IS it just me, or do children not play out any more?

Have the climate of fear, the smart phone or good old Elf and Safety really put paid to all the games we used to play when I was little?

When did you last see a group of girls endlessly twirling a length of washing line and chanting “All in together girls, jolly nice weather girls” as they skipped for hours at a time, or a load of lads having lots of jolly red-cheeked fun playing British Bulldog from dawn till dusk?

I recall a local football coach in the late 1970s shaking his head at the notion that boys should have to do regular fitness training rather than working on their skills.

He said: “ Bairns are always fleeing aboot on their bikes, running to the shops or chasing each other roond the field. There’s nee need for fitness training.“

I fear that sound reasoning does not apply now.

I cannot help feeling that we are breeding a generation of fat and pasty children, addicted to their phones and the games thereon, who never go out and take part in playground games.

Stern-faced “experts” point the finger at too much sugar in pop and cake for the explosion in chubby children, but I think it’s because the bairns have either forgotten, or are not allowed, to get hot and sweaty burning off energy in the playground.

As far as I can recall, no-one died or was even taken to hospital at my school during robust games of fish and bait or kingy, the rules of which escape me now, but which certainly involved the very real risk of boys being thrown heavily to the ground, or being whacked in the face with a high speed tennis ball.

There was occasionally blood from a squashed nose, but there was never a queue of vengeful parents trying to sue the school for neglect or have the tennis ball thrower expelled.

Children don’t seem to walk to school anymore either, but are taken from front door to school door by car by parents who are depriving their children of vital exercise.

If either of my parents had turned up at my primary school, to which I walked a mile every day from the age of five, with hordes of other unaccompanied children, I would have assumed that someone had died or that I was in really serious trouble.

There’s a social history side to all this too, for skipping and two-ball songs and games that have been mystically handed down through generations of children are in danger of being forgotten in the world of electronic shoot em up mayhem.

In fact, I don’t think I have ever seen any girls playing two-ball in all my time in this part of the world.

As the name suggests, it involves bouncing two balls off a wall one after the other and catching them, while chanting a succession of nonsensical rhymes about Nebuchadnezzar, King of the Jews buying his wife a pair of shoes, and incorporating throws with left hand, right hand, under the legs, behind the back etc. without missing a beat.

Games usually only came to an end when the unfortunate occupant of the house whose wall was being used as a bouncing board came out to remonstrate, waving a walking stick and threatening to tell your mother.

Only girls played two ball, and the same applied to skipping, where many of the songs used to time jumps over the flailing rope were appropriated by football fans as chants on the terraces.

“We’ve won the cup, we’ve won the cup, ee-aye-addio we’ve won the cup”, of course started life as “The farmer’s in his den.”

Other skipping songs included the definitely 50s number “Bubble car, bubble car number 48. I went round the corner and screeched on the brakes!” and what about “There’s somebody under the bed, whoever can it be, I had a shock of nerves so (a friend’s name) came in to me. (The friend’s name) lit the candle, under the bed she looked. Get out you fool, get out you fool, there’s somebody under the bed...and so on?

Some of the skipping songs favoured by my sister and her friends were somewhat risque, with one I recall containing the immortal lines: “Bow to the Lord Mayor, curtsey to the Queen, show your knickers to the football team!”

Such wanton behaviour would doubtless lead to exclusion and hours of counselling these days.