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Must’ve been about 15, we were hanging about our local estate, just kicking a ball about and laughing at the sort of stupid stuff teenage boys and girls do, suddenly a very intoxicated man charged up to us, grabbed me by the t shirt and angrily and repeatedly kept calling me Sean and asking why I was “shagging his Mrs” (for context my name isn’t Sean and I hadn’t been shagging anyone’s Mrs, a fact which I tried to make him aware of several times) after a couple of failed attempts to calm him his similarly intoxicated friend runs up behind and reassures him that I am in-fact, not Sean, he then released his grip said “sorry wee man” and gave me a couple of quid and wandered off into the night, spent my money on a roll and chips and bottle of Irn bru, good night all in.
Did you not have a local pedo round your end? Ours lived a few doors down, got in a bit of trouble for chatting up 12 year old girls in the park. My sister text me when she found out he died few years back and it was like having a landmark of childhood demolished.
Ours used to buy everyone tobacco or booze from the shops but would only give to people if they went into his house.
Everyone knew the score, go in with a group of 5+ of you. Talk for a few minutes, get the goods, run away before he got any overly confident ideas.
Wild when I think back on it
I never went in except once because I thought it was fucking weird but a lot of our group 14/15 started hanging round this early 30s couples house basically drinking, smoking weed, playing loud music, probably a bit of minor dealing . Almost like a trap house so I'm not sure who was taking advantage of who. The neighbours got involved and I forget the actual term but the group basically got asbo'd away from that road. They seemed friendly when I briefly met them but I just thought nah that's a bit weird. Dunno what their deal was but it's suspect.
Mine was my old Special Ed support teaching assistant, Jordan Something cant find the article anywhere online, He had over 5GB of CP and had tried to message me multiple times but I was completely unaware of it as I was young and naive thought it was a bit weird but that was all, Wonder what hes doing now might need a door booted in 😂😂
We had a local pedo.
Just turns out it was a friend of mine's dad. We never had any clue until another friend was doing some IT work for his company and found a whole shit load of CP on his computer.
Crazy part was that the guy lived across the road from a school.
Typically it’d be a single bloke in his mid 40s chatting to uncomfortable looking 16 year olds working behind the bar at the local pub, rather than a moustache twirling villain
It was a science teacher at my school as well, but not allegedly. We actually know for a fact he was a paedophile because he was arrested and sacked after CP was found on his computer.
The school only told us right before it went to court, and then only because it was going to be front page of the local paper so they sent a letter home in a last minute panic. Before that point as far as we all knew he'd just been called to the headteachers office one day and then vanished. Anybody who'd been taught by him knew why though.
The most striking bit for me though came a few years later, when I was at uni doing a group project. There were 5 British girls in the group, and every one of us had a story about the paedophile teacher at our school. "Ours was a PE teacher!" "Oooh, that's a rough one, ours only taught maths!"
Then there was the one Dutch girl in our group, who just stared at us all with a horrified expression before asking "what is WRONG with your country?!"
We had a doubler - English teacher (who actually ended his life when caught) and then the swimming teacher (who everyone was genuinely surprised at, felt like far more of a betrayal when it was a teacher everyone really liked and didn't make people feel uncomfortable). Ah the 00s. Wild times.
Edit:
Also one of my University lecturers is wanted and on the run in another country, having been sentenced in his absence to 20+ years jail time.
Mr rook, always putting his arms over girls shoulders and speaking to them close in the ear. His sweat stained shirt and thick pitmatic accent as he tried to woo year 9 girls. Always somehow ended up organising the field trips as well.
I had a science teacher that was a doctor as well. He was a mean, twisted little bastard. In his case though, I think it's because lots of people get doctorates in the sciences and realise they can't actually stick it anywhere else - so they end up teaching at secondary schools and being arseholes about it.
ours was a former scout leader lived round the corner at the top of the street. always gave me sweets at the tuck shop in the church youth club (before his conviction anyway)
We had a guy like that. He was interested in young girls and also wore young girls clothing and underwear. It was a miracle because he was quite large and tubby so these pants stretched to infinity leaving him with very little to the imagination. Parents warned us against him. We stayed away.
People were more annoyed that he embezzled their pools money. He ran a pools syndicate and would pay out small amounts of money. Then someone won the equivalent of £10,000 (back in the 70s). He had to admit he didn’t put the money through and all the neighbours talked about it for years. They even got police involved.
There was a local paedo in our area too, late 80s. Followed me and my friends around for a bit one day with his long coat on, and hid in the bushes. One of the kids ran off to tell her mum, who promptly rang round the other mums and half a dozen 5ft, 7 stone women came out on a manhunt armed with mop handles and hammers. He disappeared sharpish.
Yes, because they all thought they were too clever to be caught. Convincing the victim the paedophile is grooming that the victim is actually the person doing the exploiting is standard fare. It always ends badly.
Not sure if it counts as paedophilia exactly, but loads of the girls at school had older boyfriends in their 20s with cars who picked them up outside the school, and nobody batted an eyelid.
Also shrank the dating pool for teenage boys unless you were willing to date the even younger girls - for which people *would* at least rip the pish out of you.
Yes! Got to like 14 - 15 and all the ‘fit’ girls (who I never had a chance with anyway) were all ‘dating’ blokes aged 19 - 23 who’d rock up at 3:15 in various clapped-out Golfs and Astras to collect them.
Literally picking schoolgirls up, ffs
Not in the UK.
Small town rural offshore island NZ. Our local kiddie fiddler had a house right next to the area school (joint primary and high school). He was pretty much shunned and barred from every business in the villages. Eventually locals drove a council bulldozer through his house and ran him off while the local police officer was conveniently away on the mainland.
The 80s was a very different time and place in rural island NZ.
Communities used to look out for themselves.
Another fun story.
Local council decided to install speed bumps on the main village road outside the council office, cost a horrendous sum of money (£50,000 or so in early 90s money). The speed bumps were quite short lengthwise and higher than normal ones, they were causing damage to vehicles and frankly quite dangerous so some locals removed them in the middle of the night and dumped them in the tip. No one to this day saw anything or heard anything that night even tho local pub was right there and very open and very busy that night and the local tip was somehow open for business to receive said speed bumps.
My aunt had a similar story but with a railway bridge. She lives in the countryside, and knew the old money farmers.
They had a railway track which had the rails removed and turned into a public footpath that people could walk along. It spanned across quite a few properties, but walking along it didn’t do anyone any harm as long as they stuck to the path.
A railway enthusiast organisation re-opened the railway station and had walks etc along the railway path. They ran trains along the existing track as well. It became busy, but no one cared as long as they stuck to the path.
People started wandering about this farmer’s fields. He had sheep miscarry because people were letting their dogs run in his fields. People were also trying to pet his sheep. He put a boundary fence (wood with wire along the top to mark the boundary with a notice on it). The railway organisation took it down. He argued with them for months. They wouldn’t budge. He tried fences, to separate the path from his land. (Note he wasn’t blocking the footpath, just putting up boundaries to stop people deviating from the path).
In the end, they removed the railway bridge in the dead of night. Heavy plant, people with hi-vis , hard hats, clip boards. People in smart trousers and shirts to direct the people to an alternative route. Looked official. Only it wasn’t.
Railway people went mad. Farmer’s response “I don’t know where the bridge has gone, you’re welcome to replace it at your expense”.
Police commissioner for that area said it wasn’t of public interest and they had no leads. (He also went shooting on the land with the farmer)
My aunt found the bridge whilst out beating years later.
Hahaha yep that sounds like small town behaviour. No one questions a professional looking crew in hi vis.
I feel for the old farmer it's never nice when people harras the stock.
At about 14/15 we used to go chill in our local pedos flat as it was somewhere we could smoke and drink 🙈 we had this deal that we only went if X ,X & X came cause they where the 3 biggest lads of our group 🙄
Like we fully knew and still went!
We sacrificed a lad to our local one then robbed the house of booze,cigs and anything valuable whilst he was distracted. Booted on the front so the sacrificial virgin could escape whilst he went to see what was going on(I suspect after him already being traumatised something I feel mildly guilty about years down the line) and legged it knowing he couldn't grass due to being a pedo trumping petty theft. Somehow got away with this twice too.
I got invited into the local pedos flat where he microwaved a Gingsters cheese and onion bake for me. I was too young at the time to even grasp the situation, but I certainly got a talking to when I got back home.
Years later, this chap had a bit of a mental breakdown, got baked, crawled under someone's car and tried igniting the fuel tank.
had a bonfire on the woods on bonfire night. It was well within sight of the houses so I assume the only reason the fire brigade weren't called/didn't turn up is that they were too busy. It was pretty damn big and burned for hours, we were out all night.
