​One of the things I remember well from my childhood was the excitement of getting a new comic.  My mother Peggy sometimes shopped at the newsagents “down at the Bridge”, O’Donnell’s, and If I had been extra “good”, or there was money to spare, I would be treated to a comic.  It wasn’t every week mind you.  Those weeks when I wasn’t getting one, I could only look wistfully at that week’s new comic sitting on the shelf in O’Donnell’s and imagine what the stories would be.

When I was doing my recent blog on moving to Hill View 50 years ago, it got me thinking of the things that have changed for children in that time.  Growing up in the 1960s and 70s, one of the biggest things is the amount of time that we spent outdoors playing.  Hopscotch, betchels, tip (tag/ chasing), red rover, taws (marbles), elastics, skipping, juggling two-balls or three-balls against a wall and playing with a tennis ball in nylon stockings tied to your ankle and jumped over…. or hit side to side against a wall under and over your leg!  No wonder we were all so skinny.
​
Television
To be fair, one of the reasons I played outdoors was that, for most of my childhood, I lived in a one-station television zone in Ireland.  We only had RTE 1 ….. in black and white! I envied those in Dublin and others on the east coast that could get the UK stations by aerial.