Havers – a special ball game
Yeah yeah yeah – I know – it is not strictly Kenton Bar related but many of us did go to Kenton School so here goes…..
Yes Kenton School did have a game that rivals Eton's wall game AND Harry Potters Quiddich - we had the magical game of "Havers" - The brief rules were that a ball was kicked between in informal set of goals, each player defending their own "goal". The Goal consisted of either a school bag (for the posh kids) or a haversack or school sweater placed on the ground. Havers was usually played on the tennis courts or in the lower yard. I even remember it played with a stone replacing the ball on those days no one could nick a tennis ball to play with.
AS a side note – most kids had the usual brownish coloured haversack and posh kids has the RAF blue one….we used to paint the lid of the haversack in an attempt to to waterproof and personalize it. I myself painted mine with metallic blue enamel paint (Hammerite actually stolen from my Dad's tool box) and emblazoned it with the word “Skins” in a nice yellow.
Here is a picture of a haversack – NO ONE kept the top strap as shown. There were two other straps on the back that allowed you to don the haver like a rucksack. Normal kids removed one strap and had the haver over the right shoulder only. Weirdos had the two straps and risked being maligned and victimized from the outset.
Anyone else remember havers?
Mensforth – any research on this subject?
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There was a kid on the estate, Billy Arm or was it elbow,leg? something like that anyway, who was good at art.He would paint the flap for you to your specified design for 50p.
ReplyDeleteI recall one horrible posh kid paid to have'Lynyrd Skynyrd' painted on(they were a ghastly hippy type of band from the 70's)-anyway this Billy whatever kid missed out the second 'y' in the words, spelling it wrong.The horrible posh kid still had to pay despite his protestations and pranced about with this on his hava looking like a right dork(which he would have anyway even if it was spelt correctly) Not only this at that time everybody else was into punk/new wave stuff. I do believe the horrible posh kid had a RAF coloured hava with 2 straps on....
Whilst patrolling the rampards of Castle Kenton Bar in the dead of night the other day I overheard 2 people talking bout the pyry...one was explaining how kids(No doubt ruffians from the bottom) would pinch other kids(No doubt softy posh types like Britt or Snappy from up the top) havas/bags and climb up the pyry and hang them on the apex for the vindictive purpose of causing pain and suffering...
ReplyDeleteAs the master says,'Normal kids removed one strap and had the haver over the right shoulder only. Weirdos had the two straps and risked being maligned and victimized from the outset.'unfortunatly for these posh'wierdo' types from Wyndham etc their mummy and daddy wouldnt let them take off the extra strap(officer type mentality from WW2) so they tried to look 'cool' and 'streetwise' by using one strap like the ruffians from everywhere else...but this left one strap hanging down loose...a dead give away... this attracted the attention of bullyboys(from Hillsview and down the bottom of Kenton Bar)...they would creep up behind these posh geek types and put one of their filthy sabogs(feet) into the hanging strap and push down real horrorshow HOOOOMPH! making the victim near break their back with the force jarring them upright KATOOOOOMPH!!! causing pain and suffering and possibly making them bite their posh tongues also...hmmmmm.... I of course being a cubscout type spent every playtime tring to prevent this from happening...I was like their guardian angel...I became known as'Havaman...'
ReplyDeleteReal posh kids (Like Mr. Atkinson's Son) didn't have a Haversack, they had a Briefcase.
ReplyDelete