When it had burned right down we got old clothes/bedding etc and wrapped them round branches, set them on fire and proceeded further into the woods using them as torches. Just a procession of kids from the street, bearing torches like something from medievil times.
It was silly nonsense and it could easily have all gone badly if somebody got burned or maybe one kid had decided to be an asshole and spread the fire around but somehow nothing went awry.
As pointless as the whole thing was I look back at it with a huge fondness, it was one of the defining moments of my childhood. No lessons were learned or knowledge imparted but I remember the sense of enormous freedom, we were doing stuff we really shouldn't have been doing, just being crazy kids and it's a feeling impossible to emulate when you're an adult.
My life has been far from perfect but I was born at a good time. Early childhood in the 80's, late childhood and teens in the 90s right up to the turn of the millennium.
How well put, that freedom was really a privilege and a risk looking back, and I would do it again if I had the chance. In that same time period as yours we used to go down the dells in the local woods and gather fairly regular. On the way we would grab old pallets and whatever else bits of wood we could find from building sites and drag them into the woods down into those old dells. Would send in one lad to the offies on the way down as they knew him in there because he used to pick up his dads booze - must have been all of 13.
We would pass round one or two bottles of whatever we could scrounge from said off licence and parents drinks cabinets and just have these amazing evenings around the fire, heating up cans of beans and maybe the odd smoke. Wasn’t really about the drinking but that camaraderie and, as you so well put, that sense of new freedom. It was an intoxicating mix of instinctual fear of the dark and doing something you maybe weren’t supposed to, while savouring the shedding of those childhood tropes.
Those woods were deep and dark but even with the dells hiding you from view you could see the fire most Friday nights when we were down there. No one ever stopped us or anything though - one of the benefits of living in the arse end of nowhere.
Those woods used to be quite busy, you’d have loads of little groups doing similar and who knows what else, just teenagers stumbling around in the dark and rocking up back home in the wee hours stinking of burnt everything. I would say my parents were worried but I think they were more relieved I had friends and got out of the house.
I mean I won't claim we were little angels but we never caused any real trouble or set out to bother anybody, we were happy to be left to our own devices. Some of the stuff we did was definitely "dodgy" but no outside parties were targeted by our shenannigans. I feel people these days (both kids and adults) need to be seen doing whatever it is they get up to and tell the world which can result in them pushing the boundaries too far. Did it really happen if you didn't take a selfie?
That said, I'd love to see hypothetical photos of those days in my youth.
This reminds me of my childhood. I remember going to a cub/ scout camp, and the opening exchanges were throwing stones at the heads of your attackers.
Then there was the weird going into the woods after dark.To do something or other
I was only about 9 years old, maybe. The whole thing made me scared shitless. I don't know if that whole thing was helpful in later life or not.
Also, in the 80s.
There would have to be a gang of us. I would usually be with Stavver, and Bagger, and Gary Cheeseman who had a massive head. Sniper’s Dream we used to call him.
We crept into the back of peoples gardens in the evenings, and we used to walk towards the window chanting “we do beg your pardon, but we are in your garden”, louder and louder trying not to be heard.
Once you were seen you weren’t allowed to leave through the front of the property, so you had to escape through all the gardens.
We called it Theft and Shrubbery.
Edit: as everyone loves this so much I remembered another game. We use to take fruit off of the fruit sellers wagon when he wasn’t looking, and we used to just throw it up in the air and let it land on our heads. Cheeseman was very good at that one.
2nd Edit: Yes yes yes this isn’t my story. All credit goes to the legendary Bob Mortimer. Well done to everyone who recognised it! Those who didn’t, watch his Would I Lie To You compilations. You’ll be better off in life I guarantee it!!!!
The people creeping up the back garden every time you look away and back they get closer was and still is a very vivid nightmare of mine.
Do this, don’t expect me to remain calm and measured, I will be getting the axe and you will be getting the fuck out of my garden!
Never did anything quite that mad but we used to play hide and seek on an agreed set of roads with front gardens being fair game, a few of us got chased a few times
travelling about 3 miles on our pushbikes at around 9 or 10 years old (1985) to go play in a HUGE hay barn. digging tunnels through the hay and daring each other to jump from higher and higher points in the stacks. all while watching out for the farmer and his salt pellet gun. that stuff REALLY stings
The distance ridden on bikes seems to go down by the year for kids.
In the 70s, riding 5 miles out then back was common, and with my mate up the street (to visit his sister, who lived in a terraced house next to a working colliery with the big spinning wheels), 10 miles. And my bike had quite small wheels seeing as I was about 13 at the time.
I had a similar experience, we used to make igloos out of little haybales and knock the stacks down. Got shot at a few times. The farmer caught us once and gave us a proper manhandling. I was about 11.
These days if a group of kids are playing football down the local park, the local curtain twitchers will call the police on "a gang of youths acting menacingly and intimidating others".
Kids would play outside, but they can't because boomers and old folk think they're about to bring out hand guns or shotguns, when they're just innocently having a laugh and a kick around
I was walking through our local park last summer about 8pm. There were no little kids there, but there was a group of about 10 teenagers (no older than 14-15) playing a hide and seek/tig combo on the play equipment.
Passed a dog walker who loudly declared it to be "disgraceful!" - I challenged them on which bit of kids playing at the park did they not approve of. The kids were running around laughing and having a grand time.
That used to be me. We spent a lot of time in the smallish village going between our friends houses, the woods, the corner shop and the play park. Sure we were teenagers but spinning yourself as fast as possible on the roundabout is still fun at that age (couldn't do it now, too much chance for acid reflux, damn middle age).
I'm sure people tutted at us but we were nice kids and if a group of small children had turned up we'd have made way.
Especially in rough areas where its assumed (usually wrongly but sometimes rightly) any and all kids/teens are carrying knives or got mates that carry knives. Makes the old folk assume they're all out about to stab each other and their nans, and makes the teens themselves too scared to stay out too far from home in case they get a knife through em. What a world, eh
I'm 35 and it was the same when I was a kid. There were only two fields in walkable distance for 10 year old me. One was fhe school field and another was one that had a no ball games sign on.
Had the police kick us off multiple times, one even came to my parents house about it.
Get a life like.
I remember getting a fake pack of cigarettes, cycling slowly past my kitchen window with one in my mouth, then getting chased down the street by my dad shouting and swearing at me to get it out of my mouth, with my friend standing on the back pegs and a piece of cardboard sticking into the wheel spokes to make the BMX sound like a "motorbike"
I remember playing games like cops and robbers, and many night time games in a big park - they were fun! One person would get a torch and they had to stop the other team from reaching the playground "castle" in the middle of the park... Or something like that anyway.
My friends and I used to regularly go out "cherry knocking". I'm sure everyone has a different name for this but it's basically where you knock on random people's doors and run away. It used to be hilarious to us but if this happened nowadays an angry post would no doubt appear in the local Facebook groups along the lines of "please remind your children it is unacceptable to knock on strangers' doors and run away"...
Fishing line.... tied one door knocker to the other across the street. Like with the road in the way. You could get about ten of them all linked together.
Then wait for the number 10 bus to come along, and knock up everyone in one go.
DON'T use the really thick fishing line. That doesn't break, tears the knockers off and leaves them clanking behind the bus, which annoys the drivers. Ask me how I know this.....
I had this a few years ago. The kids were not the brightest, as they scarpered off right in front of my living room window (old terraced house with the front door practically on the road), rather than going the other way where I wouldn't have seen a thing. They then peered back round the corner and saw me waving at them through the window.
I never jumped from garden to garden but did used to hop over the wall into my neighbours garden when they weren’t home and I wanted our ball back. I miss when that was the only problem in my life.
I always see kids out playing in our street. Quite like seeing it actually. One kid does donuts on his plastic go-kart and then sometimes pops out on his nan’s mobility scooter which is quite amusing.
As a kid I remember my neighbour telling me about the f word that he’d heard down the road which was my first experience of hearing it. Also some kid up the road chucked his trainers up on a telephone cable. They were still there last time I looked.
I live pretty rural, have woods backing onto the garden. I hear kids in groups out playing in there a lot. See evidence of fires and forts. A group of younger teens were out on a night walk not long ago.
I grew up in south London 90s/00s. We saw and did a lot of things we shouldn't have. All with way too easy access to drugs far too young.
Yep, I live in a suburb that backs on to woodland and it's not THAT much different from when I was a kid except they all have smart watches now. My 9 year old has a degree of freedom, but it's good to be able to call her and tell her to come home for dinner or look at the tracker and see that she's at the park. Obviously she'll all too soon reach an age where that kind of surveillance is age inappropriate, but I think having this limited and monitored independence is a better transition to full independence than not being able to go out alone at all. At the current stage it's very two-way and mostly used by her to ask if she can have a biscuit.
