I walk past my old primary school everyday on the way into college, and I am shocked by how much a place could change in just 5 years. It was rather large, with a shelter and football pitch at one end, and a MASSIVE plain, boring, flat ground area with a few benches. In my last year there, the roof playground opened for the year 5's and 6's to play in. At the time, I was only in year 6, so I didn't even get to have my fun there for very long. It was just another footie pitch, with... you guessed it, a few benches.

Now... The main playground has one, MASSIVE wooden adventure, climbing frame thingy, a football pitch with proper goals, and a 4 metre high fence around it! Its not fair! For obvious reasons, I can't see the roof playground from the ground, but judging by the sound of the amount of screaming and laughing I can hear coming from there, thats changed too.

Back in the day (Oh gawd, I feel old... ^_^;, all I had for entertainment was a tennis ball, the one or two mate I did have back then and a wall. We spent pretty much all lunch time playing "Pat Ball" against the wall, or chucking from one end of the play ground to the other. The boys wouldn't let girls play football, and when they did, they went out of their way t make sure we got a serious beating. -_-#

When the roof play ground opened, it was the same, except you couldn't really play "Pat Ball" because of the really low net over the top to stop footballs going over. So... we sat in the shelter bit reading. Or... talking. Every now and then, to the dinner ladies disapproval, we would have a water fight. This often endded up with us getting in one hell of a lot of trouble, but hey, it was kinda fun!

We also made up many games, one called "Freedom". It was like a rip off of "Had!", but with a few extra... rules. It included a bench for those wondering. Me and my friend Jodie, who were at the time major Harry Potter fans set up a club... (Oh gawd, now I feel like a nerd...).

Of course, at my school, the so called "CofE" school, there was also tons of bullies. Fun was limited if you had your stuff stolen, or if you were pushed out of every game for being different.

The playground at Haggerston (my secondary school) was also pretty large. And plain, but by that age, everyone had grown out of playing the games we used to play and stuff. Pretty much every lunch time was sitting around on the grass laughing, eatting, and reading, and... getting on with studies. "Pat Ball" turned into "21 Dares" or one or two card games.

So yeah, that sums up what it was like in my playground, and what it is like now (just not in that order). So, what was your playground like back in the day? If you're still in lower school, could remind us of what it was like?

Wow... its long... Sorwy...