Things you used to do in the summer holidays as a kid

[Greedo]

1. Get up nice and early - it was ALWAYS sunny
2. Watch champion the wonder horse
3. Wander for miles on foot or bike (your parents had NO idea where you were)
4. Play 6 hour long games of football at 18 a side
5. Mess about in fast flowing rivers and deep lochs
6. Hang around ridiculous places like libraries
7. Hang about the school you detested being in the rest of the year
8. Get shouted at if you went indoors at all during the day
9. Make crossbows with elastic bands and your mums pegs
10. Try and catch birds with a cardboard box, a bit of string and some bread (did anyone actually ever achieve this?)
11. Stay out till eleven o'clock at night even though you were nine
12a. Read a 25th hand "summer special" of the Victor or The Warlord
12b. Try not to get caught reading your sister's Bunty Summer Special
13. Make a den out of asbestos or some other dangerous substance
14. Get chases off of Hatchet Harry or similar mythical local garden-proud nutter
15. Get sweetie Cigarettes off the ice cream van and pretend they were real fags.


I'm sure tons more will occur to me and I will inflict them on you all later

 

[scots_lass]

1. Make forts out of cut long grass.
2. Make bows and arrows out of willow and string.
3. Played knifie, kick the can, hede and seek - for hours.
4. Build or try to build a hurlie.
5. Trying to go to sleep when it was still light outside.
6. Played hopscotch or skipping.
7. Waded up and down the burn in BARE feet even though people dumped stuff in it.
8. Got up at 7 on a Sunday morning to get driven 12 miles to the next town to the swimming baths.
9. Roamed the countryside without a care.
10. PLAYED, PLAYED, PLAYED!

 

[ColinJ]

I was given my most exciting present ever when I was about 13 years of age - a Webley Premier air pistol!

I was told to be really careful with it and never take it away from our house/garden, so of course I stuck it in my coat pocket and went off with my mates to the local fields to do some target practice...

We took it in turns shooting at tin cans and bottles, but things got a bit out of hand when we started play a game of "The Untouchables". I declared myself to be Elliot Ness and soon we were stalking Al Capone (a blackbird which was flitting about from tree to tree). Capone tried to make a break for it so I ran down the hillside and ordered him to stop or I'd shoot. He kept on running (flying) so I drew the pistol and fired one shot which stopped him dead in his tracks (the bird plummeted from the sky). We ran over in great excitement to stand over Capone's dead body only to see it change before our very eyes into a poor dead bird. I felt riddled with guilt and almost burst into tears...

If kids were running about with a gun like that now they'd probably end up getting shot themselves by the police!

 

[gary r]

1/make ramps out of wood & bricks thenjump them on your bike like Evil Keneaval (sp?)
2/ride your bike with a fishing rod attached to the crossbar & fish all day (never caught much)
3/play marbles on a drain cover all day
4/watch the banana splits,daktari & tarzan without fail
5/have stone or mud bomb fights
6/try & fix old honda 50's or puch maxis that our mums had abandoned
7/chalk all over the pavement outside our house (sorry Mum)
8/build a camp & form a gang

 

[gary r]

I was given my most exciting present ever when I was about 13 years of age - a Webley Premier air pistol!

I was told to be really careful with it and never take it away from our house/garden, so of course I stuck it in my coat pocket and went off with my mates to the local fields to do some target practice...

We took it in turns shooting at tin cans and bottles, but things got a bit out of hand when we started play a game of "The Untouchables". I declared myself to be Elliot Ness and soon we were stalking Al Capone (a blackbird which was flitting about from tree to tree). Capone tried to make a break for it so I ran down the hillside and ordered him to stop or I'd shoot. He kept on running (flying) so I drew the pistol and fired one shot which stopped him dead in his tracks (the bird plummeted from the sky). We ran over in great excitement to stand over Capone's dead body only to see it change before our very eyes into a poor dead bird. I felt riddled with guilt and almost burst into tears...

If kids were running about with a gun like that now they'd probably end up getting shot themselves by the police!

Oh! i forgot about air pistols,i had a chrome gat gun

 

[ColinJ]

And what do children do in their free time now...?

This afternoon, I heard a loud banging noise coming from the back street behind my house. The racket went on for more than 10 minutes. I thought that there must be a team of builders demolishing a shed or something like that.

Eventually I went out to do my weekly market shopping and saw that the noise was actually being made by one very small boy aged about 4 who was smacking hell out of a pile of debris on a low wall with a lump hammer. He was wearing safety glasses. Fliiping heck - his parent(s) had clearly authorised that behaviour!

A couple of little girls ran up to him and he carried on with his noisy messy game. At that moment, a weary looking woman poked her head round the corner and called out "Don't use your hammer when other children are near you."

Aaargh! How about "Stop smashing up things with that hammer - NOW!"

 

[ChrisKH]

13. Make a den out of corrugated iron and entice young laydees inside "to see how big it is".

 

[ChrisKH]

16. Play 15 a side "run-outs" with the telegraph pole outside your house being 'home'.
17. Build the world's biggest skateboard ramp made with any plywood/packing cases you can find/steal/dismantle.
18. Break your arm whilst going vertical on the world's biggest skateboard ramp........

 

[Arch]

Our local park had a stream running through it, the Wash Brook (or in local patois, the Woggy). We spent day after day just wandering up and down it, occasionally paddling in it in the shallow bits.

At one point it had been canalised, and ran quite fast through a channel and over a weir in a ditch between concrete walls about 3 feet high and a couple of feet apart. So we'd go and jump over it. Felt like crossing Niagra!

 

[just jim]

I used to hang out at my local library - but in a positive way yeh?

Our local one round here gets a lot of attention but in a non-race-to-get-through-the entire-Dr.Who-book-collection kind of way.

The place is more like an amusement arcade anyway rather than a library.

Harumphh grumble grumble.

 

[Young Un]

1. Cycle
2. Cycle
3. Cycle some more

 

[Gromit]

My parents wouldn't see me for dust, I was off going for long walks in the countryside. It was a lot nicer than hearing them indoors ripping bits off each other.

 

[Joe24]

1. Cycle
2. Cycle
3. Cycle some more

That will all change YC now you have a GF

 

[Young Un]

That will all change YC now you have a GF

Ok then, slight ammendment:

1. Cycle
2. Cycle
3. Lauren
4. Cycle
5. Cycle
6. Lauren
7. Cycle

 

[TheDoctor]

Build dens
Climb trees
Ride my bike
Build fires
Make kites
Try to make the kite fly
Try to get the kite out of a tree
Play on building sites, on haystacks and in rivers.