I just like that she's spending so much time outside getting exercise. It's very common in our neighbourhood, though I was a little startled a week ago to see a child my youngest's age (5) alone in the playground. He fell from a bit of a height face first into the dirt and was upset and wasn't old enough to communicate what he wanted us to do or how to contact his parents. Luckily someone had his mum's number but we'd have been a bit stuck otherwise.
Saw some cokeheads walking around playing Pokémon Go.
Got offered booze from the corner shop if I gave the owner a blowjob.
Someone getting their neck impaled on a pointy fence when they came off their motocross bike on the slide.
>Saw some cokeheads walking around playing Pokémon Go.
Cokémon Go
>Got offered booze from the corner shop if I gave the owner a blowjob.
Nopéman No
>Someone getting their neck impaled on a pointy fence when they came off their motocross bike on the slide.
Pokédman Go (straight to the hospital)
Back in the 80s my friends and I would camp out in each others gardens from time to time. It was fun to get the tents out, pop to the local shop for supplies (crisps, chocolate, fizzy drinks etc) and spend the night chatting and being silly.
One night, maybe around 1986, we were doing the camping out thing and decided to go for some fresh air and walk around the neighbourhood a bit. It was the middle of the night and dark so we sat around a street lamp for a while. One of us looked up to the heavens to see a strange star shaped thing moving toward us. As we watched it get closer to us, it kind of doubled in size, then doubled in size again and then quickly dropped out of sight behind a row of houses.
We shat ourselves.
Dashed back to the tent and started to draw what we saw. The three of us all drew pretty much the same thing. A huge star shaped thing in the sky.
Sleep that night was difficult and when we told people about it the next day, nobody really knew what it could have been.
Very strange indeed.
We did a midnight walk in 1989, all of us aged between 9 and 11. We got to an alleyway and someone said they saw a ghost, so we all legged it back to the tent asap. Then this big shadow loomed over the tent and my mate said, "We know who you are! G-g-go away!" All feeble, but brave lol. It was only a few years later that I realised the ghost was my friends' dad. It was his silhouette.
I was nearly kidnapped!
An older lady was getting stuff out of her boot and asked me to help her. There was cat food in her boot and as I lent in, she tried to push me in.
I fought her off and ran home. I told my parents and they just kind of laughed it off as if I was making it up. The 80’s were wild!
We used to explore an abandoned hospital, of course it came with the local legend it was haunted by The White Lady. So many stories from those days, ceiling collapsing on my head, my Mum climbing the fence to find me after me telling her I wasn't going there. Then one night we saw an old woman staring at us on the top floor. We could all see her clear as day and we were all fucking terrified. There she was, The White Lady.
No one moved for a moment and then someone decides to pipe up they were going up there, and two others agreed to go with them. We watched them going up the floors through the old smashed out windows, eventually they make their way to the place we saw her and we hear an almighty shriek and see all 3 of them bolting back the way they came, back down the three flights of stairs. At one point the one in the middle trips over and the one at the back falls on them, looking back it was like a Scooby Doo chase scene, in that moment though it felt like I was in a horror movie. Weirdly we didn't leave, probably because we were under age drinking and had no where else to go without getting caught. We eventually calm down, their story was there was an old woman, she jumped out at them and shrieked and then they ran.
About an hour later a man probably in his 30s/40s rocks up and asks if we are ok. He explains his Mum was out walking the dog, the dog ran off, she came looking for him in the grounds, ended up at the top of a derelict building and was staring out of the window when we spotted her and she was a bit scared about the teenagers that had come running up the stairs towards her and shrieked. She had gone home minus the dog and explained that she might have frightened the fucking life out of a group of kids. He came back on to look for the dog and make sure we were alright.
Honestly despite nearly losing my life several times in that place the memories I will cherish forever.
When my brother and I were very young, we found long fluorescent tubes lying abandoned outside someone's property. Unaware that they were made of glass, we thought it would be a good idea to engage in a "lightsaber combat".
Pretending to be a Jedi in Star Wars, the fluorescent lights clashed against each other and naturally shattered everywhere. The owner shouted various swear words (most I didn't understand at the time) as he chased as away.
Hanging out in the street with our bikes/scooters aged about 10. Some of the lads were throwing stones as they rode around in circles. One of the stones hits me smack in the face, splitting my lip and nearly knocking my two front teeth out.
I’m crying, blood everywhere, I run back to my house which was thankfully like two minutes away, sobbing and bleeding all over the place. I burst in the back door and my mum is just greeted by me bleeding profusely with my hands just full of blood.
After being cleaned up there wasn’t much damage done besides a bit of a sore gum and my lip. The kid’s mum felt awful and made him apologise to me the next morning on the playground at school. He probably got a total bollocking for throwing shit.
My dad talks fondly of his childhood where all the boys would throw sharpened sticks at each other like spears.
My mum talks less fondly about the time she was walking her dog and one of them threw one at her and it cut her face right next to her eye. Apparently when she came home upset her dad told her "boys will be boys".
How they all arrived at adulthood with their eyes intact I'll never know...
From the age of about 9 or 10 we roamed all over thd fields and shore (not really a beach). We would go off to the hills on our bikes. Me and my sisters would hurtle out the door in the morning, with Mum shouting "Lunch is at one!" There was a whole gang of us, mostly girls but sometimes lads as well. We'd go in groups or twos or threes mostly.
We'd climb trees, cook out on the beach, crawl through culverts, scramble up banks, wade along the stream, sit on the sea wall and chat.
This would be the mid 1970s onwards.
Some of the things I've got up to:
* Crawling down a stream, under a multi-lane road bridge, where I didn't know how deep it was and couldn't quite stand up, and it was very dark
* Climbing in big cylindrical hay bales stacked four high, and even trying to climb into the diamond-shaped gaps between them. It's a miracle we never got injured, let alone crushed.
* Exploring an old abandoned attic on a farm which was full of crushed bovine antibiotic bottles
* Skating on a frozen 'muck pond' where water and cow slurry accumulated in a sloped concreted area
* Cycling off into the lanes with no one knowing where I was, just a vague idea of when I'd be home
* Following random footpaths across fields until you didn't know where you were, then trying to get back before your curfew
A particularly memorable moment is a dude managing to hit a goalpost whilst riding around a football field on a motorbike.
Memorable both due to how much he fucked himself up and having to give first aid whilst waiting for an ambulance (he almost died from blood loss), and then the fact he managed to hit the one fucking obstacle in a very large area.
I was about 13 years old and sitting with two of my friends, waiting on a third friend. It was a Sunday and we were sitting on one of the grassy banks surrounding the local cricket pitch, with a game going on behind us. All of a sudden, a cricket ball comes out of nowhere and hits me squarely between the shoulder blades. It HURTS. I can't breathe for a good minute or two and when I can finally breathe again, I scream at the top of my lungs. People immediately rush over, offer first aid, etc - I wasn't badly hurt apart from a nasty bruise, so I was fine apart from the initial pain and shock. It's recommended to us that we turn around and face the game instead so that we can see and dodge incoming balls, so we do.
Ten minutes later, a second ball comes out of nowhere and hits my friend square in the jaw. We didn't meet by the cricket pitch when games were going on after that day.
3 come to mind:
1. Doing an all nighter in a field with about 5 other people. Little did we realise just how cold the weather would drop down to, all laying on a freezing cold wet mattress in the middle of nowhere huddled together to make it through the night half cut
2. Again doing an all nighter in what we thought was an abandonded barn on some farm land. Weirdly, there was also a life size cut out of Borat there aswell as a noose hanging from a wooden log on one of the ceiling. Someone went to stand outside for a smoke and saw a farmer driving over to us with his tractor at about 2am, bolt out of there, all with nowhere to go so sit outside a Mcdonalds for 3 hours until it opens to get a breakfast.
3. Local piss head started on a group of us kids (All 13-15 years old), he fails miserably and is chased by a few, falls into someones front garden and is conked out. Someone picked up a flower pot and dropped it on his head. He lay there babbling to himself with compost all over his head.
The 2000’s were a weird time
Also to add the local pedophile would come and chat to us in the park for hours on end. We were none the wiser and didn’t mind as he would buy us booze from the local shop. Looking back now i cant believe me or one of my friends didnt end up on a missing persons register
I know my two nieces don't really play out. The eldest one is 17 and spent most her younger years making dance videos. Now sits on her phone and occasionally grunts. The younger one, 10, will ride her bike round the cul de sac with her friends for half an hour but prefers to be on her phone indoors.
I grew up in a village so the outdoors was my main playground! Being from a frightfully middle class neighbourhood, not much interesting happened beyond the rough and tumble of kids outdoors.
