Manhunt

When we lived in Riyadh in Saudi we used to play Manhunt around the compound. It was pretty simple rules, you obviously couldn't leave the compound, there were two teams, one team hid the other team had to get you. It sounds pretty unexciting, but at night, on the sand, around the pools and the tennis courts, in the backs of people gardens and down streets it was pretty scary to be honest..

Saudi was already a pretty creepy place to be at night, especially when the Saudi prayers Salah was being sung/shouted out of speakers all around the country. And we took this game pretty seriously. There would have been at least ten of us on each team, and we used to scare ourselves to death playing it, crouching behind walls and under rocks watching the other teams run past.

I remember this truck which used to pile out thick which went all around the compound, I don't even know why it used to go round, but it did every morning and late every night. One time when I was walking down one of the empty back roads, thinking of somewhere decent to run to, I saw black silhouettes coming out of the smoke, three guys, one with a gun. Now, admittedly us kids didn't fully understand the risks of being on a British compound, but we knew what terrorists were. I don't know what made me more terrified to be honest though, the fact that three strangers were going through the smoke with a gun, or the realisation that it was some of the other team, one with a BB gun, and I had no where to run.

That's how I have scar on my left leg just above my knee, from climbing over a wall with wire on top into one of the empty houses' back garden. It was pretty intense for a dramatized version of Hide and Seek.