It was 50 years since I had played in a similar game. The shock of the realisation that half a century had passed slowed my step, almost as if I had suddenly aged.
There was a frisson of excitement from the parents of the yellow team as Dave – I know his name because of the collective “Go on Dave”, but then again it could have been Dale or Dane – burst through with the ball, but, just like I did all those years ago (minus the burst), fluffed his lines and skewed his shot wide of the mini-goal.
I shudder in recognition that he and the rest of the kids playing in the park won’t be the sons or daughters of those I went to school with, but the grandchildren.
I speed up again, perhaps as some form of attempt at a denial of the ageing process, and am briefly distracted by Easter displays still in the windows of a few homes – “We can keep it up until May”.
I notice a cock-eyed cactus peering out of one house as the clip-clopping of a horse halts the traffic, and as I wait for it to pass I mull over the changes I have witnessed.
A sweet shop has gone from the village, a baker (two!), a chippy, a corner shop… all now houses which, looking around, almost every building constructed over the past five decades seems to be.
Slow walkers force a change in direction – I can’t face over-taking them - and I must look as if I am planning a minor crime as I stumble left, right, back and forth, eventually deciding to head on up the narrow road, regularly changing sides as traffic approaches from in front and behind.
Lambs, perhaps unaware of their fate, embrace the midday sun, and a couple of horses look on hopefully as I pass, but sadly for them I am not their feeder.
A woman hanging out washing speaks to me and I tell her that when I was a child our cat Susie had four kittens and one of them lived in the house she now occupies. He froze to death in the snow-covered field, I add, which surprises her and gets me thinking about the twists our lives – in his case, death – are shaped around.
I choose to go left (or does it choose me?) and wonder about the turns I have made. Wrong turns, right turns, sometimes just turns that meant little. Who really knows until life plays out its final scenes?
The easier option, I decide, is to make peace with your lot, your place and likely destination, and always go straight on, but I have never been able to do that and today I feel the itch of a yet unspecified twist beckoning me.
I wonder how the youngsters playing football will feel when 50 years passes and what type of world they will be in. What twists and turns will their lives take and how much will they be in control of them?
As I head for home, I wish I could go back and take another shot at goal, perhaps change my destiny.
In 2076, will young Dave and the rest of the still full of hope young footballers in the park feel the same?