Riding on 26 inch wheels....those were the days.
Gerrin yer Fingers and Tops
Making massive piles of grass clippings at primary school and spending half and hour being the a-team and jumping into them.
I had a shotgun certificate at 13.
Fillings with no anaesthetic at all!!
Same here--was telling my current dentist about it (he is probably 32 years old) and he was incredulous
Starting at about 8 years old, my dad saddled up one of the horses every afternoon after school and I'd ride off across the ranch to round up errant cattle for milking and feeding. When I reached about 11 or 12, I was allowed to carry his 30-30 Winchester in a saddle scabbard in case I came across Wiley Coyote & company (who regularly marauded newborn calves and chickens). I was pretty sure I looked just like John Wayne.
Gentlemen's evening at the Rowing Club.
never mind gentlemens [i]evenings[/i], we used to have em at dinnertime in the local working mens club!! 😀
robinsons golliwogs.
"Fillings with no anaesthetic"
I still do that:-) .
Going home from school on my horse..
Tom Howard - Snakebite, Have seen this used as a drama warmup game and still deployed in the scouts.
Walking to and from school in a foot of snow.
Then a cross country run.
Making a gokart from old pram wheels, and
riding it down the railway embankments
"Fillings with no anaesthetic"
I still do that:-) .
I did it then because that's just what the small town dentist did--can't imagine doing it now--makes me cringe to think about it
Conkers and sore knuckles
Playing 24 a side football up the local playing fields. Using bikes, coats or jumpers as posts, the game ended when it was too dark to see the ball.
Playing dodgeball with basketballs during p.e,
If you were caught cheating you were stood alone at the wall while the entire opposite team had a shot at you, all at once.
Pirates, brilliant fun! sadly banned when somebody fell and broke their finger.
Good new Star Wars films?
I have fond memories of helping nearby farmers make hay, drinking too much cider and falling from the top of the stack into soft hay below... everyone makes smelly silage these days!!
Oh and another thing...
Which school timmys? that's my neck of the woods.
if youth is my mid to late teens,bushy fannys and women who actually wore stockings on a night out…awesome..
Sailing all day from dawn to dusk on a Starfish (early Laser) in the Florida Keys 😀
It will never happen again 🙁
I saw a tiny fairground shooting range thing along with a handful of stalls in a town square in the French Pyrenees in the early 90s. They too were .22 rifles but they weren't tied down at all! You could've grabbed one and run off.
Bikebouy - reminds me, whole days out at sea (the med) on windsurfers without a life jacket (and in budgies 😳 ). No wonder I am a bit of a helmet rebel!!!
Was hit by a ricochet in the air gun range at CLSA game fair once and another bloke was hit in the back. Good job that didn't make the papers.......
.....a mate who had a folding .410 in his golf bag. Nutter! Hiding the dead rabbits was funny to watch though.
Fillings with no anesthetic at all!!
Our village dentist used gas practically every visit. 1...2.... then waking up on the couch at home! Almost looked forward to it.
Building Nov 5th bonfires was entirely the local kids responsibility, cue rival gangs armed with axes hacking down ever larger trees and carrying them through the streets.
Sitting in a car parked on a steep hill outside the WMC whilst Dad was inside getting mashed . Occaisional coke and crisps brought out every 30mins or so.
Being able to buy 1 cigarette at a time
Being whipped by Mr Crouch if you were last in the school cross country run, with a whippy branch.
Playing death stars on the sports feild with the swimming pool roof . It ws made of fibre glass squares about 12" square whwich were removed from the roof , quatered and launched at head height and the speed of sound across the playing feild.
walking 1/2 mile to Michael Edwards house then 2 miles to school from about aged 8.
Renting a B+ W TV
Being allowed in the boot of my dads Beetle for long journeys.
Being forced to go surfing in Cornwall in just swimmers pre breakfast.
Inter school fights with homemade firework launchers.
mate at school, physics department air rifle (!), tower block, football pitches outside (3 floors up). Mayhem.
Think Day of the Jackal (in fact he's still known as Des the Jackal come to think of it).
Embarrassed if parents came to the school, although they never did.
"Bailing out". Jumping off a swing when it was at it's highest, the furthest jump won. This progressed to jumping from a standing position, had to get that right or you got a face full of tarmac.
Riding down the slide on your bike.
Jumping onto the back of the milk float to see how far you could go before the milky told you to **** off.
Swimming in local lakes/gravel pits.
Buying single cigs.
Watching through the windows at local community centre whilst strippers stripping.
My old man always had crap cars and was regularly down the local scrap yard on a Saturday morning pulling various bits out of cars. The place was like a playground to a nine year old boy. The cars were stacked three high on top of each other and there was oil and glass everywhere. I remember climbing up to the top cars and balancing on the roofs while my day was down below ripping the guts out of a Cortina.
😯 😯Being allowed in the boot of my dads Beetle for long journeys.
