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Growing up during the war years meant shortages of just about everything except getting into mischief, there was no shortage of that, at least not in Crook, Co. Durham where I lived. I'm sure it was the same everywhere else.
The younguns around my age at 10 years old could always find something to do to pass the time away. Living in the country, a lot of our time was taken up with tromping around the fields looking for birds' nests, snagging turnips or going blackberrying.
'Knocky Nine Doors' was probably the favourite outdoors game and guaranteed to get the adrenaline going, especially if you happened to be the last kid past the door.
That dubious honour usually went to the youngest or the fattest kid who trailed the mad dash down the street as the fleet of foot out in front were knocking on as many doors as they could.
While this was fun, I think that we managed to elevate the game to new heights, enterprising kids that we were. When it got dark earlier in the winter, each kid would wear the usual winter garb consisting of black raincoat buttoned at the neck like Zorro and the ever-present rubber Wellingtons or Wellys as we called them.
Instead of knocking on doors and running away, one of us would 'borrow' a bobbin of black thread from his mam's sewing machine and tie the thread to the knocker.
In our camouflage we could wind out the thread and hide in the shadows across the street and periodically pull on the thread to knock on the door. This was a riot as the hapless victim lured to the door too many times only to find nobody there would then stand just inside the door ready to pounce at the next knock.
The game would come to a screeching halt when the sight of the man snatching open the door and charging out only to find no one there became too much us. Not being able to hold our giggles in any longer we would hotfoot it down the street laughing our heads off.
Another cruel improvisation of ours was to tie two door handles together. The way the colliery houses were built made it easy to do, as they would usually put the doors of every two houses next to one another.
After carefully and quietly tying the string around the knobs we would knock on both doors and watch as the battle to open the doors began.
As an added bonus we would roll up old film, when we could get it, in a wad of newspaper and stuff it up the drainpipe next to the door.
Once lit, the blaze would cause the draft going up the pipe to produce a howl loud enough to bring the neighbours out into the street to see what all of the noise was about.
Jim Dowson, USA, 2002
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