I keep coming back to this page as some sort of cathartic emotional offloading of stand out events from my life. I really enjoy reading the responses even if it’s 100s or just a few.
Recently I was thinking that you rarely see kids “out to play” and it reminded me of the crazy stuff that used to happen. For me, a product of the 1980s, some highlights included:
1. Drinking a bottle of wine we won in a raffle and projectile vomitting after – at around 10 years old.
2. Being shot in the leg with an air rifle and leaving it because who cares about metal being inside you forever?
3. Witnessing a lone man drive a car into a field and setting it on fire, then thinking it would be a good idea to follow him and ask him questions.
4. Regularly sneaking on to an exclusive golf course to “play golf” and being chased for years on end but never caught. God, I miss that.
5. Running away with a backpack that only had a He-Man toy, a knife and a lighter in it. After many hours nobody came to look for me 😂
Sorry for the wall of text. What sort of stuff did you get up to? Do kids even go out to play anymore?
35 comments
I got shot in the face with an air pistol and naturally lied to my mum about it – saying I got it caught on one of those birthday card carousels in a newsagent. She did not believe me.
My mate ripped one side of his mouth open so that his bottom lip was flapping about. He fell of his bike on the rough ground we weren’t supposed to be riding on. He had to be convinced that he had to go home because he was convinced his mum would ban him from riding his bike. He also had to ride home one handed holding his lip up and natch had to go to hosptial to be stitched up.
I jumped through a glass door. I was just practising my long jump technique and jumped down some steps not noticing there was glass door in the way. Lots of blood, many stitches – still got the scars..
Running on to the icy lake despite sings saying “thin ice” and falling through it and then getting slapped around the head for being a moron.
Rode my bike off the end of a quay aged about six, thankfully at high tide. Got dragged out of the water by some bloke in a rowing boat. I was more upset about losing my bike than about swallowing a lungful of water.
Lashing shopping trolleys together with splits in the directional wheels of the front one to give some sort of steering, going down steep hills in them
cycling down the steep walls of the abandoned Victorian chalk quarry
Putting aerosol cans in bonfires to make explosions. Also the general principle that any den had to have a lit bonfire at all times
Friend put on his swimming trunks and swam in a creek. Later got taken to A&E because all the parents in the area knew there were a bunch of poisons in the water. Think he ended up being fine though. None of us told them that we’d all been paddling and splashing about in the water for years.
Local pub had a skip in the car park. Naturally made a “den” out of dangerous pointy things. At one point it was so large it wrapped around two sides of the skip like a sort of lean-to tunnel.
Good times.
Used to build rafts to go rafting on the local river. At least once a summer one of them would unravel and we’d all have to swim back to shore.
That stopped when one of our party swallowed some of the water and contracted weils disease. Poor bugger was in hospital for weeks.
Once we used a skip instead of building a raft. It worked surprisingly well. Until we sank it fooling around. To the best of my knowledge, it’s still there.
Buying bottle rockets and bangers with my mates, we were probably 13/14, initially went in the shop and we’re told we couldn’t have them as we weren’t old enough. Hung around outside the shop for a bit for the owner to poke his head round the door and beckon us back in. I guess he was waiting for the shop to be empty and didn’t want to miss out on a sale.
Over the park with our explosives, firing them out of the goal posts, probably at trains and just generally all being a PITA when suddenly a cop car comes zooming across the field. We leg it at this point, hurdle the brook, and make it to another exit from the park. Luckily it must have only been them and not any backup as we didn’t get accosted on our way home. We’d also ditched the remaining fireworks at that point. 😂
Making a den. Finding out that kids from the “other” estate were using the den.
Creating a cache of weapons to deal with the kids from the “other” estate.
Never seeing those kids and having no idea who they were to this day.
Also my friends police officer father bringing home a deactivated firearm for us to play with when we played cops and robbers.
Running around the streets and through peoples’ gardens with said deactivated firearm. And never being caught because we timed it when all the mums and dad’s on the street went to the shops.
