Do you remember calling for your friends to come out to play? What did you do??

Such great memories. I can also remember the group of us going down to the woods and collecting many armfuls of bluebells. We then went round the 'old peoples' houses to give them away. These one level, bungalow type houses were built at most corners on our estate. Nice idea, kept older people living in amongst the community. Of course, these days it would be illegal to pick those bluebells.

Another thing we did was to hang a large sheet on a washing line having one side as The Stage and the other side for the audience - and would put on our own shows. When I got into a very posh grammar school (one of the first two from our estate to get into that via the Scholarship (11 Plus), I set up a school for some of the younger members of our group. My parents and the parents of the other girl who got a place in that school that year were invited to a special meeting with the Headmistress and advised NOT to send us to that school. We both went!!!!
Our gang (group) was usually also joined by a local dog or two.

I lived what is now known as suburbia and we'd go round the streets, sometimes to the rec to play on the swings. Sometimes we'd go on the roundabout in the other direction which was known as 'the sick way' as it made you feel a bit funny. There was tarmac and there'd be many a fall with the usual grazed knees or bashed heads. All these lumps and bumps were accepted and you only went home to Mum if you drew blood. On the way we'd run from one lamp post to the next, would you believe sometimes backwards, sometimes skipping or hopping, etc. Oh, to have that energy now!

Funny we never needed a telephone - at worst you would call round on your bike....great days fondly remembered ☺️

Oh yes, I remember doing that. We played in the street most of the time but we also went exploring. Our parents didn’t know where we were or what we were getting up to. We climbed trees, slid down hills on cardboard, explored disused mine dumps and slid down the slack heaps, played in dried up pit water holes, dared each other to walk through a dilapidated train tunnel - none of us ever ventured too far in, played on train tracks and in the old castle and it’s grounds. Nothing was fenced off in those days. We played near reservoirs but dare not swim in them for fear of being pulled under and drowning. Knocked on doors to ask for a glass of water - we never thought of taking food or drinks with us. I don’t know how we survived ? We’d get home filthy and hungry and thirsty and it was a slice of bread and dripping and a cup of water until dinner was ready. Those were the days - we had a lot of fun and not a care in the world.

I remember our next door neighbour calling for my sister and I in a sing song voice. We lived in the country and in school hols my sister and I would be off on our bikes all day with a sandwich in brown paper. Mum had no idea where we went and never worried about our safety. That was real freedom as compared to today's children.

granjan66 Fond memories. My friend and I would do the same with our bikes as a young teenager.

WW010 I did some of those things too.
My favourite was roller skating on the pavements. Strap on skates over shoes - remember those?
I was brought up on a brand new council estate. We use to dare ourself walk on the top railings that surrounded a block of garages. About 4' off the ground. I loved that, well I did until I fell.

Thinking of the garages. We played tig and tag round them.

I was always told to be in before it went dark. Got a good telling off a few times.

I think that kids do call round for each other if it's safe to do so. Roads are so dangerous now, with so much traffic. Our DGDs had a little friend who lived nearby and they used to call for each other until she moved away.

On one memorable occasion, our DD called round to see if a friend could play. She was about 12 or 13 at the time. Friend's dad opened the door, took one look at her and shouted, "Donna, here's your f*****g Paki friend." My DD is mixed race. She thought that it was quite funny, but didn't tell us about it until later, when she and Donna were no longer at the same school.

Oh yes, in fact we were out all day. Did your mums used to say, “Get out from under my feet”so we did. When the street light went to amber we knew it was time to go home. We were so fit and healthy.

