Outdoor and lawn toys or games.

[beccabear67]

What did you play with outdoors or on a lawn in the past?

I remember a Fawlty Towers sort of place my Dutch grandmother used to do occasional cleaning for and that they had a croquet game set up on the lawn once when my brother and I were with our gran. I think he knew some rules and we played with that for quite awhile one day. I can't say I've ever tried lawn bowling though I've seen people doing that quite often.

My other grandparents (Yorkshire) had a set of lawn darts; big plastic things with a metal bit that were supposed to stick in the ground, you would throw them and try to land them inside a hoop. These were banned from sale due to accidents involving them sticking into a head it seems. They also had a wooden swing set, the kind with a lattice frame and two chairs.

I was never very outdoorsy so my father built a sandbox for me... but it seemed like every stray cat in the area got more use out of it than I did! I remember playing in it exactly twice.

[George 1978]

You remind me of playing ball (with an orange "Wembley" striker ball - not the traditional black pentagon and white hexagon patterned football) with my sister or mother of a Sunday afternoon; that was until, the ball ends up in next door's garden and had to get it back without the neighbours finding out - some of them were rather assertive when it came to such incidents happening. One neighbour was just a few years younger than me and just happened to live next-door-but-one but he was so spoilt that it was like having an adventure playground over there.

I did notice on YT off-airs and elsewhere, 1976 adverts for "Swingball" - did anyone have that at the time?

[beccabear67]

We had a swingball outdoors at one school I went to but they called it 'tetherball'. It was a bit weather beaten but worked. Metal pole with a leather covered ball, about the size of a football but looking more rugby, on a chain. I never understood the rules between two players.

We spent our recess and part lunch time on something called 'square ball', four squares as a court and four kids one at each corner, and you had to bounce the ball to someone into their square or else you were 'out' for it, or if you didn't get the ball bounced to you, then someone else took your place and you waited. We did this for years.

[George 1978]

Square ball? I bet that a lot of people used to say: "balls are not square" when they first heard of that one! But then again, we do often say, "the four corners of the Earth"...