EASY STREET
suggests this title.
PLAYING HOUSE
A meme has brought back a memory. The illustration too.
The memory is very old; from 1942.
I was evacuated, for the War was at its height
And, at that time, the future was looking far from bright.
I was living in a farm-house, quite an alien place to me,
For I had lived my early life right next-door to the sea.
I remember very little, but two daughters I recall;
One was rather older and one was very small.
I wonder whose idea it was to use the old pigsties
As little Wendy Houses, palaces in disguise.
The sties were clean and whitewashed; not a trace of smell remained;
And they were even watertight because it often rained.
Houses for girls to play in? No-one had one of those!
Except for Shirley Temple and the Princess Margaret Rose.
Now I'd a play-house of my own! It seemed like a dream come true,
And we played at being neighbours for at least a summer through.
We had rickety old furniture and crockery past its best,
And thrown-out pieces of this and that, tea-towels and the rest.
We 'visited' each other, gossiped over the garden wall,
Until, I can't remember why, the game began to pall.
I'd forgotten all about it until that little phrase
'Playing House' brought back a facet of my childhood days.
Another imaginary house here:
