Playground space was always at a premium in my younger days. The private school I went to was not one of those affluent, serene, tie and blazer scenes laid out over a sweeping campus grounds. Ours was more so a small, grungy, religious collective school, set around an open, crumbling ash-felt rectangle. A high, cyclone fence separated the couple of less-than-regulation size basketball courts on one side from a nondescript square on the other that would be used for outdoor school assemblies and epic cricket matches. At the bottom of this, was a raised square, which was laid with tan-bark and comparable in size to a 7 spot carpark. Sitting in the middle of this was a wooden jungle gym, complete with a swing, two slides, monkey bars and a swinging, wood slat bridge.
For the several years prior to adolescence, whilst we were not senior enough to fight off our elders for the use of the basketball courts, this was the recess area we made ours. And there was just one game we played on it, at both morning and afternoon recess, everyday – King.
