Things you did or tried to do in your youth (that were a bit daft)

That all sounds like my childhood! The jumping off walls (& out of trees) thing was brought about playing “Fall Guy”. We even made our own body armour

Never really bothered with armour although I did have a Batman outfit which of course made me indestructable.

A mate had a very long brick wall in his garden which went up in steps along its length. The challenge was to see how far along the wall you could go and jump off. We never did make it to the end one of my mates broke his leg and we kindof lost interest 🙂

The throwing arrows brings back memories – we called them ‘flights’ and made them out of canes. Used to spend quite some time sharpening the ends.

Gat guns also very popular as we got older (i.e teens) the challenge was to see how close your mate allowed you to get before you shot him in the backside.

Fireworks as well – Roman Candles with handles so you could hold them 😯 jacks to light and throw on the floor, bangers to put in school bags, mini-rockets that you could hold while launching and huge, mental, lethal sparklers

At about the age of nine we discovered a tree that was called the Bucking Bronco, you could sit on a bend in the branch and a couple of mate would pull the branch back and let it go. Wheeeeee you would shoot forward and then fly back, at the age of 9 it was great.

This kid called Simon asked if he could have a go, no problem jump up onto the branch and hang on. By this time there were about 10 kids pulling the branch back and we all let go before Simon was holding on. He flew a very long way and I can still see him vanishing headfirst into a field of long grass. Oh crap we all ran over to help him and were confronted by the poor kid covered in blood where he had put his teeth through his lower lip. This took up all of our attention untill someone noticed a big bit of bone sticking out of his jumper and his arm being not quite right. We didnt see Simon for about 2 months ad the tree was cut down.

Also cycled to Usk from Abercarn when I was about 11, managed to crash twice on the way and it took about 6 hours. Pontypool was really scarey at that age 😆

Under conscription in the South African defence force, nicked a Samil 120 (big truck) to buy some cigs, caught a low hanging telephone wire, I thought it was a power line and panicked, and bailed out of the cab doing about 40mph. End result was pretty spectacular. Ripped out about 14 pylons before the cable snapped.

Me and a friend used to sharpen metal rulers in the DT workshops……..Then hit each other over the head with them!

Same mate had an English Dictionary (the really huuuge edition) dropped on his head from a first floor storey window at school. He was out cold for most of the lesson and the english teacher didn’t even notice!

We both work in call centres now with no real career aspirations to think of. 🙁

dday – proper lol there, thanks 🙂

O-level Chemistry:
Pouring acetone over our hands, lighting it and then waving at the teacher.
Making paper planes, lighting them and seeing where they would crash en-route to the teacher’s desk.
Mixing bench chemicals in the sink (they used to be unlocked on shelves next to my desk!) until it started to smoke/steam and see how fast the teacher could get to the extinguisher.
Stand opposite your mate about a yard apart, with feet wide apart. Then throw knives into the ground, move closest foot until someone bottles – was interesting explaining to the casuality Nurse why I had a throwing knife sticking out of the top of my foot!
Apple cricket – one person lobs them up the second hits them with a bat as far down the row of gardens as possible – points for hitting greenhouses, cold frames and old asbestos roofed garages.
Hedge Hopping – travelling from mates house to mates house through other peoples back gardens without getting caught or chased.
Window budding – in a big gang gather handfuls of rose buds or seed pods, hurl at windows and run, keep throwing them as you run, only the asthmatic kids get caught!

How we stayed out of borstal is anyone’s guess!

Making bombs out of 22 live rounds picked up from the ranges on Dartmoor, which involved sawing the round in half??, then packing it all nicely into the golf course greens and blowing big chunks up.
Boring out old toy guns to fire a projectile through, good enough to take a chunk out of a wall at 20ft.
Firing catapults out of friends bedroom window to see who could take out most panes of glass in the neighbours green house. (never got caught).
Climbing onto the ladies toilets on a local beach and using a gas burner and seawater to popp out the glass tiles in the skylight.
Borrowing rowing boats to explore the river dart.
And quite a few other bits which i am never going to own up to, but did manage to spend an afternoon in the local nick with my mate, fortunatley we lied convincingly and got a caution.
So much fun.

to be honest I’ve not read all of that.. one thing I remember from school (ahem prep school) when we were about 10\11 we were allowed to carry sheath knives, yup you read it knives, and we played a game called chicken, in fact there was another game called streched, anyway back to chicken…

you stood opposite your opponent and threw threw the blade into the ground between his feet, he then moved one of his feet next to the knife, he then did the same, until basically both feet were together and the we’d see who would chicken out…

quite a few LOL from me sat in a totally silent office

I remember pouring white spirit into a glass candle and lighting it, we sat round watching it for a minute until the glass exploded – shit us all up. Plenty of throwing stones and getting chased too 😀

We once went night fishing (d*cking about and drinking beer while one of my mates did some fishing) under the Itchen Bridge in Southampton, it was quite a cold night so we decided to build a small fire on the shingle shoreline. One thing led to another and we had a pile of old wooden pallets burning away nicely, what we hadn’t noticed is that the tide had come in slightly and the fire had moved up the bank and off the shingle and onto the concrete. We realised what we’d done when there was a huge explosion and lumps of concrete and burning pallet were thrown in the air lighting up the underside of the bridge and spreading all around us. Needless to say my trousers were a little brown after that!

Made ‘dobbers’ which effectively were a plank of pallet wood with a wooden peg taped to one end. Inside the peg usually reserved to hold your smalls was the metal spring from another peg. This was then gingerly attached to a huge f***off rubber band stretched to the end of the plank. We used to chase ourselves sillyfiring them. Obviously top score was the bollocks. I can still remember the blood curdling screams now. How I managed to produce 2 kids years later ill never know.

Mate of mine had an air pistol.

We took his younger brother out one day, showed him how to use it, gave him a lecture on safety and responsibility, and how this was not a toy and very dangerous if he wasn’t careful.

First thing the little bastard did with it was shoot me in the arse.

My mates and i had a little trick in afternoon English lessons, the teacher was invariably late after break so we would open the window (2nd floor) and my mates would lower me out by my ankles..

The classroom beneath us was laid out so the teacher had his back to the window, i would magically appear upside down making obscene gestures to the delight of the class before rapidly disappearing upwards again 🙂

Went on for a few lessons before the teacher below clocked me! 😆

EDIT: Just remembered they did the same trick over a railway bridge to see if a train was coming, apparently if i screamed the answer was yes!