Now closed: What things do you get up to that might shock your children if they ever found out (or indeed did shock them if they have already uncovered the truth!!)? Talk to L'Oreal and you could win a goodie bag worth £200

Ashamed to say I played with matches. No child should do this!

I did some toe-curlingly dreadful things when I was young. The worst has to be when I was on holiday in Corfu, aged about 19. We met a couple of locals - one owned a jewellers shop and was a good 20 years older than me. I went off on a boat with him to Albania for a weekend where we hired a car and went up into the hills. I found out later he had a wife and 2 children. Luckily I was returned safely to Corfu, but every time I think about it, which isn't often, I am overcome with embarrassment, fear and thoughts of 'what if'. If my DD's had done anything like that (perhaps they have?) I would have been so angry and frightened, knowing what danger I had put myself in. I was soooo naïve.
I have done a few fair stupid things lately, all unprintable.

I published my autobiography on Kindle and my daughter read it, in it was lots of things I was ashamed of...including losing my virginity in an alfa romeo

Aged 17, I went for a long walk in the countryside with a gang of friends, girls and boys, all aged 18 or 19.

I was brought up very strictly in a teetotal household, totally unused to alcohol. We were thirsty after 3 or 4 miles, so stopped at a country pub , and I drank a half pint of cider, which I honestly thought was non-alcoholic.

Someone reported me to my Grammar School Headmistress, on a Friday, and she asked me to see her in her office the next Monday. I worried the whole weekend that I would be expelled and/or arrested by the police.

In he end, I got a severe reprimand, but that was all. I never told my mother, father, or my 2 kids. (My husband knew as he was there too!).

Definitely not drugs but I once jumped off a boat in strong currents to swim to a tiny sand island. It was a very bad idea and I think vodka came into play, I ended up pinned against a broken metal pier almost missing the island entirely and only just managed to get ashore.

Needless to say no one on the boat had noticed but thanks to a couple of Americans who had anchored before the currents took hold, I borrowed a phone and called the boat. I then launched myself off the other end of the island hoping that the current would float me past my boat, and fortunately a very fit Finn jumped overboard and collected me. I would never have made it on my own and I would never suggest to anyone that swimming when drunk is a good idea, especially in the middle of the sea! I'm not telling you how I also broke the boat that day and we had to be towed back by the Coast Guard, it took 3 hours! ;-)

I once spent an evening leading a guy on and letting him think he was going to get rather friendly with me. I told him I wanted to spice up the evening and using a roll of sellotape, I tied him to a chair. Then I told him I was going out to get some ice cream from the all night garage and I would be back. I didn't come back and he was stuck there all night until his flatmate, who worked nights, got home in the morning. I really did a good job with the sellotape. Took him a long time to forgive me.

maggie I don't think it's the competition threads themselves, or their content, that cause irritation - it's the presence on them of posters who contribute nothing to the other forums.
Nothing to do with cliques either, simply that if everyone only came onto Gransnet to post on the competition threads, all the other forums would be empty and there'd be no Gransnet.
Gransnet needs sponsorship through competitions and advertising, but the lifeblood of the site is those posters who are brave enough to start a thread or comment on other people's threads, and risk getting their heads bitten off or held up to ridicule for doing so.
nightowl's analogy of people gatecrashing a party is spot on. If the gatecrashers are confident enough to post on threads like this, why can't they post elsewhere too?

I have done so many disgraceful things... there is not enough room to write them all down!! OOH TO BE YOUNG..

I feel that trying to keep the site exclusive to regular posters, for whatever reason, smacks of the clique mentality some have complained about in the past. This is a public forum and as such open to anyone who registers, whether or not they want to spend time chatting about their families or political views elsewhere on the site. I can't understand why anyone not wanting to see the sponsored threads would irritate themselves by clicking on them.

The subject of which companies are given "airspace" is a different matter entirely.

Well said nightowl

I stole from a shop when I was a teenager. They would be shocked.

I used to nick the Pick n' Mix from Woolworth's! Until I got found out and had to pay them back every week from my pocket money! Also, nude sunbathing in Spain, I found it liberating!

Well my god hope the children don't read this.
I use to play truant all the time and on a morning I would sit on the stairs until postman arrived, I would look for the letter from school hide down my pants, take the other post into the lounge. Once outside I would open the letter read it, rip it into loads and loads of small pieces. I would ring the school and tell I was Mrs Naylor ringing about the step daughter what seemed to be the problem, and when they said I had not been to school, I would say something like oh yes, I was suppose to ring you, Audrey has gone to see her siblings in Middlesbrough she will be back in 2 weeks or whatever. I always managed to get away with it.

That's awful nightowl.Where is their "conscience" ?

I'm not sure whether it is worth starting a new thread soon. I have emailed GNHQ in the past to express my views but I don't think they feel they can change anything. I'm not sure what a new thread about this would achieve.

I have asked them to reconsider which companies they get involved with Greenfinch but again, big money talks louder than smaller, more ethical companies.

I quite agree, if you don't want to participate, don't read.

As a child, I lived in Borneo. I lived in a wooden bungalow in a very humid country. To help prevent mould etc in the wardrobes there were small heaters covered with a metal mesh. The holes in this mess we're about the size of a chstick (can you see where this is going!). Me, as a 3/4 year old thought it would be fun to make a bonfire in the cupboard. So I shut myself in, placed matches, very carefully, in the holes of said mesh..........GOT CAUGHT. I have never forgotten that episode. I don't remember being in very much trouble so it can't have been that bad!!

Is it worth starting a seperate thread about this nightowl? I think that you have several points in there.
And because this thread is a competition thread, a lot of the regular posters, myself included, dont generally come on them at all. They are not my cup of tea.

An excellent post nightowl. I agree with everything you say and would like to add that I don't think Gransnet should have anything to do with companies that test on animals which L'Oreal clearly does.

I do see your point henbane but let me try to explain my point of view, as someone who has posted a few times expressing irritation at this and other similar competition threads.

To me gransnet feels like a family. A very large family, where you will 'get to know' some members more than others, you will clash with people, sometimes things might get very heated, but there is also a lot of support in times of trouble. You can stop posting for long periods but always feel able to pop back in when you want to. I would also add that new posters are usually given a warm welcome.

The competition threads attract a completely different type of audience. Yes, sometimes regular posters contribute, but the main entrants are usually names you have never seen before and will never see again. It makes me feel, rightly or wrongly, as if the family has decided to have a party with goodies on offer (I am well aware that they are not our goodies) and the whole town has decided to gatecrash the party, take what they can and leave. I am aware that gransnet relies on competition threads for sponsorship, and if posters would show some commitment to the site I wouldn't feel it was an issue, but mostly they don't. So that, plus the fact that the competitions seem to run and run for ever, dominate the active threads, and are often for companies such as L'Oreal which I despise, are what really get on my nerves. But I will try very hard to ignore them in future.

No intention of sharing what I got up to as a teenager, but irritated by people complaining about competition threads - there is a disclaimer at the top: "This topic is for discussions paid for by Gransnet clients" so it's fairly clear what the thread is about, if you don't like competitions why bother to read further?

Where do I start lol I smoked, drank cider in our local park. I had boyfriends before their dad. My friend and I used to tell each others parents we were staying at each others houses when really we were going to a party down the road haha hope my children and grandchildren dont follow suit x

Mine isn't even in the past ... I break the law: when I drive back from our local supermarket, on a quiet road quite close to where I live, I never put my seatbelt on. (Because it's an old banger, a.k.a. "the runabout" it doesn't beep annoyingly either).

A summer (1970) of not bothering with, many, clothes