I wasn’t allowed out to play, and reading this thread I get why 😂
Making catapults out of elastic bands and clothes pegs
Going to the video rental when I was 7 and renting violent kung-fu movies
Going around the streets for miles on only one rollerskate
Hanging out over the ‘Sanatorium’ which was the site of an old infectious diseases hospital, but now just a collection of huge water-filled holes
Searching the bushes of discarded porn mags
Playing under old canal-bridges
All good, wholesome fun.
Watching my brother getting petrol out of the lawnmower, soaking tennis balls in it, lighting them then hitting them round the garden. Telling my younger sister it was ‘stagnant water’ so she didn’t tell on us.
Climbing through the loft window and to the top of the roof to watch the firework displays for free.
And less death defying – catching minnows in a local stream with my sister, staying there all day with sandwiches and a bottle of squash till it got too cold then traipsing home with soggy socks.
We had a twenty-foot wall overlooking the back of the estate. All the houses were already up 6 or 7 feet of stairs, and this wall went over the top of someone’s extension, so it was an extra 7 or 8 foot above the door level.
We used to get up there on a night and stick Spice Girls on loud and jump around like maniacs dancing. We could very easily have fallen because there were no barriers to stop us.
I loved that street. I always remember how I made best friends with the kid across the street who was 3 years older. I was sat out, as usual, on a picnic blanket with my Game Boy, all my Pokémon cards and a Charmander shirt on, and I traded my Magneton for the chance to play Mario 64 every day after school for a month.
Saturday mornings. My friends and me would wander around the local pubs just as they opened, walk into the toilets and remove or use the £1 coins ( that thew too drunk people couldn’t figure out how to use) in the balloon vending machines they had in there.
We’d spend the morning blowing up the balloons, they taste yuk for some reason. Buy sweets and comics then home for beans on toast.
Riding our bikes down the steep hill at the quarry.
Jumping in the local river from the bridge. There was an arrow carved in the concrete where it was supposedly deep enough to jump, so we carved another decoy arrow further along to trick people. Pretty evil when I think back to it.
Buying tins of baked beans for 9p from a local corner shop, then heading to the local industrial estate and throwing them under lorries as they went past to watch them explode.
Putting coins on the train tracks.
Playing ‘track and torture’. Split into two teams and the team on the run would each have a letter to spell a word. The tracking team would have to track down the all the others and torture each of them to get their letter; then had to guess the word. We used to always give the one lad the letter ‘r’, so when he was being tortured and they asked for his letter he’d be shouting ‘arrr’ and we’d all pretend we thought he was just shouting in pain.
Yes I definitely have a air pellet in my right elbow.it’s weird as it has a circular motion going on. It seems the circle the entry scar over a long period, I can feel it when I rub my finger over it. My dead ass brother was the culprit. Merrydown cider was my choice off seagull feeding.
This was the 70s, but I remember finding a dead hedgehog in the nettles round the back of our flats, which became the flashpoint for running battles between us on our street and the kids from round the corner over who owned it.
After a few weeks, the hedghog was nothing more than a spiny bag full of disgusting liquid that dripped out of it when you paraded it around on a stick in celebration of your latest victory. Just typing this brings back the smell of it.
We had to make our own entertainment in those days.
We played man hunt (hide and seek mixed with tag). Me and my mate jumped a fence and were stood on a pile of hay /grass type of thing. After 5 minutes we heard buzzing and my mate felt something on his leg. He lifted his pants up and saw wasps crawling on his ankle. We were stood on a wasp nest but couldn’t see it because it was hidden in the grass.
Amazingly we were not stung but ran away screaming. The next day we went to poke it with sticks, and did get stung. We were not smart young boys.
Going to the park with friends and copping off with girls who were there with their friends.
Making goals out of the metal fences used to keep kids out of unsafe sites. Looked like metal nets & made an amazing noise when it hit the back of the net.
I have fond memories of going out for adventures with friends on our bikes and just being told be back for tea. This was pre the popularity of mobile phones so I often had to knock on random doors to ask what time it was.
Nothing beat the thrill of cycling super fast back home to get there for tea time, or knowing you’re going to be late and think of an excuse. I used “I helped an old lady cross the road” a few too many times.
In summer in the mid 90s we’d check the local fields everyday to see if the farmer had cut crops and made hay bales. Then we’d pile them up at the bottom of the pylon, climb up as high as we dare and jump off onto the hay at the bottom. You couldn’t stay up there too long because the vibrations would make your hands go numb. I don’t remember any of us coming to any harm.
