Stuff you did as a child that wouldn’t be contemplated now

I lived in London. From about the age of 9 we would get a Red Rover (All day bus ticket), I think it was 6d and be out all day in school holidays. Trafalgar square, Horse Guards parade, Buckingham Palace, St James Park, Tower of London and Tower Bridge etc. A bag with picnic of a jam sandwich, sausage roll, bottle of juice and an apple. Just told to be home for tea.

When I was about 8 or 9 an older boy picked me from a group to cycle with him to the abandoned railway line to collect sacks of young seedling trees I was the only one picked so I was very proud. We had a nice time exploring an old subway and then firing stones at bottles. We collected hundreds of these little plants. I've no idea why .
When I got home my mother wad raging mainly because we were sitting on the pavement looking like urchins. She took the sacks of plants and put them straight in the bin. She had no soul.

I've thought of two more dangerous things that I did as a child :

My grandma went to bed every afternoon leaving me cooking-usually making cakes or pastry and using the old fashioned gas oven .
Just be careful not to burn yourself,said Grandma and don't wake me up until five with my tea .
I was a pre-schooler.

Aged eight my cousin and I had a couple of riding lessons and then rode the local not that well broken in ponies without any tack holding onto their manes laughing and being totally fearless .

Born 1942. At age 5, I used to walk to the bus stop some 300yds away and catch the number 4 bus (greeted by the friendly bus driver) to the 'School in the sun', two stops before Lytham (in Lancashire). The bus stopped outside, and along with other 5/7yr olds, we were greeted by one of the teachers. The bus conductor kept a disciplined eye on us, even tho' we never even dreamed of misbehaviour. At home time, we waited on Lytham Green (opposite the school) with a teacher who saw us safely onto the bus. The conductor and driver knew where to let each one of us off, and for me, I would walk home by myself without fear, the Green Cross Code in my mind. 6 to 7yrs old would see me at weekends and holidays, out on my tricycle or up and down the road on skates. Few cars were about, so it was pretty safe. Parents never seemed to worry, even when I wandered, with other tricycle 'bikers', as much as 2miles away. Just as long as we were back before the street lights came on. What happened to our society that our communities have allowed socio/psychopaths to manipulate our freedom and mutual trust away? I can't see a way back, UNLESS there is a bloody revolution.

My sister tells me about skipping school and getting the train into London but I think my mother suspected and she was much stricter with the rest of us. Wasn't allowed to take my bike out the garden, only allowed to go to my friend's house 4 doors away on my own. Having lots of brothers and sisters I wasn't short of playmates but we played at home - mainly in the wendy house in the garden.

On the other hand my OH tells some tales - he made a firearm and blew a garage door off.

When I was in primary school aged about 7 or 8 I had a friend whose granny lived about half a mile away. At lunch time we used to let ourselves out of the playground and run to her house for a bowl of soup and a sandwich. I was supposed to have school dinners but no-one ever seemed to ask where I was.

My children would disappear for hours playing in the nearby woods making camps with friends from the road. As an adult she took her husband to the woods to show him where she spent many happy hours only to find all the pathways into the woods completely over grown, sadly children do not play in the woods anymore.

wow! DS54

fire cans. yes the hardest part was scavenging an empty tin can from someones dustbin... food in tins weren`t so numerous? fire cans.......never did the sleepers though..

nor the fireworks.. you must be younger than me!

I grew up in Norfolk and definitely had a great deal more freedom than children do today. We lived in a newly built close of around fourteen houses in a horseshoe shape, which was just off a lane. Behind the houses was a field with barns. This area was my playground from a very young age. There was a group of us, of which I was the youngest. As I grew older, my world expanded and, by the age of eight, I was travelling by bus to the next village for my piano lesson. By ten, l was cycling all over over the countryside with my friend.

For some reason my parents enrolled me in a school outside our catchment area. I think it was a posher area and mum, an inner snob, thought I would mix with a better class of children! Unfortunately it was two bus rides away, the first up a very large hill, and she had to take me in the morning and pick me up again, 4 bus journeys. She did that until I moved on to the junior school down the bottom of the hill. Of course most of my school friends lived near the school so if I wanted to play with them I had to go on the bus. One friend lived at the top of the hill near the common and one day, I guess we were about 9 or 10, we were playing in the woods when a man exposed himself. We ran away and I must have been a bit more worldly wise than my friend so I said we must tell her Grandma , who she lived with. We ran to tell her and her reply was ‘ You shouldn’t have looked!’ Can you imagine that response today?

'Fire cans' - oh yes, almost forgot about those. My husband decided to revive the tradition with our GS the other year - our son (GS's dad) was NOT impressed and promptly gave him a lecture about health and safety.

