[Misc] Things you did as kid that don’t seem popular any more

[Me Atome]

Leaving my bicycle for hours and hours, days on end during school holidays, with no security whatsoever, and never even thinking that it could get stolen.

 

[LamieRobertson]

Luxury. We used to hafta get 'out the lake, 3 am, clean the lake, eat a handful 'o hot gravel, work 20 hours a day at mill, for a penny a month, and dad would beat us about the head and neck with a broken bottle, if we were lucky.

Pffft when i was six months old we lived in cardboard box in middle of road ….hmmm i may have nicked this from somewhere

 

[raymondo]

Oh you were posh….i grew up in a council house and our ‘coke’ stove was in the kitchen (it had a back boiler to heat water as well…Friday was bath night. We did have a fire in the ‘front room’, but always had to wait for dad to come home so it could be lit. Would two coal bunkers be considered posh?

That's funny... we also called it the 'front room ' even though it was in the back

 

[Zeberdi]

I was a terrible child

• Getting whacked across the hand with a cane
• Whacking classmates round the head with books or rolled up comics (and getting more whacks across the hand with a cane as a punishment)
• Comics - Beano and discovering what ‘Whiz’ really was later in life
• Dissecting frogs
• Trespassing on railway lines - and getting bollocked by railway staff
• Trespassing in back gardens - scrumping - and getting bollocked by house owners
• Dissecting rats
• Desperately shoving coins into a public phone when the pips started going before getting cut off
• Listening to Radio Luxembourg and Radio Caroline under the bed covers by torch light
• Pegging my Dad’s best bridge cards to the spokes of my bike to make it sound like a motor - getting bollocked
• Making a skateboard out of my sister’s roller skates when she was at camp and getting bollocked
• Being really bored during my parent’s Sunday paper reading hours every Sunday between 5-7 - very quiet, no TV.
• Putting up disco lights in the disused double garage and having band practice and parties
• Smoking behind the bicycle shed at school, in the bus shelter when raining and out of the bedroom window at home - getting bollocked for burning a hole in one of my curtains..
• Raiding my all mates’ Dad’s liquor cabinets every time we got together at each other’s houses after school and me going through everyone’s parents’ record collections. Getting bollocked by my mates’ Dads for guzzling all the Advocat
• Creeping in hours after curfew and trying not to wake up the dog only to crash over something in the dark and wake up the whole bloody house - getting bollocked by everyone

Getting chucked out of home for ‘treating the place like a hotel‘ and having to get a bollocking far too often.

 

[Eeyore]

Yes same here I remember when my parents had some plumbing put in and we had no bathroom for a couple of weeks so as kids we were marched off somewhere near the pepper pot Queen’s Park was a public baths you got a cubicle with an old metal bath you had to shout for the attendant outside to turn the hot water on.
our house originally had only an outside toilet which was absolutely freezing in the winter and in the summer always had the biggest spiders which made sure you were never in there any longer than absolutely necessary.
we also had a wash room with a big butler sink and wooden draining and my mum had this twin tub washing machine which had a washing section then you dragged the wet washing into the spinner it had two tubes one went on the tap to fill the other was to empty the machine into the sink unlike modern machines you could not switch it on and walk away it required a lot of user interaction.
this is quite fun just remembering how it was all those years ago, just remembered we had a cold larder which had a huge air brick that allowed cold air to flood in and it had a huge thick walls and a concrete shelf which was used as the household cold storage before we got our first fridge, we also had the first phone in the street and neighbours would ask to use it I recall that a number of them who at Christmas would be calling relatives in Australia or America which my dad was always worried about the costs.
I remember 1966 World Cup final I was a child of 6 but again the street all came in as we had the only TV

Pretty sure that was on the corner of Cobden Road

 

[Eeyore]

1. Chucking eggs over the wall of my school playground when the girls were doing PE. Throw, hear he screams, run. (I was in Seniors at the time, it's not a recent thing...)
2. Taping the top 40 with the budgie on percussion in the background
3. Holidays to Paignton and the IOW
4. Running a bookies at school
5. Stealing from sweet shops
6. Chocolate cigarettes
7. Real cigarettes
8. Two paper rounds a day
9. Getting up at 6.30, finishing paper round at 8.00. 2 mile walk to school, two mile walk back, another paper round. Off to Boy's Brigade, back home and bed. I think my life was much harder then.
10. Terrible school reports....

 

[Zeberdi]

Pretty sure that was on the corner of Cobden Road

View attachment 179168

Yes - top of Islingword Rd - corner of Cobden - my old neighbourhood when I lived in Brighton.

Google Earth

earth.app.goo.gl

 

[Eeyore]

Yes - top of Islingword Rd - corner of Cobden - my old neighbourhood when I lived in Brighton.

Google Earth

earth.app.goo.gl

Did you go to Elm Grove ?

 

[jcdenton08]

Going out on the pull!

 

[Jim Van Winkle]

Appearing onstage with Jimmy Savile at TOTP

View attachment 178998

At least he’s in front of you.

 

[LamieRobertson]

Thought of another one….Splits with a knife game …remember once stabbing my right shin

 

[portlock seagull]

Collecting insects, newts, tadpoles…that sort of thing. Was very common.

Also growing cress on wet kitchen roll.

 

[The Clamp]

Making bases for Star Wars toys etc out of old packaging and boxes.

 

[LamieRobertson]

Collecting insects, newts, tadpoles…that sort of thing. Was very common.

Also growing cress on wet kitchen roll.

Oh yes…often caught stick insects

 

[wellquickwoody]

Thought of another one….Splits with a knife game …remember once stabbing my right shin

Once got the upper half of a BIG tent pole embedded in my foot doing this. About 3 feet long with a 2 or 3 inch spike on the top. OUCH!

 

[GT49er]

Staying at Grandad's in Whippingham Road. Gas mantels only - electricity never installed there until after he died in 1965. The coal cupboard was under the stairs, and the size of the snails on the wall to the next house up the road (just about one storey higher than Grandad's house, in the steepest part of the road) was a source of wonder to a small boy. Still have the heebie-jeebies at the thought of what might have happened if Mum had ever slipped and let go of my pram!
Radio from cable, basically a speaker rented from a shop in Elm Grove.

 

[Charlie Livesey]

Waiting outside the Odeon, Kemp Town when there was an A certificate film showing, asking random adults if they would take you in with them.

 

[Eeyore]

Going to the local newsagents and using your pocket money to buy Panini stickers. The sheer joy of finding a silver/gold club badge, and absolutely ecstasy when it was the Albion. Swapping them in the playground at breaks "got, got, need, got, need, need". Establishing exchange rates for club badges v. Scottish Div 3 Team pics. Fulfilment of completing the whole album.

Oh, and the four new Commando comics every month. Learning a select few foreign words "Gott in Himmel" "Achtung" "Banzai".

And when you needed a sticker, you had to be careful not to sound too needy. If you did, the swap request might have been higher. If I really needed a sticker I would infer that I wasn't sure but would take it anyway.

 

[Justice]

Putting my pocket money into the Space invaders and various other arcade games 10p a play.