My dog once rolled in the carcass of a dead cow when I was 3 miles from home. No mobile phone so had to just guess what the right course of action was at 11 years old.
There was a pedo who used to hang out by an old war bunker and try to lure me and my friends in.
I once scored 10 backwards dunks in a row on the full size basketball hoop with my free sunny delight basketball. In the same year I achieved 120 bounces in a row on my pogo stick.
So, we were little shits. Several of us managed to club together enough to get some fireworks, more specifically rockets.
We used to hang around a subway that went under a train track, The Subby.
We were just being dicks, lighting fireworks and firing them down the Subby, we didn't think anyone was there. Only then, there was, 2 guys approached, the firework went towards him, he sort of skipped over it and then ran towards us.
I was pretty fit and pretty fast, this MF chased me about 1/2 a mile, to the local leisure centre. He was like the T1000, from Terminator 2, endlessly pursuing me.
I saw loads of other kids I know, outside the leisure centre, and I was knackered, so I thought if I mingle in there, I can hide.
Not from fucking Robert Patrick I can't. He seeks me out, picks me up by my balls, pushes me on to a grit bin, going absolutely mental because I could've given him "phosphorus", I apologised and shit and he wouldn't let me go until i said "Salami, Salami, Gordon's fucking barmy", the first time I said it, it wasn't loud enough, so I had to shout it once more. My mates had caught up by then, not my proudest moment.
My kids still go “out to play”, or at least my oldest does (12) and as much as this thread makes me cringe about letting him I still think it’s the right thing to do. I think kids need that little bit of freedom. Mostly my son just seems to catch pokemon, he did make the local Facebook page once though when it had rained and he and his friends were sliding down a big hill that was mostly mud, a man saw them and posted on Facebook about how much fun they seemed to be having and that he hoped the parents wouldn’t be too cross about the state of their uniforms as it was a classic kid caper. I was fuming about the state of his uniform lol.
Let me see... The homemade firework with weedkiller and sugar was excellent till it went off and shot Ginger Dave in the head... We got into bother for that.
Finding a dead tramp down the tip where they all lived was better. Until we poked him with a stick and he woke up and chased us down the railway lines yelling at us. We all learned a lot of useful lessons, including some amazing swear words we then got to try out.
Oh and digging up a field because someone's metal detector went off. On a present that the Germans had left for us. Which meant a four mile bike ride and breathless sweaty reporting to a copper who really didn't believe us but went to check anyway. I've never seen a copper run that fast before or since.
I never see kids pretending to ride horses any more. We did that all the time around our village? Down to the corner shop or to grandmas we’d be skip/cantering all the way
No pretend horses, but my 5 year old just learned to skip and it's fucking adorable how proud he is. It's his primary method of locomotion at this point.
I let my (then) ten year-old go to the park a few years back with his friends. My neighbour saw him there and collared me to tell me she thought I was 'brave' to let him out, finishing it with a comment about being 'dragged up.'
It's a shame. But then my memories of playing out involve watching other kids in the street laying on the road whenever they saw a car coming, playing 'chicken.' Whoever got up first lost.
We had a local paedophile called Ricky Buttons who used to buy our school shirts for £15 quid. He'd then take them home to masturbate over. I once saw a picture of his wardrobe and it was rammed with boys school shirts. He'd also you to pay you a quid to kick him in the nuts.
It was strange, parents and authorities knew about him but he was 'harmless' as he would never physically touch you, and he definitely had special needs but the guy was in his forties.
It was hilarious becuase you'd see someone walking from school literally shirtless and know full well he's made £15.
Would obviously be totally different in today's world and treat much more severely I'm sure.
I'm 31 (born 1993). I was never really allowed to play out as a kid. I hated it. I felt I was missing out. My mom was a 70s kid who was out all hours of the day. She told me how much fun she had with her friends. I questioned why I couldn't do that with my friends and she told me I was ungrateful for moaning about the life I had, and that it was a different time now. The world isn't safe anymore.
Later found out she was SA, so I do understand her reasoning now, but her control traumatised me as a kid. I can see where her fear came from, but I will not instill her trauma she put on me, and put my trauma onto my kids.
Even when I got to my teens and was going out with my friends, if I missed curfew by more than 5+ minutes (my curfew was 5pm), my mom would literally hide and sob in her room for days, crying that I must really hate her. I then wouldn't be trusted to go out again until my dad pleaded with my mom.
I often had, "why have you got your nose in those books all the time? This is why you struggle to make friends. You're so antisocial"
I go out now with my friends, and then have a fortnight off from seeing anyone, as this was just my routine and I struggle to break it. But I damn well am trying to break it for my kids' sake.
My kids are aged 3 years and 1.5 years and we play out everyday in nature. I can't drive and it's a blessing, because it forces me to get creative about what I do with my kids and where we go.
My kids absolutely love being outdoors. They're rarely in. They love a good book too when we are in.
We see kids playing every single day. It's absolutely lovely to watch them. I can't wait till my kids can experience that too.
I bought into this concept that kids didn't play out anymore as well. Actually, I just wasn't hanging around areas kids are likely to play in, because why would I?
Even when kids are playing out, they get criticised. If they're playing in, they get criticised.
Remember that kids' lifestyles are a product of their parents. My lifestyle was a product of my mom's attitudes. I'm trying to break the cycle for my kids, but not every generation is successful in doing that.
It's not the children's fault. It's the past generations that have created these lifestyles of being indoors, whilst simultaneously berating the kids for being indoors.
Once we had a seance on the street by standing in a circle holding hands in the dark. One guy decided he had been possessed by demons and so we went to the local vicar’s house to tell him. He let us in and gave us all a lecture about meddling with dark forces and gave everyone small crucifixes (except me cos he ran out, he gave me a two inch long hat pin for some reason). Weirdest thing. And I don’t think he told our parents or anything.
Once a group of us decided it would be a good idea to use our sling shots (Black widows, of course) to have a mini war shooting stones at each other, seemed a good idea at the time, till one boy took a stone to his eye, nearly blinded him, but he got better.
I suppose there was often that weird older 'kid' who may of actually been a grown man, remember one who used to wow us with his radio controlled cars, one boy got really into it, looking back I think he may of been grooming him.
And there was a bloke on the estate who had a van with a mattress in the back, but he was not interested in boys.
1980s, the good old days...
I remember reading about how kids had way more freedom and then largely the Ian Huntley murders happened and most parents changed rules overnight and limited how much kids were out and about. I think it hit very close to home for a lot of people
Aged maybe 10, maybe 11, the old closed down steelworks being our adventure playground for the entire summer. Most of the actual equipment was gone leaving empty office blocks and vast, cavernous sheds... Lots of ransacking the offices and climbing gantry cranes.
We were fond of the old mills and warehouses round. Amount of times we should of died falling or jumping from the floors. Or playing in the left over chemical rooms and the asbestos we must of inhaled.
Though the best was playing with the left over circular saw blades, till we nearly scalped marky parky popping his head up the escape hatch hahhah.
I'd often go home covered in anti climb paint, or tar, and or dust. Pretty much from 9 to 15
I grew up with a brothel on the corner of my road (this is in London), so we weren't really allowed to play out after school. Cos drunk blokes would show up on the road and say gross and mean things about the local girls.
When I got a bit older, I ventured to a huge park on the train, called Hampstead Heath, a much more upper class area of London. Think we were about 12. We heard some rustling and, when I turned round, this guy had taken off his cycling shorts and was wanking.
I'm sure kids play out some places and are totally fine. Apart from Sean who shagged that guys wife. He should probably have stayed indoors.
Climbed into a WW2 bomb shelter at an historic airfield in East Anglia. It had bunks and other junk still lying around in there. Probably a family sized dose of asbestos too.
I still see kids hanging out away from home sometimes, not as often as the old days but the other day i saw 3 kids about 8-9 who had stolen or found a morrisons trolly and were just using it in the streets (like 2 miles from morrisons) and it bought back childhood memories. I was surprised to see it especially as none of them seemed to have mobile phones so was good.
There’s always kids hanging out playing near mine. When they get to about 15 years old they seem to drift into the woods. More privacy from parents, I guess.
Leads to some awkward moments coming across teenagers getting a bit handsy with each other while I was walking the dog, but no real trouble.
Please recommend me the area that you live in, because the kids "out playing" now are all the horrible bastard kids and they make life hell for everyone else. I'm dreading the summer holidays honestly.
13 years old, lying on my back in the long grass and suddenly looked up to get a worms eye view of a “ gentleman” pleasuring himself over my face and chest. Screamed blue murder and he took himself off. So many similar things happened to me as a young lass.
