Playing out

Went rambling with friends in the blackberry fields with my "gang", (lived on the edge of town) skated up and down the road, knowing just to step out of the front door other kids would be around, cycled distances on roads at age 10 with friends for miles, went on errands to the grocers at age 5 pushing the potatoes in the pram crossing a road now heaving but then empty...

I did all of those things mentioned above. Children sadly won’t ever experience what we did. Everything today is organised. We were out from morning till teatime. Then, in summer, back out until it got dark. Wonderful unforgettable days.

I was born in 1944 in a working class suburb of Liverpool and all the children then played out. There were rows of terraced houses and these streets became our playground, although there was a nearby park. Cars were few and far between in those days so it was much safer for children to play in the street. Generally the playground was for weekends and out parents liked us to stay in the street between getting home from school and the evening meal.

We had a whole lore of street games which involved the two opposing pavements. Learning the games and the various rules self-socialised us in a way that modern children dont experience. If you didnt obey the rules you were "out" and no one would play with you. Nowadays the snowflakes would call this bullying. So we learned to be what is now called a team player. Tou took your turn as the less desirable roles, such as being "it" in hide and seek og holding the rope for skipping games. We fell in and our of friendship as we grew up and our parents never interfeared,

Like the OP we also played in the park on the swings, climbed trees, made dens and so on. Sometimes when we were really lucky parents might allow us to invite a friend into the back yard or even the house. That was a real honour.

In a very real sense we made our own fun. It developed our imaginations and our characters. I read now of children who get to secondary school and have never been on public transport on their own. By that age I used to catch a bus into the center of Liverpool and look around the shops.

There were no artificial play dates then with helecopter parents. I feel so sorry for modern children being ferried about like parcels from one activity to another.

We were so lucky. Out all day with friends. Pop home for a sandwich at lunchtime then back out again. Making dens, climbing trees, riding bikes, skipping.

My kids are in their early 40s and I am pleased to say they had loads of fun outdoors too but I think they were the last generation to do so.

All sorts of ball games, skipping games, made dens, ride on swings, bikes.
Same as Lisaangel10.

@biglouis we also played street games,

Sorry posted prematurely. Meant to say we played all kinds of games with various rules. Red rover was one of them. One player stood looking at the wall whilst others tried to creep up to him without him turning round to catch them moving. We would chant ‘red rover, red rover, can we come over’, the one who successfully crept up to the one turned to the wall and tapped him on his shoulder would then take a turn.

Playing on a bomb site in London is an abiding memory for me. Collecting snails in a jam jar from neighbours garden. Helping the old lady who lived in the ground floor flat of the house we lived in to make toffee apples she’d give us sugar sandwich for helping and she sold the apples at a fairground.
Making a go kart from rubbish, and those awful metal skates that always fell apart. I was allowed with taking my 5 yr old brother to the ‘rec’ with a pack of sarnies and we played in the paddling pool for most of the day coming home at ‘dinner’ time.
Carefree days for sure. It’s a childhood denied children nowadays.

Tanith I too remember playing on bomb sites and it was only as an adult that I realised what they actually were.

I lived in a pit village. While at Junior school, our "gang", the children who lived on our lane, used to roam around together. We made dens, climbed trees, paddled in the river, dammed streams, played 'Cowboys and Indians' or 'Cops and Robbers'. We walked miles, but always home in time for tea. Looking back if our parents had seen some of the risks we took we'd have been kept indoors. The one serious accident was when one of the boys came of his sledge in the snow and hit a tree, a broken leg. We put him on the sledge and pulled him back to the nearest house where an adult took over.
There were no after school clubs or playmates. If we were lucky and had some money we would get a bus to a swimming pool about 4 miles away. We were much more independent and savvy than children now, we stuck together and knew which adults to avoid.

As a child I wandered freely about fields and woods, often by myself. Ponds were a great amusement too. We lived in a world of imagination - organised games were for indoors. There were no playgrounds near enough to go to. I became familiar with flowers and trees, birds and wild creatures. Sometimes I collected caterpillars and kept them in jam jars until they pupated and then turned into butterflies for me to set free.

My children had a more urban childhood, but still had green spaces to explore. They certainly played out a lot, but not in fields as I did. Even my London-dwelling grandchildren played out in the street, but had to go to a park to find greenery, apart from their rather small garden - but even that had one climbable tree.

No I didn’t I was a lonely only and lived on a main street in a town so the back garden was my playground for the most part my children had much more freedom than me

There were very few "activities" then compared with now. Perhaps the boys had more with organized cricket and football teams. Apart from guidies, brownies etc I recall little for girls. There was the local dance school where we learned "morris dancing". But that was not the traditional all male morris dance with the village maypole. It was more like American cheer leaders with paper shakers. The only other activities were things like sunday school which I wnt to for a few years, until I decided I no longer believed in god at age 11.

My parents had no car so they would not have been able to ferry me around, nor I think would they have been willing to. I was given a second hand bike at age 10 so I was expected to use that for anything further afield.

