'My mum tells me not to play with you. She says you are a bad influence.'
'My mum says it's you that gets me into trouble.'
That was me and Sue. Two little girls who were quite well behaved until we got together and then we just fired each other off somehow.
We would arrive home filthy and sometimes minus a cardigan or a coat having abandoned them somewhere while we were absorbed in our play, or we squelched home with soaking wet feet after wading ankle deep into ponds looking for newts and sticklebacks. Girls wore dresses then, and of course, they got torn on the branches of the trees climbed. Sue and I didn't care for sitting on the grass making daisy chains.
'Don't go off.' was our mother's vain plea when they allowed us out to play.
It fell on deaf ears. As soon as they took their eyes off us we were gone exploring. We had no concept of time. It was only hunger that drove us home, but once, during the long summer holidays, we wandered back as dusk was falling, oblivious to the fearful panic we had caused. Sue's dad ran down to the local phone box just in time to stop my dad from reporting us missing to the local constabulary.
Later at high school we were no better. If the lessons weren't inspiring we could be the Class Clowns, fidgeting and fooling around at the back of the classroom. We could always laugh at the ridiculous, I only had to look at Sue's face to start. I have to say, though, if I had been our teacher I would have separated us and put us on opposite sides of the room; problem solved!
At lunchtimes a group of us played netball outside the PE department. One day the ball went on the flat roof and Sue and I, always in competition to see who could be the stupidest, chased like monkeys up the drain pipes to retrieve it. Sue was on the roof first, picking up the ball and I was at the top of the drain pipe when a window opened at the far side of the courtyard and a voice called out,
'You two girls, down to my room.'
It was Pop, the Deputy Head, a man handy with the cane as some of the boys attested.
We waited outside his room in trepidation, but when he arrived he just seemed to think it was funny and let us off. He liked kids and he had a sense of humour; essential qualifications for a teacher.
Children didn't grow up so fast in those days. Out of school Sue and I were still involved in daft exploits. There was an old abandoned railway tunnel not far from where we lived. More than a mile and a half long it was, and pitch black. We dared to walk through it. Just once. In the scary darkness what remained of the tracks could not be seen, so we kept to the side, dragging our shoulders along the soot encrusted walls to orientate ourselves forwards. It smelled of damp and coal dust and we could hear the eerie 'plopping' sounds of water dripping into puddles from the roof above.
As we went deeper into the blackness we considered the possibility of horrors and dangers obscured there. But we continued on sightless, every minute expecting to fall into a bottomless pit or else to bump into some nameless thing. Worst of all was the fear that we were mistaken and the tunnel was still in use. We would suddenly hear a whistle blowing and see a train belting out steam and smoke and chuffing towards us at deadly speed.
At last, with some relief, we saw the light at the far end. We pressed on to the finishing line with increasing confidence as the opening gradually got bigger until we finally arrived at the exit. Sue wanted to be the first out. She leaped into the centre of the track onto what she thought was solid ground only to find it was soft, deep sludge. One of her feet disappeared down into it and came out shoeless.
'Oh no! My mother will kill me!' She cried, hopping onto the grassy embankment. 'They are my best shoes!'
For a few long seconds we both stared in dismay at the mud as it gradually settled back over the hole that had swallowed her shoe. Then I carefully ventured to step over the rail onto a rotting railway sleeper. Feeling it sink into the wet ground a little, I bent down and gingerly reached into the depths of the gloopy mud to reclaim the said shoe. As I pulled it out I felt the sleeper disintegrating beneath my feet, prompting me to step back quickly onto the firmer ground at the side and make my way around the offending sludge pool.
Safely outside the tunnel I handed over the claggy mess, now unrecognisable as footwear, and wiped my hand on my cotton hanky. We sat down together, bathed in sunlight while Sue swabbed the shoe with dock leaves and handfuls of grass. When she had done her best to clean it she held the sorry sight up to the light.
'What do you think?' She said with a wry smile.
I gave it a critical look and replied reassuringly, 'Your mum will never notice.'
We both burst out laughing