The Game

There was a girl who lived on my road when I was growing up and we would always be playing out together. One time, we balled up loads of grass from the green in the middle of the cul-de-sac we lived on and 'painted' the road sign green. I remember there was definitely a distinctly green tinge to it for a few days afterward.

Another thing we did was pretend we were estate agents and go round the road 'selling' the houses to each other by loudly proclaiming what a 'wonderful gold letterbox' this one had, for example.

We had lots of games of this sort. But at some point we came up with The Game and honestly must have played it for a few years. Whenever we were playing out or at each other's houses, we'd check we were out of earshot of everyone and start playing The Game. It was top secret, although I'm not really sure why.

The basic outline of The Game went like this. We were grown ups. My friend was married to Gary Barlow from Take That. I was married to Mark Owen from Take That.

And that, in essence, was the whole game. I remember that we both divorced our husbands later because they were cheating on us. I think my new husband was called John. I remember my friend being more ethnically enlightened than I and calling her new husband Ahmed, or something like that.

We both had children with our first husbands, I think I had a girl. Mark was constantly trying to win me back but I was happily settled with John. At one time, there was a heated moment when my character in The Game, fell out with my friend's when she and Mark fell in love briefly and tried to have my child taken into care.

We clearly had both been watching waaaay too much Eastenders....

I was very shocked when I heard my friend announce that, as a grown woman, in The Game, she was not going to wear any make-up! But all grown up women wear make-up, don't they?! It was the first time I had ever heard the idea suggested that a grown woman was not going to wear make-up! I just thought everyone did it.

One time, when we played The Game, we were teachers in a school and spent the whole time speaking in robot voices. I'm not sure how the two are connected, teaching and speaking like robots. Maybe that's what we thought they did....?

The secret of The Game was highly guarded. My brother once hid in my wardrobe in my room so that when my friend and I went in there to play, he could listen in and discover the secret of what The Game was. Except that day we decided to play Neighbours instead, so I was Gabby and my friend was Lauren and we picked up from the last episode which had been on. After ten minutes or so, my brother burst out of the wardrobe, laughing and saying he knew what The Game was! We were like, 'The joke's on you actually, because we were just playing Neighbours. We weren't even playing The Game!'

But now I've blurted it out. I've just said it, as though it wasn't the most closely guarded secret of my childhood. I feel a bit bad towards The Game, that I've blogged about it in such a casual manner. Well, I had to get it off my chest. The weight of carrying the secret for so long was becoming too much.....