"Dip, Dip, Dip,

My Blue Ship..."
Along with this, and the wording becomes hazy after the opening couplet in my 63-year-old (today!) memory, the first bits of doggerel I recall are:

"G's for the Guards in their scarlet & gold,

A truly magnificent sight to behold !"
pitter-pattered out in the quadrangle of Layton Infants' School along with schoolmates with a couplet each to recite (only Tony Gilbert managed to fluff his lines, and burst into tears as he often did).

And an old favourite:

"I had a little nut tree.

Nothing would it bear,

But a silver nutmeg,

And a golden pear.

The King of Spain's daughter

Came to visit me,

And all for the sake

Of my little nut tree!"

Thinking back to my infancy, how I agree with both T.S. Eliot & Ezra Pound that it is the lilt of language which entices us first - sheer enjoyment precedes meaningful understanding.

Still after fifty or so years of reading and puzzling over, I am enjoying Four Quartets and The Pisan Cantos as well as reams of other poetry and other examples of artistic expression.

I am delighted to learn that fellow investigator Steve Roud is working on a book on playground lore which sounds as though it will update the invaluable earlier work by the Opies which I enjoyed during my teacher-training in the early 1970s.

I suspect Steve Roud has his focus on the experience of the British Isles, but he says he will be delighted to hear of any rhymes or games. past or present, via his website, www.loreoftheplayground.co.uk, or via his e-mail sroud@btinternet.com

He would be particularly pleased to hear from anyone with children or grandchildren between the ages of seven and eleven who are willing to be interviewed about their current playground games. Do English-speaking children in former colonies or now Commonwealth countries have interesting local variants?

I connect playground chants and childhood rhymes with the posts of Poet Laureate and Oxford Professor of Poetry, both posts recently awarded to women (only Ruth Padel has since resigned the Oxford post after accusations of academic skulduggery) for the first time in Britain because I suspect that, like me, the long-ago snatches of doggerel will have been the first introduction to poetry of both Carol Ann Duffy, new UK Poet Laureate, and Ruth Padel, now no longer, sadly, to become Oxford's Professor of Poetry.

From my male perspective it always seemed that the "lore of the playground" was passed on most sacredly by girls, and the plethora of superb women poets whose work we so enjoy currently is a direct result of their mastery of the babble of childhood.

I shall return to this topic as mining my earlier life is a major inspiration for my writing.

I should like to hear the thoughts of others - are the Arts at the centre of your life, as they are in mine, and if so, why so?