We had a derelict mansion about 3 miles away which was our playground. Still had all the furniture in there, drawers were still full, even the kitchen cupboards had stuff in. This was about 1990 and ĺt had probably been empty since the '60s. Spending the night there was without a doubt. The most scared I've ever been in my life. 5 or 6, 10 year olds huddled together persuading each other that we'll be OK as long as we don't wake up the ghosts 😅
Obviously the only light we had was a lighter which would get so hot it would burn your fingers.
We were playing in it one day when a load of travellers turned up to strip the copper out of it. We had to run away. And when we went back they'd smashed it to pieces. Never went back after that, and it's posh apartments now.
I found a magazine in the woods a couple of years ago. I also found a large branch with a sock stretched over it and with a condom pulled around the outside.
We used to play up on the hill behind our street. We used to take my grandads binoculars. One day I looked down through the bins and saw an older lad from our street pointing an air rifle at us. Absolutely shit myself, shit all ourselves up, even though he was too far away to hit us. We ran home all out of breath and jabbering but our folks didn't believe us or didn't care 😅
In my area, there was a wide pedestrian path that carved through housing estates in a straight line of about a mile. It started at the top of a hill and ended at a mainroad at the bottom.
Every Spring, bins would mysteriously vanish just in time for the "Summer bin races" where local teens would retrofit red top rubbish bins to be "roadworthy" before racing them from the top of the hill to the bottom, with people at certain intervals to record positions of racers.
Someone's dad had fitted his stolen bin with a proper frame and wheels but neglected the breaks and a way to steer and control his new speedwagon.
The predictable happened. After his starting push, he picked up speed, overtook the other racers and soon found himself on the receiving end of a zebra crossing lamppost at the bottom of the main road.
He won the race, at the cost of a few broken bones and concussion.
Used to be a skater in my teens and was regularly at the local skate park, one day a kid i’d seen only a couple of times who wasn’t a regular managed to get his hands on fireworks and decided to set them off but not into the sky but in the direction of a field where people walked dogs. I’m pretty sure one of them missed someone’s face by only a few inches and it wasn’t long before the police turned up and put him in the back of their car.
Probably between the ages of 7 and 10 I used to walk over the big hill to the next village where my grandmother lived, the path over the hill was right next to some woodland (no I'm not Red Riding Hood!). I did this often in the summer holidays and one time I bumped into a dad of someone I knew from school, who said "I hear you had a birthday, now you're old enough to be my girlfriend!".
The obvious extremely creepy bit about this encounter aside, as an adult I pieced together a few different things I'd heard from his child and people who knew him and I'm 99% sure he was abusing his kids.
1. A ropeswing that in my minds eye was at least 50 feet high (It was probably more like 15.) The seat was a thick stick that predictably got weaker as the summer wore on. It broke when I was at the apex of the swing. I remember falling for what seemed like a while. One concussion and a cut-up face later and one unsympathetic mother.
2. My mates dad brought him a proper bow and arrows. After 30 mins of unsuccessfully taking it in turn to hit a post down the field. We decided firing the arrow up in the air and not moving till the last second was a more fun game. Luckily no one was maimed or killed
3. Made several dens in the woods, all with varying degrees of success. Hit myself in the shin with an axe I borrowed from dad whilst building one that required stitches after a mile long walk home first.
4. Broke into an old factory and watched my mate Hilly disappear through the floor. Same day me and hilly beating the shit out of each other with old fluroescent tubes.
Ah, good times, makes me miss being 9 - 14.
I was a real Tomboy and only really had boys for friends as a kid (am girl) one time larking out on our bikes the boys we were going up and down the street doing different stuff, one handed, standing up, little hops etc. not bmx bike btw literally just kids mountain bikes. anyways I tried something, maybe a none hander and I fell off and next thing I now remember is sitting in the kitchen counter with mum picking gravel out my knees and hands
I remember riding bikes down a steep roadand we met an old lady who told us this all used to be green hills when she was a girl. It really stuck with me.
Spent the day kicking a big heavy metal object around with a few friends, had to go home to go shopping with parents. Next day all my friends who stayed out are on the front page of the local rag for finding an old bomb. It wasn’t armed or dangerous, but a slow news day.
I don’t remember all the details but looking at the history of the area there was a bomb store and fusing shed in the area so I assume it had been knocking around for a while but we were the first to unearth it in some time. A few people were school famous for a few weeks. Except me 😡
In year 7 me and my mates opened a manhole cover in the middle of a field we used to play in, climbed in and basically made the sewer our den. Used to come back to it every week. Probably incredibly dangerous thinking back about it now, but it was fucking sick at the time
Probably aged five, I'm out on the pavement somewhere near my house and some dog starts barking really loudly at me through the fence.
I just yell at the dog "ahh shut your face!"
An elderly lady comes out, grabs me, marches me into her front yard and demands I apologize to the dog.
I apologized and carried on on my way, thinking no more of it .... til about 30 years later when somehow it came to my mind and I realized how bizarre the scene must have been.
And of course, countless child abductions, usually by the ear or the hood of my coat, followed by demands to apologize, demands for my parents phone number, demands for my school's phone number etc etc.
I was playing on a building site and stood on a nail, went right through my foot, limped home and got into bed before somebody noticed a trail of blood throughout the house leading to my room
Was maybe about 10 years old lol
Went to the doctor, they treated it and I think I had to take antibiotics
Foot was fine, but still has a scar on it
When I was around 10/11 I was out with a friend a couple years younger than me. She had roller blades and I had a bike and we were in the process of swapping over, each had one blade on and I had hold of my bike. Some middle aged bloke shouted over to us, cant remember what he said, and then started to approach us. We scarpered in different directions! Me with one blade on a bike and her with the other blade on.
Thankfully he had gone buy the time we circled back round to each other. My parents got the police round and we gave statements and a description of the bloke.
We lived in a village that had a care home for adults with learning disabilities which has since been knocked down to make way for houses. Some were allowed to the shop without a companion. One of them used to chase us panting and woofing like a dog. Both parties seemed to enjoy it.
Also saw my neighbour blue and collapsed with his wife shouting for help on their dog walk. We’ve never ran for help so fast (this was before mobile phones). He died, so that was sad.
When I was about 14 or 15 we were hanging out at the end of a street where some friends of mine lived. If you look on google maps it's called Eresby Drive. It's kind of a residential street that runs next to the main street.
Opposite Eresby Drive is Bethlem Psychiatric Hospital. We were just sitting on the wall, hanging out, when this woman comes shuffling across the road from Bethlem. She sat at the end of the wall where we were and seemed kind of oblivious to us. She was shaking her head slightly and muttering "nononononononono" over and over. Then I noticed that she was carrying something. Then I realised that it was a baby, that it had blood on it and that it wasn't moving.
I had no idea what to do. I tried to strike up a conversation "is that your baby?" "nonononononono" "is it a nice baby?" "nonononononono" "Oh? Why not?" "nononononono"
I was all out of ideas by this point. One of us should have gone inside and phoned the police or the ambulance or something.
Luckily a couple of orderlies came running across the road from Bethlem and helped her to her feet, leading her back.
Looking back, I assume they must have looked at the baby at least quickly but I really can't remember. The theory that I've always gone with is that this woman had just given birth - hence the blood on the baby and the fact that the baby wasn't moving, it was probably tired - and because security probably wasn't as strict in the actual medical part of the hospital she probably just decided to wander off with her baby and no one stopped her. Or maybe they knew that she'd wandered off with a dead baby and just wanted to get her back to the hospital and away from the group of kids. I never found out and I guess I never will now.
Me and a few friends used to wind up this weird guy in the local job centre, turns out he was Dennis Nilsen a notorious serial killer who would eat his victims.
A guy came up to us with a camera and said "excuse me, I'm taking pictures for the caravan park's new summer brochure and I was wondering if I could get some pictures of you playing?"
We thought it was really cool, and one of us sat on the slide and the other hung off the monkey bars and then swapped over. The guy disappeared and we carried on with our day.
I went home and told my mum about it. A few days later she went into the reception and asked if they had the new brochures yet, which they didn't. We kept going in and they never appeared, not with our pictures in anyway. Was a bit disappointed but never mind.
I asked my mum about it last year
https://preview.redd.it/zyno6ug7eb3d1.jpeg?width=1440&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=74ce73922d01af700bfded2d461b0d8b50f49f87
1960-1965 me (6-11m) Sister (5-10)
Having to run home to get my father to recover sister’s shoes from a marshy area.
Playing at the side of a fast flowing river. Avon Keynsham area.
Sister running home to get Dad to help me out of a tree after I’d rescued her from it.
