Simple and free

[Clive.]

..and digging holes in Dads vegetable garden...down to sandstone..or greenstone as it is here..."chuck us chisel" I shout to my brother from down in the hole..he did ..and I exited hole with blood pouring from a head wound that looked worse than it actually was thank goodness....but my school friend all but fainted...
H&S did you say JB.

..and riding my bicycle in a figure of eight round and round the front lawn..'til it looked like a grass track circuit.. ..and my Dad was despairing...

Suddenly then I got into lawn care...and put it all back to right again...and my next bike did not get trashed... I made sure of that...it only came out twice a year on sunny days..the rest of the time it sat on the upstairs landing..

Clive.

[Catherine]

Marbles on an upturn metal tray with legs using the lip as a race track round and round and round. I was a very sickly child with quite a lot of time off school so I used to sit on the settee under a blanket playing with the marbles. It must have driven my mum daft but she never complained.

[oldherbaceous]

Reading all the replies, something is troubling me a little.
We all seem to have got up to things that were slightly naughty, but tolerated, but it never really turned to malicious damage or rudeness.

Nowadays children seem to be stopped from doing this and that by rather intolerant people, and the children turn out to be quite troublesome.

Could it be simply down to boredom and frustration

[richard p]

our youngest is now eleven, when i was his age i used to dissapeer after breakfast, reapear at lunchtime, then off till tea time, most of the time my parents had no real idea where i was, they would know if id gone off to see a friend or was wandering somewhere in the fields or woods on my own but i could hve been anywhere within a couple of miles of home, now we know our kids whereabouts nearly all the time, if they are out of sight they take a mobile phone, i sometimes wonder if we are too protective, when i was 8 i rode a bike to school on my own, now we take the kids in the car, is that going to cause illhealth later cos they arnt getting as much exercise as we did, though they dont arrive home dripping wet like we used to... .

[The Grock in the Frock]

A friend of mines dad worked on the docks and could get some really fab rope from there.If he got a really long one ,we would play with the mothers in the street and they would turn the rope and we would skip or play higher and higher.With other lenghts we would tie around the lamp post then swing for hours.we would try to get the most swings in before you hit your head. Many a time i came home with an egg on my head or a black eye.

[lizzie]

I played out in the street most of the time. There were loads of kids in our street and we all played things like British Bulldog, skipping, football, kirby, 2 balls, hide and seek...........all kinds of stuff.

There was always one of the mothers sitting on the step watching us all. Mainly it was the next door neighbours Mum, old Nanny Mac. She was a little, tiny thing and was happy as anything just sitting, with a cuppa tea, watching about 20 kids all playing, and keeping an eye on us.

Then we'd have street parties about 4 times a year, then there was the 4 trips out on an old double decker bus to Blackpool, Morecambe and Southport. The women all payed into the street club each week and this paid for the outings, plus a little money for all the kids to spend. Then there were all the crisps and pop we supped on the way there and back. There was always someone who threw up on the way home...........normally my friend Amy

Then thee was the annual street Christmas party. Father Christmas was there. He was one of the neighbours who was always a bit tiddly. All the kids would get a present and there were games and a buffet for everyone.........plus a bar for the adults.

What I remember most were the wonderful holidays I had in Wales with my mum and dad, and Grockie They were wonderful cos they were always in the countryside. Me and Grockie would disappear, looking at the farmers pigs.........one of whome was a whopping big Saddleback (i think) called Henry. Then there was holding new born piglets, running around in fields looking at field mice climbing the wheat. Watching bats and rabbits and listening to owls in the night outside the window.

We must have been a real pest to the farmers with our never ending questions but they didn't seem to mind much.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh, happy days.........and wonderful memories