Sugar and weedkiller pipebombs. We set fire to Jamie Fogg's dad's shed that way.
Blagging the empty Barr's pop bottles to return them for 20p to get toffee off the Penny Tray.
Playing in the local works throwing small metal discs at each other.
Going to scout camp and eating meat mush from the river. We had put four days worth of burgers and sausages in a plastic bag then put it in the river too stay cool. The bag had a hole so the meat turned into a pink blob which we ate for the next few days. Can't imagine what river life had had a nibble previous! Wide games were fun, breaking into the rugby club, stealing whiskey, drinking it at the firing range/jump spot and riding through fire! Scouts was great.
Spud guns!
Remember the ones that had a little cartridge that flipped out to load with spud and a paper 'cap' off a roll. If you peeled the backing off the cap, you could fold two together and hurt people more!
getting dragged to the head penguins office by the hair/ear for 6 thwacks with a wooden meter ruler,last one turned on its edge if you were deemed possessed.All in the w**k bank btw 😯
Strippers at our local rugby club - who then did additional performances for cash. So I am told
Collecting cows eyes from the slaughter house for a biology lesson
13 year old Army cadets being sent on a fag break.
We used to travel to camp in an open 4 ton truck. No adult supervision, kids would be hanging off the back going down the motorway.
Occasionally we would take the mini bus. It had two sliddy wooden benches to sit on. The driver would slam the brakes on as hard as possible in an attempt to hurl the cadets across the van. They had a scoring system. They would get the smallest kid to sit immediately behind the driver. If they hit the brakes at the right moment the kid would end up wedged under the driver's seat.
This was worth loads of points.
Jamming shotgun cartridges into the centre of round bales, then shooting at the percussion cap with an air rifle. From about 20 feet away.
Interestingly, and I wouldn't want it to descend this fantastic thread into a health and safety debate, I read t[url= http://http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/school-ditches-rules-and-loses-bullies-5807957 ]this[/url] the other day.
Lived next to Salisbury Plain. Once a year a big exercise had the squaddies camped in Pear Tree hill woods near Earlstoke. We'd buy a case of beer from the pub (George and Dragon). The walk up the hill and sell it for massive profit to thirsty troops.
Buying a .22 air rifle, Bowie knife, and WristRocket at the same time.
Somehow managed not to die or kill any of my mates.
Watching England win a World cup football match.
Running up to a copper and knocking his helmet off, running away, and if caught just getting a clip round the ear.
Playing split the kipper
Airgun fights
Going to France without a passport on a school trip and buying flick knives.
Being able to use whatever language to insult whoever you like in whatever way you like without fear of arrest.
'Sticks and stone may break your bones but names will never hurt you' being a very reliable mantra.
Weedkiller and sugar bombs. Obtaining boiling tubes from school and then filling them with petrol. Shooting them over a flame with a Webley Meteor .22, the weapon of choice, all the discerning lads had them.
And as so many others have said- just vanishing for hours and miles during amazing summer days that seemingly now lasted for ever. Oh if I could go back to those times...
In retrospect meeting 'down the arcade' on Saturdays and leering at the girls was grim but to be expected I suppose.
Outside toilets at school.
Dustmen who walked into the back garden to collect the bin, and except for Christmas, usually half empty.
Same Milkman my entire childhood.
More worried that my Mum would find out, than actually getting the cane/slipper.
Buying fags in ones from the sweet shop.
Driving a van in my first job, with only the Boss asking 'can you drive?'
Never, ever carrying any form of ID.
Going out without a watch or mobile phone
Being safe on a bike on a dual carriageway tt
Getting wacked with a ruler in German lessons
Drinking thunderbird (kids these days semust be more discerning surely)
I too used to love the long, languid summer days when we used to cycle bloody miles and hang around in leafy places talking about girls, Commodore 64s and BMXs. I'd be out of the house by ten and would only pop back for meals, I'd roll in home long past dark.
In my teens it was all about drinking cider in the park and smoking your way through a packet of ten JPS...bought for the princely sum of 79p.
Playing "stinky finger" in the park with Jane Kelly.
tying the 'fur' from the collar of your parka round a pin and firing it across the classroom using a bic biro as a blowpipe.
Riding on the top of a trailer stacked high with straw bales
Collecting cows eyes from the slaughter house for a biology lesson
Our kids (4.5 yrs old) have just helped dissect a pig's head in school! Pictures if them holding prized-out eyes, holding slices of brain etc.... 😀
pretty much all of it. most of all pyrotechnics, 'genies' rockets up and off the slide, out of the end of handlebars, with bike on its side we werent mad, rocket in 2 forked sticks just above river level, went like a torpedo with a smoky baang at the end, shooting at each other with those exolpoding fireworks. Acorn catapult attacks, acorns just about eye sized
incendiaries with paraffin were crap.how far can you get with julie T.... competition, mostly quite a way 😀 😀 was a team event and good spectator sport at 13-14. how the hell did we get through it all?