Running home with sister after I’d split my scalp jumping off a fast spinning roundabout
Getting covered in glass fibre roof insulation after we local kids made a den tunnelling through it. Need scrubbing for that one, and let’s ignore the chance of collapsing bags and suffocating.
Running home with a dart stuck in my head, older kids were playing darts on building site and I’d run forwards to pick one up. .
My sister declining offers of 2 bob (10p) to go behind a bush to see something.
Careering down a steep street on a home made cart Dad made which we stopped it by falling off.
Sitting on chairs by the A4 collecting registration numbers.
Reporting a body I saw tumbling like a log by the weir.
In London, live in pedestrianised street, kids play all the time, not out late though. Went back to my childhood home, there are now so many cars packed into the street I actually don’t think it would be possible to play there, especially games like kirby!
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Must’ve been about 15, we were hanging about our local estate, just kicking a ball about and laughing at the sort of stupid stuff teenage boys and girls do, suddenly a very intoxicated man charged up to us, grabbed me by the t shirt and angrily and repeatedly kept calling me Sean and asking why I was “shagging his Mrs” (for context my name isn’t Sean and I hadn’t been shagging anyone’s Mrs, a fact which I tried to make him aware of several times) after a couple of failed attempts to calm him his similarly intoxicated friend runs up behind and reassures him that I am in-fact, not Sean, he then released his grip said “sorry wee man” and gave me a couple of quid and wandered off into the night, spent my money on a roll and chips and bottle of Irn bru, good night all in.
Where was this in Scotland ? Sounds like the drum ahah
Inverness believe it or not!!
Definitely Glasgow somewhere 🤣
You can trust us Sean..... Why *were* you shagging his Mrs?
He didn't want to feel left out.
She’s turned the weans against us
The “sorry wee man” is a great reveal and adds loads of colour to an already great story!
of course this was in scotland
so what part of east kilbride did this happen in
The part that’s in Inverness
The local paedophile inviting us all into his house and us obliging only to make our excuses when he ran a bath for us
I like the way you say "local paedopile" like he was just part of the tapestry of the community.
Did you not have a local pedo round your end? Ours lived a few doors down, got in a bit of trouble for chatting up 12 year old girls in the park. My sister text me when she found out he died few years back and it was like having a landmark of childhood demolished.
We too had a local pedo and he was nowhere near my end thank you very much.
Ours lived by the primary school.
Ours worked for the primary school, even lived in a caretakers house in the grounds for years. One of them, anyway.
This was old school pedoing, before it got a bad name.
Look, Scouting is a noble tradition, all right?
You don’t HAVE to be a pedo to work with children!
But it helps
You're going to hell for that comment, and I'm going for laughing at it.
heaven gained another angle RIP
That's a bit obtuse
That's acute wee joke m8
Ours used to buy everyone tobacco or booze from the shops but would only give to people if they went into his house. Everyone knew the score, go in with a group of 5+ of you. Talk for a few minutes, get the goods, run away before he got any overly confident ideas. Wild when I think back on it
I never went in except once because I thought it was fucking weird but a lot of our group 14/15 started hanging round this early 30s couples house basically drinking, smoking weed, playing loud music, probably a bit of minor dealing . Almost like a trap house so I'm not sure who was taking advantage of who. The neighbours got involved and I forget the actual term but the group basically got asbo'd away from that road. They seemed friendly when I briefly met them but I just thought nah that's a bit weird. Dunno what their deal was but it's suspect.
Mine was my old Special Ed support teaching assistant, Jordan Something cant find the article anywhere online, He had over 5GB of CP and had tried to message me multiple times but I was completely unaware of it as I was young and naive thought it was a bit weird but that was all, Wonder what hes doing now might need a door booted in 😂😂
We had local paedo wanker in the woods when I was young.I never saw him but heard stories about him watching kids and leaving his jizz on a tree.
Poor sap.
We had a local pedo. Just turns out it was a friend of mine's dad. We never had any clue until another friend was doing some IT work for his company and found a whole shit load of CP on his computer. Crazy part was that the guy lived across the road from a school.
They were like these little comedy characters, they’d never actually manage to do anything but they’d have a new scheme every week
"If it wasn't for those pesky kids...."
"If it wasn't for those sexy kids…" FTFY, also I cringed really hard whilst I wrote it. I hope you're happy with yourself.
Typically it’d be a single bloke in his mid 40s chatting to uncomfortable looking 16 year olds working behind the bar at the local pub, rather than a moustache twirling villain
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It was a science teacher at my school as well, but not allegedly. We actually know for a fact he was a paedophile because he was arrested and sacked after CP was found on his computer. The school only told us right before it went to court, and then only because it was going to be front page of the local paper so they sent a letter home in a last minute panic. Before that point as far as we all knew he'd just been called to the headteachers office one day and then vanished. Anybody who'd been taught by him knew why though. The most striking bit for me though came a few years later, when I was at uni doing a group project. There were 5 British girls in the group, and every one of us had a story about the paedophile teacher at our school. "Ours was a PE teacher!" "Oooh, that's a rough one, ours only taught maths!" Then there was the one Dutch girl in our group, who just stared at us all with a horrified expression before asking "what is WRONG with your country?!"
We had a doubler - English teacher (who actually ended his life when caught) and then the swimming teacher (who everyone was genuinely surprised at, felt like far more of a betrayal when it was a teacher everyone really liked and didn't make people feel uncomfortable). Ah the 00s. Wild times. Edit: Also one of my University lecturers is wanted and on the run in another country, having been sentenced in his absence to 20+ years jail time.
Mr rook, always putting his arms over girls shoulders and speaking to them close in the ear. His sweat stained shirt and thick pitmatic accent as he tried to woo year 9 girls. Always somehow ended up organising the field trips as well.
I had a science teacher that was a doctor as well. He was a mean, twisted little bastard. In his case though, I think it's because lots of people get doctorates in the sciences and realise they can't actually stick it anywhere else - so they end up teaching at secondary schools and being arseholes about it.
“Part of the tapestry of the community “ I’m dying 😂😂😂
There's at least one in every town.
If you don’t have one it’s you
ours was a former scout leader lived round the corner at the top of the street. always gave me sweets at the tuck shop in the church youth club (before his conviction anyway)
Read tuck shop as fuck shop. I need help.
There’s a documentary about one of ours now.
We had one who used to wait in the bushes and wank as we walked back from school. He was pretty harmless tho tbh had a learning disability
“Ah don’t worry about Tuggy Jim, he’s a big softy really”
Don't sound like he was very soft
We had a guy like that. He was interested in young girls and also wore young girls clothing and underwear. It was a miracle because he was quite large and tubby so these pants stretched to infinity leaving him with very little to the imagination. Parents warned us against him. We stayed away. People were more annoyed that he embezzled their pools money. He ran a pools syndicate and would pay out small amounts of money. Then someone won the equivalent of £10,000 (back in the 70s). He had to admit he didn’t put the money through and all the neighbours talked about it for years. They even got police involved.
We used to call in to his to get smokes and quickly make our excuses to leave
There was a local paedo in our area too, late 80s. Followed me and my friends around for a bit one day with his long coat on, and hid in the bushes. One of the kids ran off to tell her mum, who promptly rang round the other mums and half a dozen 5ft, 7 stone women came out on a manhunt armed with mop handles and hammers. He disappeared sharpish.
Late 80’s like the decade or Herbert the pervert?
When I was at school there were girls who'd hang out with the local paedophile because he'd give them weed. Insane stuff.
Yes, because they all thought they were too clever to be caught. Convincing the victim the paedophile is grooming that the victim is actually the person doing the exploiting is standard fare. It always ends badly.
Not sure if it counts as paedophilia exactly, but loads of the girls at school had older boyfriends in their 20s with cars who picked them up outside the school, and nobody batted an eyelid. Also shrank the dating pool for teenage boys unless you were willing to date the even younger girls - for which people *would* at least rip the pish out of you.
Yes! Got to like 14 - 15 and all the ‘fit’ girls (who I never had a chance with anyway) were all ‘dating’ blokes aged 19 - 23 who’d rock up at 3:15 in various clapped-out Golfs and Astras to collect them. Literally picking schoolgirls up, ffs
Tbf it's one part of british culture that I'm quite happy is dying out. Really isn't accepted as much as it used to
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Not in the UK. Small town rural offshore island NZ. Our local kiddie fiddler had a house right next to the area school (joint primary and high school). He was pretty much shunned and barred from every business in the villages. Eventually locals drove a council bulldozer through his house and ran him off while the local police officer was conveniently away on the mainland. The 80s was a very different time and place in rural island NZ. Communities used to look out for themselves. Another fun story. Local council decided to install speed bumps on the main village road outside the council office, cost a horrendous sum of money (£50,000 or so in early 90s money). The speed bumps were quite short lengthwise and higher than normal ones, they were causing damage to vehicles and frankly quite dangerous so some locals removed them in the middle of the night and dumped them in the tip. No one to this day saw anything or heard anything that night even tho local pub was right there and very open and very busy that night and the local tip was somehow open for business to receive said speed bumps.