I lived in a road with hardly any young families it was mainly elderly or people with teenagers and I was an only child! So I was thrilled when a young family moved in next door when I was 10,( the 70’s). I used to call for them all the time, and vice versa! we used to cycle to the village and up on to the Sussex Downs where we took picnics, built dens and looked for treasure, or went to the local park for feeding the ducks on the lake looking for squirrels or to the cafe to get an ice cream! We wanted to go to the beach (very near) but that wasn't allowed.we had a great time though and were gone for hours!
My own children were allowed to call round to local friends houses, and go to the local park alone! Slightly more restrictive than my own childhood. My grandchildren though are not allowed to go anywhere alone. And every play date is organised and parents carefully monitor all the play too. Different times

I was brought up abroad and wasn't allowed to play out until I was about six. In the late 1950s we were living in Buenos Aires in the San Telmo district and one day I was outside our building playing ball against the wall, waiting for my friend who lived across the street to come over. Suddenly, there was a terrific noise and a passer-by grabbed me and pulled me down on to the pavement - someone passing in a car had sprayed the wall where I had been playing with machine gun bullets! My mother and father wouldn't let me play out again after that - not even when we moved back to the UK - our next posting was Belfast!

I grew up in the 70’s in a new build ‘close’ so the road was safe. All the kids came out to play and we all went to one of two local primaries.

We made camps, had woods to explore, went on bike rides with packed lunches, play ‘it’, rollerskating and cobbling together anything with wheels out of old prams to make makeshift go carts.

All very Famous Five

A lovely post! Remember most of the above except that we were not near any open countryside. We did also use the old Anderson shelters in people's gardens as our hideouts. Also used to stand on a nearby railway bridge waiting for a steam train to pass by so that we'd all be enveloped in smoke, probably not a great idea but fun at the time.

Being able to go to the local lido with friends when at secondary school. Being able to take sandwiches and a drink and go to the park on our bikes. We didn't realise how lucky we were.

I remember taking a small boy back home to my mom after he had fallen in the pond catching tadpoles. He was covered in green slime from head to foot. I was dispatched to let his mom know my mom was giving him a bath and some old clothes to go home in. Probably wouldn’t be well thought of today.

We were kicked out of the house in the summer holidays at 6.30am when our parents went out to work. We were locked out all day, I can remember being told to clear off on a regular basis when I called for a friend at 6.30 am I had no where to go so I used to wander around the village until I was allowed to ask a friend to play. Sounds astonishing now but in 1972 it was just what I was used to!!

I suppose we should call it benign neglect but it was the norm for kids in the 1950s like me to go out for the day and come back at teatime.

We had a drinking fountain in the “rec” and a jam sandwich in the saddle bag of our bikes and off we went, making dens in the woods and cycling round the sea wall. One dramatic day we saw a drowned body being retrieved from the sea, which I’ve never forgotten.

Oh so many happy childhood memories here. I grew up in North East London and my Mum didn't like the local kids, considered them to be common and rough, so wouldn't let them call for me, always sent them packing! But she approved of one girl whose parents were 'business people' so I was allowed to call for her and visit her home. But we weren't t great friends so she didn't often call for me. But I would tell Mum that was where I was going and then I'd be off round the neighbourhood calling for whoever I liked, usually boys, their games and toys were more fun! We did all the things other posters have mentioned, also scrumping apples and pears, playing 'knock down ginger', playing cowboys and indians with cap guns, and exploring a large empty estate house which we believed was haunted and building campsites and bonfires in the grounds. Oh happy days! You can tell I was a real tomboy. I think that freedom to roam and choose my own friends made me more streetwise and increased my confidence as I was growing up. My Mum never knew what I got up to and was quite shocked when she did find out when my own children were young, hard to believe she never knew.

When I had my three sons in the 70's I allowed them to play out and call for their friends, with the usual parental warnings to behave themselves and stay out of the river. But I know they got up to all sorts of mischief, and so long as it wasn't (too) illegal or dangerous I turned a blind eye. Only twice did I have to wade in 'guns blazing' to rescue them from an angry neighbour. Just part and parcel of being a parent and they still remember it with amusement today.

