Archive - So far so so-so

Clackers in the 70s were the best... 2 quite hefty plastic balls on loose strings attached to a tab.

The objective was to get the balls into a gentle occillating rhythm, clacking them together slowly at first, then with increaing speed and force until you could make the leap of faith and whack them so hard that they defied gravity and met above your wrist, then up and down they'd go in a crescendo of noise that sounded like a castrato navvy's road drill.

You'd keep this going until you felt gravity was getting the better of you, then bring them back to a controlled slow clack, keeping the strings taught at all times.

If the strings slackened the balls would crash down ferociously onto your carpo-metacarpals, requiring bandages and splints to be worn as an ambiguous badge of honour to school, indicating that you had faught valiantly in the field but had been ultimately overwhelmed by the odds.

Then they went and replaced the strings with rigid plastic, enabling any Jenny-come-lately to indulge in the benefits of round-the-clock clacking without exposure to any of the risks, and everybody lost interest and resorted to cosh pop-socks instead.

It was a big girl thing... a rite of passage that passed the time during that long, slow year that fell between hop-scotch and binge-drinking