Darren Melsom

No Ball Games Darren Melsom

'No Ball Games' is set in the late 1970s and early 1980s in a Britain stretched by the joys of a Royal Wedding and Silver Jubilee celebrations, as well as the conflict of racial and social tensions that simmered beneath them. Spanning six years, 'No Ball Games' begins and ends in a small, but lively council estate in the West Midlands. The narrative chronicles the growth of an unlikely group of youngsters as they try to come to terms with the prejudice and contradictions that surround them. Two identical twins and their irate sister trying to understand their feared father; a girl desperate for the romantic attention of the Spanish goalkeeping heartthrob living next door; a boy who secretly loves speedway more than football and the girl over the road who claims to know the truth behind Father Christmas, all serve to complicate the already confusing life of Dean, a boy terrorised by the strange rhythmic tapping sounds that seem to be coming from the other side of his bedroom wall, ashamed to get his first kiss from the girl he most wants it from in the whole world and devastated by being caught stealing in his mother's vegetable shop. With football, music and a surprising new interest in reading, shaping much of what Dean understands around him, the boy is thrown further and further into an abyss of confusing loss as he worries about a possible future without his family and friends around him. The story picks out the key events that guide the group of kids through to that time of their lives where they teeter on the verge of their teenage years at High School. With the help of each other's erratic yet reassuring presence, they are ultimately able to reconcile themselves with the loss of loved ones, the revelation of tragic truths and the ultimate separation of a friendship group that had promised to be there forever. The honest naivety of their schemes and plans provides a welcome reality check for their parents who are increasingly forced to step back and allow their kids to shape their own futures for themselves. 'No Ball Games' offers a light hearted, yet subtly critical observation of the conventions and characters that made up such communities at that time. 'No Ball Games' is trivial, yet deliberate. It is nonchalant, yet perceptive. It is ridiculous, yet heart breaking. 'Coming-of-age' has to be all of these things if we are to understand anything about the people around us and indeed ourselves, as adults.