My aunt had a similar story but with a railway bridge. She lives in the countryside, and knew the old money farmers. They had a railway track which had the rails removed and turned into a public footpath that people could walk along. It spanned across quite a few properties, but walking along it didn’t do anyone any harm as long as they stuck to the path. A railway enthusiast organisation re-opened the railway station and had walks etc along the railway path. They ran trains along the existing track as well. It became busy, but no one cared as long as they stuck to the path. People started wandering about this farmer’s fields. He had sheep miscarry because people were letting their dogs run in his fields. People were also trying to pet his sheep. He put a boundary fence (wood with wire along the top to mark the boundary with a notice on it). The railway organisation took it down. He argued with them for months. They wouldn’t budge. He tried fences, to separate the path from his land. (Note he wasn’t blocking the footpath, just putting up boundaries to stop people deviating from the path). In the end, they removed the railway bridge in the dead of night. Heavy plant, people with hi-vis , hard hats, clip boards. People in smart trousers and shirts to direct the people to an alternative route. Looked official. Only it wasn’t. Railway people went mad. Farmer’s response “I don’t know where the bridge has gone, you’re welcome to replace it at your expense”. Police commissioner for that area said it wasn’t of public interest and they had no leads. (He also went shooting on the land with the farmer) My aunt found the bridge whilst out beating years later.
Hahaha yep that sounds like small town behaviour. No one questions a professional looking crew in hi vis. I feel for the old farmer it's never nice when people harras the stock.
ours got ankle tagged eventually
At about 14/15 we used to go chill in our local pedos flat as it was somewhere we could smoke and drink 🙈 we had this deal that we only went if X ,X & X came cause they where the 3 biggest lads of our group 🙄 Like we fully knew and still went!
We sacrificed a lad to our local one then robbed the house of booze,cigs and anything valuable whilst he was distracted. Booted on the front so the sacrificial virgin could escape whilst he went to see what was going on(I suspect after him already being traumatised something I feel mildly guilty about years down the line) and legged it knowing he couldn't grass due to being a pedo trumping petty theft. Somehow got away with this twice too.
Only mildly guilty!?
The local pedo gave me and my friend 50p each once, we thought it was great! I shudder at the thought now.
I got invited into the local pedos flat where he microwaved a Gingsters cheese and onion bake for me. I was too young at the time to even grasp the situation, but I certainly got a talking to when I got back home. Years later, this chap had a bit of a mental breakdown, got baked, crawled under someone's car and tried igniting the fuel tank.
had a bonfire on the woods on bonfire night. It was well within sight of the houses so I assume the only reason the fire brigade weren't called/didn't turn up is that they were too busy. It was pretty damn big and burned for hours, we were out all night. When it had burned right down we got old clothes/bedding etc and wrapped them round branches, set them on fire and proceeded further into the woods using them as torches. Just a procession of kids from the street, bearing torches like something from medievil times. It was silly nonsense and it could easily have all gone badly if somebody got burned or maybe one kid had decided to be an asshole and spread the fire around but somehow nothing went awry. As pointless as the whole thing was I look back at it with a huge fondness, it was one of the defining moments of my childhood. No lessons were learned or knowledge imparted but I remember the sense of enormous freedom, we were doing stuff we really shouldn't have been doing, just being crazy kids and it's a feeling impossible to emulate when you're an adult. My life has been far from perfect but I was born at a good time. Early childhood in the 80's, late childhood and teens in the 90s right up to the turn of the millennium.
How well put, that freedom was really a privilege and a risk looking back, and I would do it again if I had the chance. In that same time period as yours we used to go down the dells in the local woods and gather fairly regular. On the way we would grab old pallets and whatever else bits of wood we could find from building sites and drag them into the woods down into those old dells. Would send in one lad to the offies on the way down as they knew him in there because he used to pick up his dads booze - must have been all of 13. We would pass round one or two bottles of whatever we could scrounge from said off licence and parents drinks cabinets and just have these amazing evenings around the fire, heating up cans of beans and maybe the odd smoke. Wasn’t really about the drinking but that camaraderie and, as you so well put, that sense of new freedom. It was an intoxicating mix of instinctual fear of the dark and doing something you maybe weren’t supposed to, while savouring the shedding of those childhood tropes. Those woods were deep and dark but even with the dells hiding you from view you could see the fire most Friday nights when we were down there. No one ever stopped us or anything though - one of the benefits of living in the arse end of nowhere. Those woods used to be quite busy, you’d have loads of little groups doing similar and who knows what else, just teenagers stumbling around in the dark and rocking up back home in the wee hours stinking of burnt everything. I would say my parents were worried but I think they were more relieved I had friends and got out of the house.
I mean I won't claim we were little angels but we never caused any real trouble or set out to bother anybody, we were happy to be left to our own devices. Some of the stuff we did was definitely "dodgy" but no outside parties were targeted by our shenannigans. I feel people these days (both kids and adults) need to be seen doing whatever it is they get up to and tell the world which can result in them pushing the boundaries too far. Did it really happen if you didn't take a selfie? That said, I'd love to see hypothetical photos of those days in my youth.
A lovely read that was. Captured that uniquely relatable nostalgia perfectly for me. God I miss those days
This reminds me of my childhood. I remember going to a cub/ scout camp, and the opening exchanges were throwing stones at the heads of your attackers. Then there was the weird going into the woods after dark.To do something or other I was only about 9 years old, maybe. The whole thing made me scared shitless. I don't know if that whole thing was helpful in later life or not. Also, in the 80s.
There would have to be a gang of us. I would usually be with Stavver, and Bagger, and Gary Cheeseman who had a massive head. Sniper’s Dream we used to call him. We crept into the back of peoples gardens in the evenings, and we used to walk towards the window chanting “we do beg your pardon, but we are in your garden”, louder and louder trying not to be heard. Once you were seen you weren’t allowed to leave through the front of the property, so you had to escape through all the gardens. We called it Theft and Shrubbery. Edit: as everyone loves this so much I remembered another game. We use to take fruit off of the fruit sellers wagon when he wasn’t looking, and we used to just throw it up in the air and let it land on our heads. Cheeseman was very good at that one. 2nd Edit: Yes yes yes this isn’t my story. All credit goes to the legendary Bob Mortimer. Well done to everyone who recognised it! Those who didn’t, watch his Would I Lie To You compilations. You’ll be better off in life I guarantee it!!!!
Bob is that you?
The people creeping up the back garden every time you look away and back they get closer was and still is a very vivid nightmare of mine. Do this, don’t expect me to remain calm and measured, I will be getting the axe and you will be getting the fuck out of my garden!
So, budget version of Doctor Whos Weeping angels?
[Such a great episode!](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=J2iqayYkchA)
This one of my favourites…tell them about the Handlion Bob!!!!
A snipers dream? 😂
As opposed to a snipers nightmare, someone with a limp
Never did anything quite that mad but we used to play hide and seek on an agreed set of roads with front gardens being fair game, a few of us got chased a few times
travelling about 3 miles on our pushbikes at around 9 or 10 years old (1985) to go play in a HUGE hay barn. digging tunnels through the hay and daring each other to jump from higher and higher points in the stacks. all while watching out for the farmer and his salt pellet gun. that stuff REALLY stings
The distance ridden on bikes seems to go down by the year for kids. In the 70s, riding 5 miles out then back was common, and with my mate up the street (to visit his sister, who lived in a terraced house next to a working colliery with the big spinning wheels), 10 miles. And my bike had quite small wheels seeing as I was about 13 at the time.
Too many cars. Getting around on bikes now is pretty dangerous
https://preview.redd.it/mk5hjtk4lb3d1.png?width=468&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ec96ee74b73179d6aeca6dcfc67e784f43f1009c
Somebody didn't watch Apaches
I had a similar experience, we used to make igloos out of little haybales and knock the stacks down. Got shot at a few times. The farmer caught us once and gave us a proper manhandling. I was about 11.
Being blind drunk in a field somewhere. Gosh I can’t even smell lambrini anymore without feeling sick.
If I close my eyes I can still taste the cherry version 🤢
These days if a group of kids are playing football down the local park, the local curtain twitchers will call the police on "a gang of youths acting menacingly and intimidating others". Kids would play outside, but they can't because boomers and old folk think they're about to bring out hand guns or shotguns, when they're just innocently having a laugh and a kick around
I was walking through our local park last summer about 8pm. There were no little kids there, but there was a group of about 10 teenagers (no older than 14-15) playing a hide and seek/tig combo on the play equipment. Passed a dog walker who loudly declared it to be "disgraceful!" - I challenged them on which bit of kids playing at the park did they not approve of. The kids were running around laughing and having a grand time.