One time this kid on our council estate turned up with a Tupperware FULL of daddy long legs. Back when they used to swarm so hard every wall would be a thick matte. He chased girls around with it and shit it was pretty wild.
We had mud bobsleigh events. Involved an old plastic water barrel cut in half. 2 people to a sled, going down a windy hill to beat the fastest time. Was great fun but also a little dodgy since it finished onto a road. Assuming you got that far since it often ended in people crashing into trees.
Other good one was a zipline made from electrical cable and a bicycle wheel.
Watching a Harrier jump jet crash into a field near where I lived. That was a different day.
Made extra special as I heard tales of my uncle crashing one too shortly after I was born.
Dosser jumping.
No idea why it was called that, we’d go to the fields and just aimlessly keep jumping over the streams, or off tall bits of landscape, or whatever was around.
There was one known as “Devils Jump” it was at a bend in the brook, one side was a lot higher than the other and the brook was quite wide, but because of the height you could make the jump if you had enough acceleration. Needed to be brave.
A couple of years ago some kid tried it and failed and hurt themselves a bit and some of the locals wanted “something” doing with the Devil’s Jump because it was dangerous. Thirty five years ago I knackered myself on it but back then you waited till your knee stopped bleeding and went again.
Purposefully trying to get chased by the farmer who, legend has it, shoots trespassers
Three of us roller skating miles from home down the lanes in Cornwall and Nicola fell and broke her knee cap.
Telling the local paedo to fuck off and running away.
Climbing onto the viaduct and shitting ourselves when a train came.
When I lived in the states we would go ‘sewer spelunking’ some of the less bright kids would always get lost and we would have to rescue them from topside based on their shouts.
Playing 40 40 in with the kids from the street in the meadow next to the house. Lighting fires on the paths round the fields with my friend. And the classic telling my parents I was at a friend’s, her telling her parents she was at mine and meeting the boys at the top of the road – we got found out and grounded
There was a cornfield directly behind our house. When it was at its highest (around 5 or 6 ft.) all of us from the estate would go into the field, split up, and have massive corn wars just launching the cobs at each other. There must have been about 20 of us in that field. Good times.
We dug a massive fox hole one summer after watching to much Tour Of Duty. Ended up with a tarp on it and rudimentary fire. Spent a few summers there in the woods with mine and my brothers mates We also tried making snares to catch rabbits (failed) from small trees and tried to dig a defensive trench but got bored of that pretty quickly.
Buying some candles from Boots and going down the local caves. (abandoned sand mines). No one had a clue where we were. Stupidly dangerous. Nothing happened when I was there but one kid broke his leg falling down on of the shafts on another occasion, or so the story went.
Playing next to the local train lines in an abandoned signal box. Strewn with porn mags, obviously. Looking back it seems like a scene from Stand by Me.
1. Rolling down hills in a water barrell
1. Running across a burning bonfire
1. Poking a smackhead strapped to a lamppost with a stick.
1. Building dens with car bonnets and old thrown out furniture
1. Sneaking into a local industrial bakers factory and sticking our fingers in the melted chocolate to taste it.
1. Getting lifts down the street off the back of the above companies lorry’s
1. Jumping into the riverbank at low tide and having to be pulled out, it was a competition to see who could get the mud the highest. up their bodies.
1. Having stone fights and splitting my head open in multiple places
1. Setting fire to pampas grass in peoples gardens because it goes up in miliseconds.
When rollerblades was a craze me and my friends used to hang onto the back of passing trucks/lorries going up hill, then shoot down said hill. Which would have been fine if it wasn’t steep, had traffic lights at the bottom and we had no real way of stopping suddenly if things went tits up.
I use to hide in the neighbour’s bin and jump out at her when she would be off to work. She had a regular shift in the evenings. I stopped after he talked to my old man and I got sorted out. This was in ‘89 and I was 9.
My mates and I did all sorts of mischievous shit until my parents moved house and I ended up in nice posh parts of Kent at 14. I was in Croydon before that but too many dodgy things went on and they wanted out. It all was done in for me after a drug addict stabbed another homeless man in front of our house.