Magdalen Green

I was born and brought up in Bellefield Avenue and to me and my generation both here and on Magdalen Green this was to be our playground.

In the early 1930s Bellefield Avenue was to us a pretty wide street no doubt due to the fact that it was devoid of cars parking on the street. This being the case it was the ideal play ground for our many activities. One of the games we played regularly was our interpretation of American baseball, the base was a close entrance, the next base was a lamp post, the next would be a jacket, then another lamp post, then a dust bin lid, another lamp post and then back to final base. At this stage I must name the participants, Bob Pilkington, Jim Hampton, Dave McDonald, Bert Taylor, the Johnston boys, Jimmy Lamb and Torbet McKinnon, we did have one imported player and the was Jim Hackney for Thomson Street, he and I would go through Primary School at Hawkhill School and then Harris Academy, became members of the 3rd Company Boys Brigade etc.

All the names I mention and more provided the "Scottish" football and our home ground was to the east of the swing green at the bottom of Bellefield Avenue, the pitch we played on was named by us "Ibrox" and we played against any team who would answer the challenge. It was not a fancy grass pitch, the surface was the discarded ashes from the near by railway sheds, it was therefore a cinder pitch or as we called it "Danders" a surface which was not the best to fall on, if you had the misfortune to so do then out mothers' had the job of getting out the tweezers and pulling our bits of cinders from scraped knees.

We then had the Magdalen Green tennis courts when during the 1939 to 1945 war became allotments where a few of our gang became part of the nationwide army who "dug for victory" with a lot of help from our fathers.

It was a great place to be brought up, no television, plenty of things to do and strangely enough it "never seemed to rain" and the phrase "we are bored" was never heard.