pop’*, the ‘picnic’** and the cigarettes whilst charging gleefully around the sward with the wind in their crew-cuts and the scent of young blood in their noses. For the ‘hares’ it was not such a great way of passing the day. You were under strict instructions to stick together, if you left anyone behind you were heading not just for a kicking from the bigger kids, but also a belt around the ear from the parents of the dawdler. So you had to stick together, even if one of your number was complaining of having a stone in his shoe after the first fifty yards, claiming that he had broken his leg before the end of the street and crying before the city limits. What you desperately hoped was that guile and stealth would allow you to sneak back through the lines of the chasing pack, lock the door, plonk yourselves on the settee with crisps and barley water, and watch ‘Mr Ed’ whilst they were still dismembering newts in the local stream, all the time praying that your mum would get home before they realised what you had done and arrived en masse with a key, a grudge and the fervent desire to dish out retribution. In the event, what you actually did was run for your life and hope that they would get bored before your knees buckled.
If you timed it right, you would arrive back on the street as they all disappeared into the houses for their tea; when even the look-out who was left on the bottom corner with a cricket stump and an evil glint, had had enough and succumbed to the lure of the ever-permeating odour of slightly charred Birds Eye rissoles, Surprise Peas and crinkle-cut chips. Only then, tired and starving could you sneak back into the house in the knowledge that older kids could not hand out the traditional beating in front of your parents. Not so easy, though, to escape the wrath of your mother for a) being out all day without telling her where you were (not easy, as most of the time you did not know yourself) b) missing your tea, and c) scuffing the toes of your school shoes and bleeding on your shirt. Dobbing-in the big kids was not an option, you could not stay with your mother forever. Sooner or later she would send you to the shops with a ten-bob note and the warning not to let the butcher give you a joint that was full of fat again, and they would be waiting.
The whole point of the game? Well, as far as I can remember, it was simply to survive long enough to, one day, be one of the bigger kids yourself…
*Any fizzy drink, usually bought from the Corona Van Man, in a glass bottle that you dare not lose or damage as it had a 3d deposit on it.
**A slice of three day old Mother’s Pride, a hard-boiled egg (with green rim around yolk), a packet of Nibb-its and a slice of Lyon’s Jam Swiss Roll wrapped up in yesterday’s Daily Mirror.
Getting On 