"Marbles, draw a circle in the dirt and place your marbles inside, let battle commence. How ever many marbles you knocked out of the cirlce, you kept them, they were yours.
My greatest ambition was to be the owner of the Rolls Royce of marbles, the ultimate weapon, more deadly than school dinners. It was a round steel ball and it was called the Bomper. You could do some serious damage with this. You always kept it in your pocket until the very last moment because no one wanted to play against a boy with a Bomper.
It had taken all my skill and courage just to be the owner of such an important object. I used to roll it down the road and chase after it like a pet, sometimes terrified it would fall down the drain. Often I would see small groups of children staring down the drain cover totally distraught because their prized possession had disappeared. Not me!"
