Because I’ve been so busy, I haven’t taken a full-on summer holiday this year, just had a few nice long weekends away. One of them was spent with my Dad in Caerphilly, where I grew up. Me and my older brother were pretty feral as children – we used to spend all our time playing outside in a big pack, coming home like cats when we were hungry. Our favorite haunting ground was Twyn School Field, which has scrubland around the playing field that felt like a dense forest as a child.
Whilst I was back in Caerphilly I literally took a trip down memory lane (which is no longer littered with white dog poo) – past the railings I used to somersault over, down the path along The Brook into The Field. It was great having my memory jolted by a tree where I once disturbed a wasps’ nest, a shed where we all found a stash of illicit porn mags and the bushes where I had a rather clumsy first kiss.
Even better was seeing that a new generation of players are using the space for much the same thing. They weren’t there but telltale signs of them were – a tree used as a bridge over a ditch, graffiti tags on a garage door, an empty bottle of cheap white cider and the throne of the new King of the Castle – a sopping wet blue playchair on top of a tree stump.