Oddly enough last summer I mentioned to a friend of mine that as kids a group of us went away on a weeks' holiday without parents at 13, a few were parents themselves at 15, and most of us had left home at 16. Alcohol and fags were a given by secondary school. By the age of 20 at least one mate would have died as a result of a motorbike accident. It seemed normal back then - early 1980's for me. He looked at me as if I was an alien and patiently explained that it was not normal for people to have done such things.
Being able to 180 a BMX.
But I may have made it up.
Playing cowboys and Indians with air guns around the local housing estate.
The Indians had to use those little steel darts with the yellow or red 'feathers'.
Going to a primary school (from the ages 5 until 8 ) with about 12 pupils and one teacher. having a rota to take turns to make the teacher her morning coffee, boiling milk in a little saucepan on the open fire.
The sadistic bastard Mr Kissack at Albert Road school, who would beat you with the sole of a slipper if you so much as looked the wrong way, were one second late doing something or did something incorrectly.
He'd always make you wait until the end of the lesson too -"you know what's coming, don't you lad?" Bastard, I can still recall the smell of his fags (he smoked like a chimney).
Having a "Hobbies Exhibition" at school and one of my mates bringing in his collection of swords, bayonets and revolvers (with ammunition) and test firing the guns in the long-jump pit. He was just told that he'd "better take them home"...
Me shooting someone with a Gat gun while waiting for the school bus in Ramsey and then, while he ran whinging back into school to "tell Sir", jumping on the first bus that arrived (to make my getaway!), being chucked off later by the conductor 'cos I didn't have the right bus pass and having to walk home.
I never heard any more about the shooting though.
Riding a 197cc Sun motorcycle down a school corridor at the end of term (when I was 15) and crashing through a set of swing doors into the school kitchen. I was chased out by irate dinner ladies.
The bike had been provided by our Biology teacher to give us something to do for the last week of term.
Driving tractors everywhere, as soon as I was tall enough to operate the clutch. Doing pretty much all my father's tractor work in the school holidays, at weekends and whenever I got the opportunity.
Getting 4d bounty for each "longtail"( we're not allowed to use the "R" word) tail that we brought to the local Police station. When we were threshing we'd collect hundreds of them. I bet the copper at Andreas loved having to count those.....
Riding bikes without a helmet 😛
Having real fur on your parka hood
Standing close to a 'senior' school girl on the packed bus to school, they had massive boobs back then
Typing 'BOOBLESS, SHELLOIL AND ESSOOIL' into a calculator and thinking it was ace.
Treehouses with a cider stash.
VHS video nasties
Your mates Atari
My Raliegh Bomber(I miss you)
Smelling your finger on the way home 😯
When I was very young, mods and rockers at Belle Vue..
Nicking empty bottles from the AA pop factory to get a few p from the shop
Making man traps in the woods filled with dog shit and sharp sticks and covered over with sticks and leaves
Getting battered by teachers
Battering teachers
Perry boys
1/2 p's
Vimto like treacle
Mars bars that were as hard as a brick
Tickle finger with Caz..
M'old... 🙁
Making chinese arrows.
Being slapped(hard) across the face by teachers.
Teachers smoking pipes in class(I loved the smell).
School trips where the teachers provided the booze.
Badgering motorists to give you their tokens to obtain a 'tiger tail' from the Shell/Esso garage (can't remember which) and tying to it to your bikes handlebars. The cool kids had 3 or 4 flailing about in the wind at the end of their bars.
In Todmorden they used to have a 'Soap Box Derby' down the back of the Centre Vale park woods.
Very steep, and the soap box carts were usually old stripped out car chassis.
Loads of ale involved and only a few straw bales scattered about to protect people.
Mental, but good stuff
In my dads old bedford van with sliding front doors, driving around the west end while me and my brother tried hanging out of the door to look up ladies skirts. (never worked but kept us amused).
Later living in Devon and being stopped by the police for walking around with an air rifle; "just off to shoot rabbits", "ok, just keep it covered in public".
Shoplifting (usually off the top shelf as i was the tallest) and legging it, no cameras, and they always gave up after 20yards.
Drinking home made farmers scrumpy on scouts summer camp, never touched the stuff since!
- Smoking dope with my English teacher.
