the simple pleasures of life that we have lost

Kilgore

Cap guns. A roll of 50 caps, hours of fun.

 Are they still legal? You would probably get shot by an armed response unit.

munckee

mikeyrob73 said:

27 a side games of football down the park in the summer that would last for an afternoon 

I remember a game between all the young people in my village (before it became a small town, it was all fields back then) against a large group of french students.  It was like Agincourt.

EricTheWeary

I'm just following this until someone says white dog poo. 

ESBlonde

White dog poo!

right now he's gone, where were we....

not_the_dj

Kilgore said:

Cap guns. A roll of 50 caps, hours of fun.

 Are they still legal? You would probably get shot by an armed response unit.

You can get them in cheapo poundstore type places. They have to have bright orange muzzles to easily distinguish them from real weaponry (in the US at least).

Funkfingers

octatonic said:

Finding pornography in the woods.

Some poor sod had hung those magazine pages out to dry after washing them. 

thecolourbox said:

Having a "monkey run" area in the park and thinking it was WILD

That’s Bakerist.

Reverend

Chinese burns. 

CHRISB50

Reverend said:

Chinese burns. 

I taught my daughter how to do Chinese burns. My wife and her teachers love me for it.

EricTheWeary said:

I'm just following this until someone says white dog poo. 

I saw white dog poo last week. It does still exist!

Kilgore

Blue Peter.

I built a gas cooled nuclear reactor out of a Fairy Liquid bottle and two yoghurt pots. It's still powering 750,000 homes in the East Midlands.

menamestom

octatonic said:

Finding pornography in the woods.

It must have been an unwritten back in the day, when you were older and had finished with your pornography, you fed it  back to the younger community, like others did for you as a lad.  You didn't bin it, but simply left in a bag for younger folk to enjoy.  And thus the cycle continued until the evil that was the internet appeared.

Only thing everybody I know found the porn, but nobody has ever said they distributed to the hedges and woods around the community.  I can only imagine every town had one mass consumer and distributer of it.

Iamnobody

Ringing up the operator from telephone boxes and joking with them (ok basicalky abusing them).

Reversing the charges in telephone boxes to phone home and let them know you were going to be home late.

Having to get past girls parents on the telephone before you could speak to them. No mobiles.

Knocking on doors and asking if you mates were coming out. No emails or WhatsApp to make that arrangement.

Knocking on doors and running away.

Porn in the woods (again never met anyone who’s not aware of this phenomenon).

Biking everywhere.

Drinking cider on the field.

Playing footie everyday.

Loads more.

p90fool

axisus said:

I remembered the other day that as a kid walking around the streets, it was great (and not uncommon) to find a discarded ring-pull from a can of drink in the gutter. We would pull the ring bit off of the tab, then use the tab to ping the ring away like a flying saucer.

There was also a plentiful supply of ice lolly sticks in the gutter. We would make flying saucers out of them, 6 for a square one and 5 for a triangle. They would break up on impact.

I also recall the excitement of finding a glass drink bottle in the hedge. We would dash off to the local garage with it and get 5p which bought a decent haul of cheap sweets. It felt like a major win!

I rarely see kids play on the streets any more. We were out every day, we used to attach cigarette cards to our bike with clothes pegs so that the spinning wheel hitting the card would give a sort of motorbike sound.

My kids never experienced any of this stuff.

Got any other memories?

So you (and indeed I) spent our childhoods kicking around the streets, bored, playing with the litter that was everywhere.

I don't get particularly nostalgic about that if I'm honest. 

Veganic

p90fool said:

axisus said:

I remembered the other day that as a kid walking around the streets, it was great (and not uncommon) to find a discarded ring-pull from a can of drink in the gutter. We would pull the ring bit off of the tab, then use the tab to ping the ring away like a flying saucer.

There was also a plentiful supply of ice lolly sticks in the gutter. We would make flying saucers out of them, 6 for a square one and 5 for a triangle. They would break up on impact.