Televisions where the 'remote control' was the youngest person in the room who had to get up, walk over to the TV and press one of three buttons to change channels.
Going to scout camps in the back of a furniture van with the whole troop and kit.
Cars with no seatbelts and unheated wing mirrors on the wings.
As a student I could buy a return air fare from London to New York for £100.
Trainers were called gutties.
The scouts I was in on the Wirral used a furniture van to get us to camp. When I moved to Scotland we went in a double deck sheep lorry, gear on the bottom deck, kids on the top. If it rained you got wet.
When I moved to Scotland we went in a double deck sheep lorry, gear on the bottom deck, kids on the top. If it rained you got wet.
A minute later and I'm still laughing and mopping up tears. Thanks.
As soon as you could reach the counter your whole life was making cups of tea for your mum or anyone who came in the house.
On the bushy fanny theme
Going on the school trip to France. Coach from Whitley bay to La Rochelle. Sitting by Emma Thomson who was the year above and had huge boobs
Wilson also in the year above asking me if I could sit by her and he'd give me a pack of Murray mints.
Two days later he gave me said bribe and said "she's like a forest man".
Those were the days.
Swimming off the rocks in the North Sea by Whitley bay.
Football in the park after school. Jumpers or bags for goalposts. Pitch as wide as the field.
Cars with no seatbelts and unheated wing mirrors on the wings.
My dad's Morris Traveller with the sticky indicator which needed a thump on the inside of the door pillar to get it to pop out.
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Great thread---amazing all the things we survived and, IMO, sad that kids today will never experience
Playing cowboys & Indians with homemade bow & arrows with the arrows as sharp as you can get them.
Getting a backhander from local plod for giving him lip
Getting the slipper at school or cane
Eating toast toppers
Yes and white dogshit never see that now?
Sat on the village green guarding a big pile of empties the bigger lads collected from the houses and the took back to the pub for the deposit. I got paid in threepenny bits.
Finding a cache of ww2 ammunition and rifles we were told by the police were put aside in case of invasion. Obviously we didn't give it ALL back
We used to drill holes in fence posts stick in a live round and hit it with a hammer. Golden days.
Playing tiggy airgun and trying to hide the resulting purple bruises from mum and dad at bath time.
Going to The Anvil outdoor to buy cigs and cider for "my mum".
Aged 14. Drinking Boddinton's bitter in a school minibus on the way to The Lakes with a fully opened OS map to conceal us from the teacher in the driving seat.
Metal climbing frames on tarmac playgrounds at school
Soft. Ours were covered in concrete and broken glass. There was always some kid with his arm in a plaster at school.
Iodine on your knees after you fell over.
Making shrapnel 'grenades' from 3 bangers, a Ben Shaws pop bottle and a good handful of drawing pins.
Three bangers with the fuses wrapped together packed in the bottle with the drawing pins and the fuses sticking out of a hole in the screwtop lid.
The idea was to see how late you could leave off throwing the bottle into the air once you'd lit the fuse 😀
Kids today are quite good at making stuff up too. 😉
As a scout leader , i'm pleased to report that the rope with a knot/ball game is still going strong. Scouts are still allowed to build massive fires and carry knives (penknives only till you get to 13 then bowies it is!)as well as climbing trees and playing various fairly energetic wide games in the pitch black before coming back to poke sticks in the fire etc
We can't travel up the M6 in a removal van though......
Standing on the transmission tunnel between the front seats of my dads car whilst he drove.
Similarly sleeping in the boot of a large estate whilst my dad drove 7 hours to Devon.
We went on a 6th form trip to a club, we were 16, the 3 teachers drove the minibus. thems were the days.
The grenades were a bit of a disappointment if i recall, more of a 'pop' than a bang. Anyone remember those whistling bangers you could buy? Made great missiles, you lit them & stuck them lit end first down a bit of pipe with a sealed off end. We used to shoot them at each other in the local park - how we never ended up with our faces blown off I'll never know!
Aged about 10 I used to be sent to the paper shop to purchace 20 Senior Service for my Dad when his gout was bad and he couldn't walk properly. The lady in the shop used to put them in a paper bag and fold over the top and selotape it down and write down the amount on the front.
Travelling the length of the street in the backies without toucing the ground, going from one air raid shelter roof to the next. Technical terms involved "half spammies" where distance < body length so hands in front and below face level so falling forward should span the gap, "full spammies" where distance = body length so hands at face level or above and the awesome "jumping spammies" where distance > body length so a jump was involved, as well as some tears and someone's mum as often as not
Going shopping with my mum at the village CoOp. The counter girl would ringbir up and put the receipt and cash into a metal puck that was latched on to a network of cables on the ceiling and it it would be fired off to the cash office at the back of the store. Moments later the change and receipt came firing back. Every months or so wed go to the big CoOp in Chester or Birkenhead to cash in the divvy.
