Give 'em enough rope

I was lucky enough to grow up in a house with a garden which had some trees.  Nowadays I’d like them for the associated wildlife and their natural comfort – watching over us like gentle guardians, keeping the secrets of past decades safe in their silent, living presence.  But when I was a nipper there was really only one good reason why I liked our trees - well, one tree in particular.  And that was for the ‘Tarzan Rope’ suspended from it.

I don’t know whose idea it was to hang this rope from the huge central tree – mine was a family with no boys  – but my dad naturally got the job of fixing a chain to a high bough, from which he attached a very strong piece of long rope. This hung down at double thickness and was then knotted in several places.  The specially adapted piece of kit to go with it was a section of a broom-handle, just over a foot long I reckon.  All you had to do was position this wooden bar into one of the gaps between two knots, place your hands either side, lift your feet from the ground and….off you went…. Hours of free entertainment would ensue.

There were several different manoevres that my big sister and I invented and soon became experts at.  One was to walk back as far as you could in a straight line and simply swing back and forth.   A better one was to start off close to the tree trunk, run a short distance outwardly from it and then lift your feet off the ground so that you could swing around the tree in an almost complete circle, touching down again at the opposite side of the trunk.  A slightly dodgy and less popular variation was to position the bar so low down that you could hook your legs over it, effectively sitting on it and hanging on to just the rope.  This wasn’t much fun though because you couldn’t really go anywhere on it.  You’d just hang there in a highly uncomfortable sitting position trying not to look bored and ungainly, not to mention the risk of getting rope-burn in a most undesirable place.

But the best, and most impressive move of all was ‘twizzling’.  This was when you did the circular swing around the tree but incorporated some mini 360 degree spins, or ‘twizzles’ as we called them, along the way.  This took bravery, skill and stupidity.  In the relative safety of my own garden I was lithe and fearless and became a bit of a twizzling champion, sometimes managing to spin repeatedly from start to finish.  It’s funny how I didn’t seem to get so dizzy in those days.  Now I only have to turn around too quickly in the shower and I need a sit-down and a cuppa to help regain my balance.

As this was chiefly a Summer activity my sister and could usually be found throwing ourselves around this solid old tree in shorts and T-shirts, barefoot and bare-headed.  No crash helmets, no safety harness, no knee-pads.  The big old branch so many feet above sometimes creaked ominously, and I frequently got my planned trajectories hopelessly wrong, ending up slammed against the trunk with nothing to protect me from the blow except my epidermis.  I hit my head countless times, got blisters on my palms and grazes on my knees, but still I adored that Tarzan Rope. 

Unfortunately it was responsible for more casualties than just my bruises and temporary braining.  I was the lucky one.  My sister fell off and fractured a toe.  My cousin misjudged things too, came off the rope and landed on a sharp stone which embedded itself very painfully in one buttock.  And a neighbour’s awkward tumble resulted in a huge gash to her arm.  I remember my mum running out to give her a small glass of brandy.  I’ve no idea what her parents must have thought when she was delivered home to them, oozing blood and smelling lightly of alcohol - but this was the '70s after all.  It’s funny how I can still remember the way the trail of blood drips led from the tree, down our garden path, all around the house and to her front door over the road.  Those dark claret stains stayed on the pavings for several weeks that hot, dry Summer.  I think her scar lasted some time longer. 

Eventually we just grew too big for such shenanigans and my parents may have started fretting about our unfortunate, injured friends and family, even though I don’t remember them ever expressing anything outwardly other than genuine sympathy to the victims.  The Tarzan Rope was left to slowly rot away and those of us who used to swing on it like deranged whirling dervishes learned that there were even better things to spin: little black slabs of vinyl that twizzled at 45rpm.