I also recall the excitement of finding a glass drink bottle in the hedge. We would dash off to the local garage with it and get 5p which bought a decent haul of cheap sweets. It felt like a major win!

I rarely see kids play on the streets any more. We were out every day, we used to attach cigarette cards to our bike with clothes pegs so that the spinning wheel hitting the card would give a sort of motorbike sound.

My kids never experienced any of this stuff.

Got any other memories?

So you (and indeed I) spent our childhoods kicking around the streets, bored, playing with the litter that was everywhere.

I don't get particularly nostalgic about that if I'm honest. 

That's a bit of a buzz-kill if you don't mind me saying.

ourmaninthenorth

A kind of strange thing to say, but simply having fook all - like everyone else in the street - and not giving a shite about it. 

Grumpyrocker

In the last week my kids have made paper airplanes, eaten sherbet dip and been out on their bikes. They haven't though had to make toys out of rubbish found on the street, thankfully. 

guitars4you

Making a 'soap box'  style go-kart from a pram and a few bits - great summer holiday project - plenty of scars after

Cant even what we called them back in the 70's

Eating fish n chips out of the paper on the way home from the cinema or cubs etc

Having a crush on your best mates sister

Reverend

Cow horn handles on bikes.
Skinheads with bleach splashed jeans.
Tiswas.

p90fool

Veganic said:

p90fool said:

axisus said:

I remembered the other day that as a kid walking around the streets, it was great (and not uncommon) to find a discarded ring-pull from a can of drink in the gutter. We would pull the ring bit off of the tab, then use the tab to ping the ring away like a flying saucer.

There was also a plentiful supply of ice lolly sticks in the gutter. We would make flying saucers out of them, 6 for a square one and 5 for a triangle. They would break up on impact.

I also recall the excitement of finding a glass drink bottle in the hedge. We would dash off to the local garage with it and get 5p which bought a decent haul of cheap sweets. It felt like a major win!

I rarely see kids play on the streets any more. We were out every day, we used to attach cigarette cards to our bike with clothes pegs so that the spinning wheel hitting the card would give a sort of motorbike sound.

My kids never experienced any of this stuff.

Got any other memories?

So you (and indeed I) spent our childhoods kicking around the streets, bored, playing with the litter that was everywhere.

I don't get particularly nostalgic about that if I'm honest. 

That's a bit of a buzz-kill if you don't mind me saying.

Haha it is a bit I guess, but when you take a step back and think about it, we really were just bored enough to amuse ourselves with trash in the streets, but without the cutesie slumdog storyline. 

Life may have seemed simpler, but partly because we had fewer opportunities, keeping aspirations quashed. 

I didn't have a particularly unhappy childhood, but still remember the 60s and 70s as a grey, violent era. 

We look after our grandkids a lot, and we all spend as much time as possible outside, but without the abandoned-feeling, bored nihilism.

 

darthed1981

Bridgehouse said:

fastonebaz said:

bobblehat said:

octatonic said:

Finding pornography in the woods.

This.... 

Haha I used to find that as well.  Always wondered who was buying it,  taking it to the woods and leaving it there.

From experience:

Naughty Schoolmate nicks porno from newsagent - normally the tall kid who can reach, and normally whilst other mates distract the shop owner with a kerfuffle about panini stickers. 

Said mag is pored over at the local park/woods/etc. 

Then, one of the following happens:

- One kid gets antsy as he wants to take it home for a quiet wank
- Local bobby is seen approaching
- Bigger older kids seen approaching

And said mag is then quickly torn up, disposed of, or chucked quickly into the nearest bush/hedge/bin/undergrowth etc.

Basically anyone who found porn in a bush, you denied @Bridgehouse his quiet wank...

NelsonP

I was in a pub the other day and they had one of these. 



You could play it for free. So I did. Unfortunately Pac Man and Zaxxon were a bit shitter than I remember them being. Maybe if I'd actually had to put 10 pence in the slot it would have been different.