The things you did as a kid...

[Teejayexc]

Originally Posted by The Idle Biker

You could have a punch up without too much risk of getting stabbed. Happy days.

Yup. Local truckers cafe was a favourite meeting place for the nearby townies to show their muscle*. Same faces week after week, always started with a smile and inevitably ended up in a fight.

*proper sinews, not the George Michael kind.

[dirtydog]

Climbing trees then falling out if them
Playing British bulldogs, pretty much all of the kids in the street would be playing
Scrumping, stealing the neighbours rhubarb.
Cutting the tails of of newts, no idea why we did this but we did.

[keith_d]

Nearly blew myself up with chlorate and sugar, nearly burned my mates house down, launched (big) hydrogen balloons with time fuses, made and used a slingshot, played with air pistols, made fruit wine, cycled miles from home on our own, built an electric arc & nearly blinded myself, and a fair bit of geeky stuff on the primitive computers of the 1970s.

So pretty much nothing that kids would be allowed to do today without the parents getting an interview with the social services (except the geeky stuff which is pretty much impossible on a modern console)

[MisterTommyH]

Me and my mate decided that throwing darts (you know the kiddy ones with metal tip and plastic body) at a dart board was boring, and it would be more fun throwing them between us and catching them.

Was fun until he mis-timed a catch....... The tanned **** was worse than the dart into the flesh of the thumb.

[tonyk]

Epic football games.
And epic bicycle rides miles and miles from home....why?.. cos it was fun.

[timwilky]

Originally Posted by keith_d

d a fair bit of geeky stuff on the primitive computers of the 1970s.

It must have been at least 1976 before I even saw a computer and that thing filled a huge data centre. At least 78 before I was able to touch a keyboard on a teletype on a Prime before that I had to hand write coding sheets and someone gave me back the compile log.

79 when I was writing in APL, still on a teletype. and 80 before I got my mitts on a VDU connected to a GEC 4080 through a bureau service.

So how the hell did a kid get access to computers in the 70s? The first small scale computer I got my mitts on were Rockwell Aim 65 that I used for test rig control and interfaced via a star lan that I built to an Acorn Atom file server. in about 1980

I had a colleague who had a superboard II which came out in the states about 79. but it cost a fortune. Far more than I earned in a month at the time.

There used to be a lot of old mill buildings around this area, knowing what I know now its amazing none of my friends ever died doing the crap we did back then.

Closer to home we'd burn stuff and build stuff, sometimes combined the two.

Other than that its the usual chucking things, climbing things, football and push bikes. Nothing nearly as interesting as you lot seem to have gotten up to.

[yorkie_chris]

Nearly blowing myself up, repeatedly.

i used to steal my sisters small bike when i was around 6 and then speed down the driveway and take the corner at the bottom and see how low i could get, then lowsided the push bike and slid under the car,
also used to ride next to my brother with a big stick then shove it in his front wheel and when it hits the forks the front wheel would stop dead causing him to fly over the handlebars and munch tarmac

Going down the dump and rescuing old pram wheels to build carts and have soap box races.
Putting a straw in a frogs mouth and blowing them up to see how big you could get them----then drop a brick on them.
Weedkiller,soot and icing sugar,made a 4ft one out of cast iron with screw end caps and ended up with a 4-5ft deep crater and a mushroom in the air like an atom bomb.Thought it was great till the police and fire engines arrived and had to run like hell.Injury sustained being a bloody sore ar-se
Chap doors and run,first collect dog ****,put it in a brown paperbag,light bag,knock door and run. STAMP STAMP to put the flames out,get called a lot of bad words.
Climb over the back wall of the workmans /miners club,nick two lemonade bottles then go to the chippie and get the 3d back for a tanner bag of chips.
Being a mining area carbide was available[as used in the old miners lamps] put some in a screw top bottle with water and shake it,throw it in a pond of fish[trout] so that when it exploded it stunned the fish.gut them and cook on a bonfire.