The metal gate to our garden was not in very good shape – it creaked and squeaked. You could hang on to both door handles and try to make the gate swing forward and backward making these terrible sounds. Over time we developed an arsenal of acrobatic ways to sit on the gate, hang upside down from it etc. –we had names for these  ways– I remember ‘the spiral of death’, ‘the screamer’, ‘the singing cat’. You were old enough to start with easy swinging when you were tall enough to reach the handles… Obviously the spiral of death was the pinnacle of this game, reserved for the older children. We also tried to make the gate squeek in order to get reactions out of passers by, which did work occasionally. Another thing was to have as many children as possible holding on to the gate and one would move it using a rope around the door handles. One day the gate was restored, no squeeks and new paint – it wasn’t the same after that, we stopped playing on it.