Featured Writer: Gigi Jaatinen

It’s been a long time since I saw the game of British Bulldog being played, anywhere really. The last time was back in Suva Grammar School in Fiji, under the trees at one end of our school grounds before the staff quarters began.

British Bulldog

In that shady natural playing field, we kids would run each other down amidst spirited competition, but not without joy and laughter. There would be that churning fear as you began to run through the middle, dodging the bulldogs, and the childish elation and glee as you reached the other side, free.

Class 5 Suva Grammar School

This afternoon, after decades of living in other countries, I stroll barefoot across the undulating lawns of the Sheraton Resort on Denarau Island, Fiji. And then I stop dead in my tracks. There, supervised by a female resort staff, are about a dozen white kids, all visitors, engaged in that long-forgotten game of British Bulldog.

I stand and watch for a long while, immersed in the game being played now, and when I eventually turn and head back to my studio at the Radisson Blu on Denarau Island, I am softly swaddled in the warm memories of a childhood I was lucky to have.

Fiji Islands

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