Our youngest son's children enjoy a similar level of freedom, but the other GC less so. As someone else said it seems to be all supervised playdates now, not quite the same. I sometimes wonder if limited independent activity and decision making impacts on children's confidence, anxiousness and mental health in young people today.

When I was three I persuaded my mother to let me play out with some less advantaged children who lived in the next street. I took out my dolls prom and scooter. When the nearby factory hooter went off at one o’clock the disappeared so I was left crying until my mother came to find me. Wasn’t allowed out again until I was older and had s sister.
We moved to a rural location near woods and fields. Also our house had our own piece of woodland at the end of the garden and a piece of field before that. My parents were over protective so was never allowed to play out with other children.

This has been the lovelies thread. Thanks so much for all the memories. I’ve read through it a few times and it keeps making me smile. A couple of wows in there too!! I’ve made my mind up to introduce my little GDs to some of these games.

We used to go to the sandhills, woods or beach. Very lucky to have such amazing areas where we grew up.

Oh the memories! We used to play "I draw a snake upon your back, zigga zagga, zigga zagga, who did THAT" ("THAT" being someone who taps the person on the back). Why zigga, zagga, I have no idea! Then we would all go and hide and the person who's back was tapped had to find the person who drew the snake on their back. However, it could have been any of us, and no-one thought that one out, so basically it was just hide and seek. We also used to make dens and sit in my Wendy house eating old custard creams that had gone soft!

Forgot to mention we used to "cockle up". I think Cockling up must have been a Derbyshire expression. It meant standing on your hands and throwing your legs up at a wall (doing a handstand) or even on your hands and throwing your legs right over your head.

We were always outside playing, Making dens, off on our bikes, having conker fights and I remember the elastic band game when you joined all the elastic bands up and made a huge one and one girl had on her ankles one end and another girl at the other end and then you used to jump in and out and make patterns and do a sort of weave of the band around your ankles, singing a song. I can't even remember what the game was called but used to love it. Does anyone else remember this? Played marbles, made perfume from rose petals, drinking pop in our treehouse with sugar butties (yuk) but we loved them and mum used to tell us we would get worms eating sugar butties! Hopscotch, whip and top with coloured chalk on the top to make a pattern, skipping, fishing for tiddlers in the local brook, collecting tadpoles and I could carry on. These are all the things I did when my friends knocked and ask could I play out. Such happy days and such freedom, we went off for hours and the mums were quite happy for their children to do that and play out. No mobile phones or I pads then!

Rozina, in Manchester we used to call that "tippling over". We had many street games that involved the children that lived in the same street but every so often there was a huge game of "Ralievo" or Ralley-vo that would go on over several evenings. This was usually in the autumn when it began to go dark earlier. I never knew how the word got round about this game, but it did and everyone, kids of all ages, joined in. I had a younger brother that I HAD to take with me on my disappearances/adventures. Off we went all bathed and clean clothes. On the return I would be filthy, lost ribbons etc. and brother was pristine. Bugger. I had to grab handfuls of dirt and rub it over him. One dirty was in trouble, two dirty was OK. Collecting wood for Nov.5 bonfire was always fun, we called it logging, and there was warfare with other groups as we tried to pinch their wood or they attacked our pile. Roast potatoes and apples in the embers, and parents came out later to sit out and have a drink.

Wow, such a blast from the past and did practically all of the above. We would make dens on a patch of waste ground using whatever was to hand, dam streams in the local woods and cycle through the park (when the park keeper wasn’t around!). There were communal skipping games in the road, with a very long rope and everyone jumping in and out - even the mums would join in sometimes! Not many cars around either. And we played lots of games of marbles. Marbles were much nicer then than they seem to be now. Winning a prized specimen off your opponent sometimes caused upsets! When I was a child the edge of our large northern city had quite a rural feel and there were farms and fields of dog daisies and cowslips in the summer and bluebells in the woods. It took you out of yourself and life in a two up two down terrace with no garden. It’s council housing now, but the woodland is still there to be enjoyed.