- Getting battered by teachers with slippers, hairbrushes (that was the old man), canes, Dunlop Green Flash (Mr Dalrymple, he would famously leave the Dunlop logo imprinted in the bruise on your arse) and anything else handy.
- Dunlop Green Flash
- One teacher, the legendary "Drac" Mensforth smoking in class and rubbing his hands constantly through his whiite hair, giving him a yellow nicotine streak.
- Nintendo Game and Watches
- Tetris for money in pubs (my mate Diggsy used to clean them out every time)
- Wham Bars
- Slaps and knuckles
- That creepy test card
- Why Don't You? on TV. Even then struck me as slightly ironic..
- Wet dreams, usually involving Alison Pudge (better than she sounded).
- Endless summers with real, 100% British, sun
Another memory to add to my sailing one earlier..
We had a very large and very empty 1880's Old Colonial 12 bedroom farmhouse very near to my home back then and me and my mate Randy (yes his name was Randy, it was the 70’s & in Florida) would sail down to it and then run around the place. I can still remember the creaky floorboards and massive spiders webs and odd bits of furniture that were left behind. The fridge and larder had old cans of corned beef and sweetcorn and some random tins that the labels had fallen off, yes we opened them but bottled out eating anything that was inside, IIRC it looked ok. We made a den out of old sheets and curtains and would hideout there, some great times had there over the summers, then one day a few years later we got chased off by a farmer and got shot at by salt pellets that landed in my butt. God that stung, it was quite embarrassing have my Mum pull the still unbroken ones out with tweezers then scrubbing the others with lots of cold water..
Being out all day and getting so thirsty that you took a swig of vinegar in the chip shop.
Cycling from London to Southend without a patch or pump and watching the wall of death at the Kursaal.
Hitch hiking 1000 miles a month to climb in e.g. Stoney Middleton (now deserted by climbers).
I do recall being in the fifth year at school and going on a week long trip to menai (no doubt some on here will know it) and one of our tasks was to be blindfolded in a van and dropped a couple of miles away in the dark and told to make our way back. unlit roads, no torches and about half a dozed 15 year olds.... no risk assessments back then... We also had a cross country run from our school which involved running for about 2 miles along a very narrow path along the very busy A49 in cheshire ( Weaverham to what was the old SKI yoghurt factory for those that know it).... they don't do that anymore...
10m high diving platforms at the local swimming baths
This ^
Sharston baths in Wythenshawe had a 10m diving board that we used to do front flips off. I slapped my back a few times on that one.
a mega selling pop group releasing "Don't stand so close to me"
Eating toast toppers
Holy crap I remember those now ! Thanks for the memories
Making Ninja stars in metal work, and the metalwork teacher just rolling his eyes having asked what we were making, then going home and lobbing them into the side of the wooden shed.
And properly messing around with fireworks
Digression: I heard of someone getting hit in the mouth by one of those stars. He asked his mate, "what kung fu dat den?" TOOATBT
On a lads' only outdoor pursuits holiday in The Lakes, our games teacher told us it was traditional to stand in a line on a bridge and pee into the river. So we did. How very, very odd. Eight 14 y.o. pissing into a river with teach' in the middle surveying things.
De-glazing a distant greenhouse with a .22 BSA Mercury S. I'm so ashamed...
Physics lessons with an old ex-army WW2 veteran. Introduction to metals involved having a tray of mercury which we were encouraged to dip our fingers into to see what it was like. Chasing said mercury all over the lab desk when it (inevitably) got spilled.
Connecting bunsen burner hose from cold water tap to gas tap on same desk, turning former on and seeing bunsens go out.
Making miniature cannon in metalwork ( before D&T invented). Only supposed to drill 1/2" into barrel, deep drilled , drilled smaller pilot hole at back end, used thread to pull banger by fuse up barrel, small alu rivet in the end. Took out to playground, lit it and stood back..... I now realise how lucky that no one was on other side of hedge...
I can remember buying a pint at the Cricket Club for 22p and 20 Carlton premium were 20p inc a box of matches.
Knicking the potassium and then chucking it into puddles in the school playground during break afterwards.... Setting fire to the Bunsen burners....Physics lessons with an old ex-army WW2 veteran. Introduction to metals involved having a tray of mercury which we were encouraged to dip our fingers into to see what it was like.
Driving somewhere to ride a bike.
White dogs mess
Porn mags in hedges?
Being put on the boat train to Dover in central London, taking the Dover Calais ferry then by train to Wuppertal in the Ruhr area of Germany to live with a lady my parents had met once on holiday. Including going to school with her daughter, getting top marks in an English test, the teacher not knowing who the hell I was. I was 13.