Vice Versa.... LOL

My friend ‘s dad was a coal man and every Friday night he would send his daughter (and me) out round the local estate with a list to collect his money! Imagine 2 young girls (we were about 10) out & about with a load of cash😬

When 7 yrs lived a mile and a half from the sea. Walked with a couple of school friends to the beach. Had about quarter lemonade bottle of water and a couple rich tea biscuits for a picnic. We pretended to swim letting the waves carry us back to shore. We were there for hours. No suncream either. Walked home in time for teatime. Or we deviated from our route and had a few slides down a pit bing thinking our parents wouldn't know. Of course our behinds were black from the dust. Worth getting in trouble for!

Kate1949

I walked miles to school, walked home for dinner and back to school. One thing I find unimaginable now is that my friend and me used to knock on people's doors and ask if we could take their babies out. The mums would put the babies in the pram and off we'd go for the afternoon. Some of them had never set eyes on us before. I cringe when I think about it now.

We almost came to blows about pushed the pram holding our neighbour 's twins, they must be over 65 now!

My mum was put on a train in Liverpool by her mother when aged 5. She travelled to Wales where her gran met her. She was quite traumatised by it.

My mother made beautiful wedding cakes all hand made side rose holders and ornate tracery on each tier. One was ready for collection sitting on the sideboard and my brother knocked it and broke a couple of the fragile side vases, he shot out of the back door and returned home after 8pm, he'd been so worried . Mum always made spares and could easily fix it. I am in awe of the time she spent making everything for these cakes, she say for hours and hours. Our daughters' christening came was the last she made as her hands weren't too steady.

Walked to school from age 5, it wasn’t far. Walked to secondary school, couple of miles, sometimes coming home over fields and a disused quarry. At weekends walked five miles through woods, and over a common to go riding alone (age 11).
Bought cigarettes for my Dad, without question from age 6!!

When I was 15, I often used travel to the BBC studio in London and take part in a live broadcast of Top of the Pops.

Loads of people, many younger than I was and mostly girls, used to turn up. They would open the doors and we would all swarm in. Nobody checked how old we were or how many people went in.

It was a different DJ every week and of course, Jimmy Savile was a regular.

I sometimes went on the bus after school to my granny’s from the time I was seven. From the time I was nine, I was home alone after school until my parents got home from work at teatime. There was usually a shopping list and money waiting for me. From then on, I did most of the shopping, including going along a very isolated road on dark evenings to buy my parents’ cigarettes. I was always out playing, or cycling around the area. By the time I was ten, I was taking babies out in their prams, and taking younger children in the neighbourhood out for country walks. Hard to believe now.

I am the oldest of 3 .
Our Mam had a heart condition and was often "resting" ( she lived to be 84 )
I was , I think, what is now called the " parentalised child" and took on many things for my family and 2 siblings.
This includes taking afternoon off school, because Mammy was poorly, so I could cook for Dad and the younger children.
I would phone my head master to tell him this and he would sanction it because we were " a nice family" , clean and polite and very clever.
The best story is the one about 10year old me being kept from school, to walk 2 miles to the nearest pharmacy to collect.....Diconal .... A strong opiate medicine Mam needed for her migraine.
Social services would have a wonderful time with that one now .
This was 1966.
Thankfully, no one mugged me for the drugs on the way home!

oh grannybuy I used to do the shopping had my shopping list, had to have King Edward potatoes, not those "whites" and eggs loose in a bag I think, and do NOT break any, then I had to balance the money from the list and make sure I got the change correct.. oh gosh those memories, this is such a good thread for me, as I don`t often look back.well have no one to share them with thank you everyone

I recall when I was ten, a girl in my class felt ill, and I was chosen to take her home. No one had a phone, so parents couldn’t be contacted. No one was in when we reached her home, but she had a key. I had to leave her by herself. Looking back now, it seems dreadful that no one was responsible for an ill child.

I came across a letter written by my mother to my father in 1971 when he was away on a course. In it, she describes how she drove me and my brother (14 and 13) to the bus stop because we were late for school, leaving my baby brother (6 months old at the time) at home, alone. She writes 'He was perfectly happy in his playpen, playing with his toys.'
I find this strange in so many ways. When my children were teenagers, if they'd been late for school, they would have had to accept the consequences - I would not have bailed them out by giving them a lift. And I would never, ever, have left a 6 month old child at home on his own even for the 20 minutes it would have taken. Changed times.

So much of these accounts of the 1950s are familiar to me. Walking to and from school in all weathers (including deep snow in Yorkshire) after first day at infant school. At age 9-10 taking my 4 year old brother on top deck of double decker bus into busy town for Saturday morning cinema at a choice of two cinemas. Then afterwards a long walk together to the other end of town to visit grandparents where we’d each be given
a “ Saturday sixpence” which we’d spend at the corner shop on the walk back to the bus station. I too knocked on doors if I spotted a baby in a pram in a stranger’s front garden. If I could take their dog out for a walk attached to the pram, all the better. I cycled 5 miles to secondary school and back along country lanes, satchel strapped on the bike rack, rain or shine for years from age 11. I am grateful that we all learned independence and resilience, had all that freedom and I am so sad for the restricted childhoods of today. There’s no going back.