ABSTRACT
Traffic conditions have put an end to many of the seasonal pastimes such as marbles, whip-tops, hoop bowling and roller skating which were once carried on in the streets. Hopskotch is played, however, in suburban areas of Cambridge and occasionally children are seen on roller skates. The trap was placed on the ground and two boundary lines were fixed to mark the area into which the ball had to fall after it had been struck. The first player then placed the ball on the ‘bowl’ of the spoon-shaped trigger, hit the handle sharply with the bat and then struck the ball, as it rose, towards the boundaries. A modern form of Platters has been recorded from a 21-year-old man who remembers playing it in a Cambridge school in 1954-6. Two teams were chosen and a pile of square pieces of wood, of diminishing sizes, was stacked up in a pyramid on the ground.
