Children have always put fairness, or treating someone fairly as most important, you often hear them shout, ‘That’s not fair’ or such as that.
It was even very desirable to have a fair complexion or fair hair, even blond.
David Ralph, who lived opposite Pound Pond, was such a boy, he was fair skinned and had blond hair, we all liked David—he was also amazingly good at marbles.
In school, owning marbles was like having money, it was currency, you could ‘swap’ them for anything, fag cards and milk tops, and even sweets.
On this day his pockets were heavy with marbles, he had beaten everyone, and now he had run out of boys to play with, and they had all drifted away.
Children have an easy remedy for this, it is called ‘scrambles’. Our David shouted ‘scrambles’ and threw his marbles in the air. The playground was soon a heaving mass of children gathering as many marbles as they could, soon the games were in full flow again.
He was only ten, but he already knew, that to children, sharing was better than simply keeping.
Then we all grew up, and a new slogan crept in.
‘All’s fair in love and war’
Madeinchertsey 