We're playing "French cricket", that funny little backyard anachronism where your legs are wickets and "baulking" is prohiber!

The French are a proud lot and every few years claim "criquet" was born on their side of the channel about 80 years before any stout yeoman smacked that first ram's testical, or whatever was used for a ball back then, down to cow corner.

Understandably, the English simply ignore the gall of the Gauls and take comfort in the fact they beat the home team (comprising Brits anyway) by 158 runs at the Velodrome de Vincennes in 1900, to this day the only Olympic cricket match.

One wonders, however - like word of a legitimate heir to the throne being raised by a woodcutter and his goodly wife deep in the forest - whether the ambiguous origins of the game haven't always gnawed at the establishment, hence the extant Francophobia of the modern era.

Our commentators still mock an unintended shot as a "French cut", suggesting only beret-wearing halfwits, who, as General Webb, from The Last of the Mohicans, said; "would rather eat and make love with their faces than fight", could possibly be responsible for such an on-field abomination.

Similarly, the bastardisation we're playing this afternoon seems designed for those who don't take cricket particularly seriously, so it's apt we're using the bat we scored for two bucks at the tip shop. It was plundered from a discarded kit bag along with a couple of stumps, a lone bail and a mallet (we left the nasty collection of dented protectors for some other needy family).

The little Gray-Nicolls is actually the best slugger we've ever had. The kids can't get over its generous sweet spot and it makes me yearn for my old County. I loved that slab of Dennis Lillee-endorsed willow so much I used to polish it with Mr Sheen on Friday nights before my junior fixtures, which, in hindsight, would explain my propensity for nicking out to slips every Saturday morning.

Although French cricket is the latest craze for our lot, it's just one in a quiver of quasi-sports we inflict on them.

Their favourite is DONKEY, a fiercely competitive catching and spelling game (again, no baulking!) where each time you drop the ball you gain a letter of said equine until you're out. There's an abbreviated version called ASS and our own special take on the discipline called DOHERTY (the game where everyone's a loser).

The kids are also partial to piggy in the middle, stuck in the mud and hey presto! - a handstand game all the rage until a spate of acute wrist injuries.

It's always heartening to witness how much our easily bored and device-addicted children enjoy these snatches of family time, so perfectly engineered for daylight saving, mown grass, a still-sprightly mother and a slightly sozzled father.

To be honest, though, our motivation for instituting these lazy grabs of cardio is probably more about nostalgia than health because my wife and I are both from country towns where such activities were commonplace across the backyards and front lawns of what were once known as "neighbourhoods".

Sociologists love to tear down urbanisation as the reason for the disintegration of the neighbourhood but it's not just the big, bad cities which have their problems.

Although we're part of a lovely community, the far-flung nature of our village and a demographic skewed towards older tree-changers and rusting rusted-on locals, means the children don't have those triple-fronted brick-veneer breeding grounds of our own youth, where you'd fall over a kid as soon as you stepped out the (glass-panelled) front door.

One afternoon, you'd find yourself playing marbles for keeps up and down the obstacle course of Tony Marco's undulating block and the next, sinking into bean bags while watching Star Blazers and eating 5pm fried rice over at Geoff Chow's place.

Sometimes, for reasons unknown, you'd be adopted by some older kids who'd introduce you to a whole new world of sophistication.

The Kennedy brothers lived two back fences up from my place and wouldn't give me the time of day at school but one summer allowed me into the inner sanctum of their rumpus room and blew my mind with a steady stream of Bruce Lee, Chuck Norris and Cheech & Chong.

Not surprisingly, given the nature of the content, it wasn't long before this cultural odyssey began to be accompanied by substance abuse and the frequency of my visits became more about my next fix rather than the next Lone Wolf McQuade instalment.

Those Kennedy boys put sugar in their Milo ... talk about entering the brown and white dragon.

But that was thing about that pair, they were the local cool cats, the trend-setters.

In fact, exactly 37 years ago this week, their lounge room was ground-zero for one of the most significant events ever held in our neighbourhood - the premiere of the music video for Michael Jackson's Thriller.

Forget the moon landing, this was the moonwalker in peak '80s form and it seemed the whole town, in our febrile, unapologetic lust for all things Americana, was crammed in front of the Kennedys' (good) TV, preparing to be dazzled by zombie dancing and unprecedented production values.

Trouble was, even as a 10-year-old, I found the whole Thriller film clip a bit infantile, so I skived off to that familiar rumpus room and laughed myself silly to a Bill Cosby record.

To this day, I'm not sure which was the lesser of two evils.

And now, so far from that heady night in 1983, it's with a touch of melancholy we play our familial French cricket because I know our (splendidly) isolated children are missing out on those strange delights of a suburban childhood.

But things do change.

Our village is growing and vacant blocks are suddenly alive with excavators preparing the ground for house slabs; flatbeds are dropping off trusses, surveyors are pounding in pegs.

This afternoon, in a long-dormant paddock just across the road, a family is visiting the acre in which they've decided to put down roots. They walk the boundary and drink in the big sky the compromise of country living can provide.

And into that sky trickles a kite tailed by the giggles of a brand new kid.

Welcome to the neighbourhood.