"P-L-A-Y, Play, Play Away..."
Older B3tans will remember back in the mists of time, just after TV had gone colour but before Multicoloured Swap Shop and Tiswas had seen the light of day, let alone Why Don't You Etc Etc, the Saturday afternoon treat that was Play Away.

It was either that, or the rugby league with Eddie Waring on BBC1 or Dickie Davies introducing the wrestling on ITV. God, we were spoilt back then.

At the time, we lived on a huge council estate on the fringe of South East London, a fantastic place to be a kid, although looking back now I know that my mum would have much preferred living somewhere leafier and more genteel (my dad, however, was an architect, so he has no excuses - my mum blamed him and his colleagues for building the concrete futuropolis in the first place).

One of the places we would spend much of our school holidays was the local Adventure Playground* basically, a death trap made out of telegraph poles, ropes, pulleys and such like - staffed by three stoner hippies who rejoiced in the names Catweazle (due to his physical similarity to the TV character), The Joker (who never stopped smiling, probably because he was off his head) and the curiously nickname-bereft Jane.

This was run by the council, as far as I can remember, and one wonders what on earth modern-day health & safety people would make of the whole set up; actually, scrub that - it's probably used as a case study in health & safety school about how not to do it...

One year, ahead of the school holidays, a poster went up advertising a kind of summer camp down in rural Gloucestershire, and after a bit of pestering, the parents signed me and my older sister up for it, with the two then little 'uns staying behind with them at home.

The bus that took us down there was an old Routemaster, painted up as only a bunch of spliffed-up hippies can paint a bus, and we felt like the cast of Here Come The Double Deckers as we headed down the M4 (having first stopped in Deptford and Peckham to pick up some other lucky kids who were off on the same trip).

I've got to say that the holiday, which was at a place called Macaroni Wood remains one of the most fondly remembered experiences of my life - we got to go to the airfield near Bristol where the Concorde prototype was (and got to clamber all over it), we had a trip to the open air swimming pool at Cirencester and got to see some Roman stuff too, we would sit round the camp fire in the evening and sing songs and get scared shitless by the ghost stories told by the grown-ups, and I finally snapped and hit the school bully who had tormented me for the last couple of years so hard that burst out crying and ran away to be found a couple of hours later trying to hitch a ride home (he never touched me again).

But the best thing, from the boys' point of view, was the day we spent making go-carts, especially when we were told, as we were shown a pile of random materials from which to make them, that the Play Away crew were coming down at the weekend to film us. None of us had ever been on TV, so this was The Most Exciting Thing Ever (this was just the boys - the girls got their own segment showing them making dolls, or basket-weaving, or whatever it is they were getting up to).

I worked so hard on that go-cart, styling it on Jackie Stewart's formula one car (basically, nailing a plank of wood front and back perpendicular to the main plank so they looked like spoilers) then, on the appointed day, they took us to a hill that to our young minds seemed as tall and as steep as the one that they roll the cheese down (same county, I suppose) and the legendary Brian Cant was there with his film crew (of course, being cheeky little council estate dwellers with Sarf Lahndahn accents, we just about got away with misprounouncing his surname - "'Ullo', Mistah Caaahhhnnnt!")

Then we had the all-too-brief race itself - absolute carnage that taught us quite a lot about the force of gravity, the usefulness of brakes (not that we had them) and why it's a good idea to roll out of the way when a proto-Jackie Stewart is careering down the hill towards you at speed (the kid was called Dylan and came from Deptford - I don't think I did him any lasting damage, however).

We watched Play Away every week for what seemed like months after that, and finally the episode aired - complete with me crashing into the unfortunate Dylan accompanied by a stern voiceover warning not to do this type of thing without adult supervision.

Happy, happy days.

* If you have time, have a look through the full set of these photos which were taking by a young teacher at the local secondary school (my sister went there, I didn't) - it's an outstanding record of what it was like to be a kid back then in the days before video games, SATS, paedo hunts, etc.
(Capo, Mon 15 Jun 2009, 12:41, 5 replies)

Ah Play Away...
Brian Cant (and his lovely wife Bladdy)
( brown-wings Made with three kinds of butter, Mon 15 Jun 2009, 17:40, closed)

Ace
The playground reminds me of this place in Orange County that existed in the early 80's. The safty feature was that the ground around the structure was all mud. Many fond memories of jumping 15 feet off that thing and your feet would sink so far you would lose your shoes.

*click*
(anotherlogan and the whit he shites, Mon 15 Jun 2009, 18:43, closed)

Those photos are incredible
I just spent an hour flicking through them

Good story too *click*
( chart cat has an itch, Tue 16 Jun 2009, 2:52, closed)

The pics are pretty amazing
I may have to put something on /links
(Capo, Tue 16 Jun 2009, 7:47, closed)

:-) Good to see the photos
There was one hear my Grandparents like that! Magical...
(Beer Elf Thought this was like a campfire, anyhow, on, Tue 16 Jun 2009, 11:12, closed)