Up the back passage

[yenrod]

Alley way, Entry or Back Passage/way.

 

[ColinJ]

In Coventry when I was a kid (long, long ago), we called them "the back entry" and would regularly "play up the back entry" every night after school , oh such innocent days.

Aaah! I used to play bike Tig (a.k.a. Tag) with my mates in a network of back entries in the Coundon area of Coventry in the 60s. That was great fun. Whoever was IT would close his eyes and count to 100. The others would sprint off out of sight. The rule was that we couldn't leave the entries and go out onto any of the surrounding roads. It wasn't just a case of IT finding another rider, he also had to catch him! It was hard work - we'd probably call it interval training now. If you could get out of sight, there were lots of little nooks where you could rest and get your breath back. Trouble is - most of them were dead-ends so if you got cornered in one of them, you had no chance of escaping. Sometimes we'd play that game for hours. I remember one evening conspiring with other riders to play a trick on IT. We all cleared off round to my house to watch an exciting new TV show called Thunderbirds (!) and left IT to ride the entries alone. IT turned up about 2 hours later absolutely shattered and not particularly happy with us

There isn't much playing going on in the back entries now. Too much like hard work for the little darlings? Well that too ! Residents are paranoid about burglars and so are installing security gates everywhere so nobody can get in or out without a key. All the shortcuts between adjacent streets have gone. Some people living only about 100 metres from the local shops now have to walk a km or more because they don't have keys to all the gates. They don't do it of course - they just drive instead. Drivers leave the cars out front now for convenience. It might be convenient for them, but there are so many cars that they are now parking perpendicular to the kerbs and overhanging the pavements. Not good for pedestrians, and terrible for those with children in buggies, or disabled people in wheelchairs or electric scooters...

The entries all have garages along them but nobody bothers to use them any more. Many families don't even keep their bins out there now to save having to wheel them round the front to be emptied. By the way - how come binmen used to go round the back for the bins when they had to be carried but now the bins have wheels they don't bother? I was amazed when I found out that elderly residents (e.g. my old mum ) were having to get neighbours to move the bins for them. All the binmen do now is to slot the bins onto the back of the waste trucks and let hydraulics do all the work - flipping heck! Health and Safety rule #327 - no person in council employ shall wheel a bin when there is a frail old person available to dump the job on. I.e. the person whose council tax is actually supposed to be paying for said service.

 

[Pete]

I don't think either 'snicket' (Yorkshire) or 'twitten' (Southeast) are the right words here, don't they refer to a very narrow passageway between houses or gardens, not wide enough for a car?

We don't have the beast round these parts, too suburban middle-class: but I remember them well from my days in Bradford (1970s). I also can't remember a specific word for them, unless it was "xxxxx Road Back" or "Back xxxxx Road" ("xxxxx Road" being the street round the front). I think that, in latter upwardly-mobile years, residents didn't like to admit that such places existed, so they were in no hurry to refer to them by any name.

Admit it Fnaar! You were hoping for saucy innuendo in every reply and you're still waiting....!

 

[Fnaar]

Rumbled by Pete!

 

[Pete]

Rumbled by Pete!

If it's all the same to you, old chap, I'd sooner not....

 

[John Ponting]

Back lane where I live
gennel where I was born.

Sheffield Council offer the following definition for assessing responsibility:

What Are Gennels?

Pedestrian only footpaths that link one area to another.​

 

[Tetedelacourse]

Lane here. Well, in my old 'hoods in Glasgow and Edinburgh. Not much call for lanes in Fife since no-one wants to live there, there's plenty of space for all.

 

[col]

Back alley,or lane here.

 

[bonj2]

Cob or breadcake. Prefer cob.

 

[Abitrary]

er, back alley... is this a trick question?

 

[Noodley]

Sounds like a "Closie"

 

[Abitrary]

hmmm, this could become a variation on the perennial 'knock down ginger' debate

 

[mondobongo]

As a kid growing up in Liverpool we called them 'Enogs'.

 

[Abitrary]

As a kid growing up in Liverpool we called them 'Enogs'.

C'mon. hee hee hee

 

[punkypossum]

Back alley or alleyway. AFAIC a ginnel is the narrow covered passage between two terraced houses - but I might be wrong!