I remember specifically collecting frog spawn in jam jars, and putting caterpillars in my old mum’s cake tin with lots of leaves hoping it would become a butterfly.
She wasn’t well pleased.

We had a tremendous amount of freedom as children and were never indoors. We played marbles, hopscotch, communal skipping games, whipped tops and any piece of waste ground was an adventure playground for cowboys and indians or a bit of “gang warfare”! We were also within walking distance of a park, and woods where we would explore the stream and generally rampage around. To my eternal shame, we used to collect birds eggs too. There was a railway line and a river at the bottom of our road, so we train spotted or collected water snails in jam jars. The river was very polluted so it’s amazing we didn’t catch some awful disease from it, but we were a pretty healthy lot. It’s clean now and full of fish. When my children were young, they had a certain amount of freedom to roam - at one point we lived in the edge of a disused airfield and they and their friends would ride their bicycles on the deserted runways or kick a football about, but we always knew where they were and who they were with. My grandson never had that same kind of freedom and neither did many of his friends. They spent lot of time outside but always under some kind of supervision until they were around eleven or twelve when football in somebody’s garden or other was their main occupation at which point he was allowed to walk home on his own, but DD could track him on her phone so she knew exactly where he was at any given point.

Another one here played on a south London "bomb site" as a 6 year old and only thought as an adult what it was. Our road was a long hill with a horse and cart milk delivery. Once we moved to SE Kent the sea front and beach was our playground. And a bicycle was the best "toy" ever. Out in the early morning and back at tea time with a sandwich and crisps in the saddle bag.....I would love to do that now. A caring role prevents me. How lucky we were. I expect today our parents would be accused of neglect.

I lived in inner city Birmingham for the first 10 years of my life.
My home was a 2 up 2 down back to back house in a courtyard of 5 others.We were surrounded by railways, canals, factories and bomb sites and that was our playground.
Like many others on here, I was, I suppose, semi feral by todays standards.
Our local "rec" was built on in the mid fifties and the small, enclosed play area that was included in the development, was for the sole use of the residents children.
We slum kids would sneak in but were usually chased off.
I did make friends with one girl, but eventually she was banned from playing with me. I was, apparently, a bit of a bad influence.
Aged 8 I would walk into the city centre (it took about 10 minutes) on my own, and head for the big library. It was a magnificent victorian building, later demolished and replaced with " the carbuncle."

Eventually we moved to a small market town in Worcestershire, surrounded by woodland, orchards and fields. A whole world away from my early years in Brum.

My former home was demolished along with the factories and the railway goods yard. They have been replaced by swish canalside apartments, wine bars, restaurants and towering office blocks.

Marvellous amount of freedom as described above. It prepares you for life, you work as part of a , make your in fun. Feel sorry for today's children, everything organised can't even walk to school, not safe, too many cars, too many people that want to rob them of their innocence. We never had drug gangs that used children, knives in schools, no respect for authority. There again we didn't have foreign holidays, designer clothes envy, tv on constantly and if not that your computer. Both parent usually work now and there's that finding a good child minder you can afford, not enough hours in the day.

I lived in a small Suffolk village and yes we used to play in a field with a stream running through and trees to climb. It was particularly fun when the cows were there and maybe a bull or two!! We also used to dig in the garden of an old derelict cottage and dug up old plates and bits of China happily bringing home our treasures. A particular memory is going to the local jumble sale and waiting to the end and buying a gift for all the family cheaply when they were practically giving things away! A readers digest magazine for dad, a plate with snowdrops on it for mum etc. It was fun. Very different to what our grandchildren do!

I was another lover of local jumble sales, but I was much more selfish. From about age seven I just bought secondhand books, usually adventure stories, usually for a few pennies.

We had a strip of woodland behind our houses in a cul de sac, we lived in there, dens, tree climbing, hiding and played in the road out front, skating, skipping and riding our bikes. We roamed further, blackberries from afield, primroses from a railway embankment - naughty!
Our grandchildren are near a playground with football cages, grandson spends hours there, all in sight of their house. My daughter takes them on countryside walks every weekend, or did, the novelty is wearing off now.

We had a very large common area at the bottom of our garden where we used play and roam about.. and we used to make dens, build fires and cook in our garden..

then when I was 14 my parents gave me a pony and I used to just ride for miles on him.. down to the local beach and then on through the countryside.. not so many cars around.. life was certainly much freer then.. and it felt safe..

Cressy

Tanith I too remember playing on bomb sites and it was only as an adult that I realised what they actually were.

Same here! We knew the site as 'bomb buildings' and it never occurred to me at the time that that was exactly what it was.

I lived near Loch Lomond and spent loads of time there with friends or parents in the summer. Or we used to go 'up the burn' and play on rope swings, dens, sand tunnels and eat what we had been taught was safe. During summer holidays we left home in the morning and only came back when we were hungry and our parents never came looking for us. Life was a lot safer in the '60's.