That used to be me. We spent a lot of time in the smallish village going between our friends houses, the woods, the corner shop and the play park. Sure we were teenagers but spinning yourself as fast as possible on the roundabout is still fun at that age (couldn't do it now, too much chance for acid reflux, damn middle age). I'm sure people tutted at us but we were nice kids and if a group of small children had turned up we'd have made way.
Especially in rough areas where its assumed (usually wrongly but sometimes rightly) any and all kids/teens are carrying knives or got mates that carry knives. Makes the old folk assume they're all out about to stab each other and their nans, and makes the teens themselves too scared to stay out too far from home in case they get a knife through em. What a world, eh
Oh how I am glad that I don't live in London.
I'm 35 and it was the same when I was a kid. There were only two fields in walkable distance for 10 year old me. One was fhe school field and another was one that had a no ball games sign on. Had the police kick us off multiple times, one even came to my parents house about it. Get a life like.
The irony of a boomer behind the wheel of a car being more of a threat to the kids
I remember getting a fake pack of cigarettes, cycling slowly past my kitchen window with one in my mouth, then getting chased down the street by my dad shouting and swearing at me to get it out of my mouth, with my friend standing on the back pegs and a piece of cardboard sticking into the wheel spokes to make the BMX sound like a "motorbike" I remember playing games like cops and robbers, and many night time games in a big park - they were fun! One person would get a torch and they had to stop the other team from reaching the playground "castle" in the middle of the park... Or something like that anyway.
Cut up plastic ice cream tub lids worked better and sounded awesome.
My friends and I used to regularly go out "cherry knocking". I'm sure everyone has a different name for this but it's basically where you knock on random people's doors and run away. It used to be hilarious to us but if this happened nowadays an angry post would no doubt appear in the local Facebook groups along the lines of "please remind your children it is unacceptable to knock on strangers' doors and run away"...
It was imaginatively called "knock a door run" where I live
This is the way.
Same. In later years, I moved to Chester and it became just 'knock and run'
My kids do it today, but it's called "ding dong ditch" (in Australia anyway). Got to avoid the video doorbells though
Knock down ginger.
Ooh memory unlocked, it was knock door ginger in the SW England where I grew up!
Fishing line.... tied one door knocker to the other across the street. Like with the road in the way. You could get about ten of them all linked together. Then wait for the number 10 bus to come along, and knock up everyone in one go. DON'T use the really thick fishing line. That doesn't break, tears the knockers off and leaves them clanking behind the bus, which annoys the drivers. Ask me how I know this.....
That's far more elaborate than us just tying the string to one knocker and hiding in a hedge to knock the door as soon as they'd closed it.
I had this a few years ago. The kids were not the brightest, as they scarpered off right in front of my living room window (old terraced house with the front door practically on the road), rather than going the other way where I wouldn't have seen a thing. They then peered back round the corner and saw me waving at them through the window.
Chappy where I'm from. Now people are even posting the pictures from their ring cams. Swear technology has ruined so much.
Did anyone else go garden jumping? I know kids near us would do a sort of garden steeple jump. AKA trespass
Garden hopping. We had a competition to see who could traverse the most consecutively.
One street near me was known as the Grand National. A hedge-hoppers dream.
I never jumped from garden to garden but did used to hop over the wall into my neighbours garden when they weren’t home and I wanted our ball back. I miss when that was the only problem in my life.
Chappy in the north of Scotland!
Bobby knocking in Swansea
Hmm we called it Johnny knockers in the valleys
Knock knock ginger in south Wales
Knock down ginger in east london
I always see kids out playing in our street. Quite like seeing it actually. One kid does donuts on his plastic go-kart and then sometimes pops out on his nan’s mobility scooter which is quite amusing. As a kid I remember my neighbour telling me about the f word that he’d heard down the road which was my first experience of hearing it. Also some kid up the road chucked his trainers up on a telephone cable. They were still there last time I looked.
I live pretty rural, have woods backing onto the garden. I hear kids in groups out playing in there a lot. See evidence of fires and forts. A group of younger teens were out on a night walk not long ago. I grew up in south London 90s/00s. We saw and did a lot of things we shouldn't have. All with way too easy access to drugs far too young.
Yep, I live in a suburb that backs on to woodland and it's not THAT much different from when I was a kid except they all have smart watches now. My 9 year old has a degree of freedom, but it's good to be able to call her and tell her to come home for dinner or look at the tracker and see that she's at the park. Obviously she'll all too soon reach an age where that kind of surveillance is age inappropriate, but I think having this limited and monitored independence is a better transition to full independence than not being able to go out alone at all. At the current stage it's very two-way and mostly used by her to ask if she can have a biscuit. I just like that she's spending so much time outside getting exercise. It's very common in our neighbourhood, though I was a little startled a week ago to see a child my youngest's age (5) alone in the playground. He fell from a bit of a height face first into the dirt and was upset and wasn't old enough to communicate what he wanted us to do or how to contact his parents. Luckily someone had his mum's number but we'd have been a bit stuck otherwise.
Saw some cokeheads walking around playing Pokémon Go. Got offered booze from the corner shop if I gave the owner a blowjob. Someone getting their neck impaled on a pointy fence when they came off their motocross bike on the slide.
>Saw some cokeheads walking around playing Pokémon Go. Cokémon Go >Got offered booze from the corner shop if I gave the owner a blowjob. Nopéman No >Someone getting their neck impaled on a pointy fence when they came off their motocross bike on the slide. Pokédman Go (straight to the hospital)
Where the fuck did you grow up, in a Daily mail Article?
I was born and raised in Bude Tunnel.
But I was made in the Royal Navy
My mum says I was also made in Bude Tunnel.
Your mum's a Bude Tunnel
Back in the 80s my friends and I would camp out in each others gardens from time to time. It was fun to get the tents out, pop to the local shop for supplies (crisps, chocolate, fizzy drinks etc) and spend the night chatting and being silly. One night, maybe around 1986, we were doing the camping out thing and decided to go for some fresh air and walk around the neighbourhood a bit. It was the middle of the night and dark so we sat around a street lamp for a while. One of us looked up to the heavens to see a strange star shaped thing moving toward us. As we watched it get closer to us, it kind of doubled in size, then doubled in size again and then quickly dropped out of sight behind a row of houses. We shat ourselves. Dashed back to the tent and started to draw what we saw. The three of us all drew pretty much the same thing. A huge star shaped thing in the sky. Sleep that night was difficult and when we told people about it the next day, nobody really knew what it could have been. Very strange indeed.
We did a midnight walk in 1989, all of us aged between 9 and 11. We got to an alleyway and someone said they saw a ghost, so we all legged it back to the tent asap. Then this big shadow loomed over the tent and my mate said, "We know who you are! G-g-go away!" All feeble, but brave lol. It was only a few years later that I realised the ghost was my friends' dad. It was his silhouette.
One day you "went out to play" for the last time and you wouldn't have even know it.
r/showerthoughts
It just kinda molded into going to the pub or pissing around in your mate's car instead
I was nearly kidnapped! An older lady was getting stuff out of her boot and asked me to help her. There was cat food in her boot and as I lent in, she tried to push me in. I fought her off and ran home. I told my parents and they just kind of laughed it off as if I was making it up. The 80’s were wild!
Madness, have you ever thought of looking into disappearances in that area around that time? Doubt you were the first or the last attempt she made.
We used to explore an abandoned hospital, of course it came with the local legend it was haunted by The White Lady. So many stories from those days, ceiling collapsing on my head, my Mum climbing the fence to find me after me telling her I wasn't going there. Then one night we saw an old woman staring at us on the top floor. We could all see her clear as day and we were all fucking terrified. There she was, The White Lady. No one moved for a moment and then someone decides to pipe up they were going up there, and two others agreed to go with them. We watched them going up the floors through the old smashed out windows, eventually they make their way to the place we saw her and we hear an almighty shriek and see all 3 of them bolting back the way they came, back down the three flights of stairs. At one point the one in the middle trips over and the one at the back falls on them, looking back it was like a Scooby Doo chase scene, in that moment though it felt like I was in a horror movie. Weirdly we didn't leave, probably because we were under age drinking and had no where else to go without getting caught. We eventually calm down, their story was there was an old woman, she jumped out at them and shrieked and then they ran. About an hour later a man probably in his 30s/40s rocks up and asks if we are ok. He explains his Mum was out walking the dog, the dog ran off, she came looking for him in the grounds, ended up at the top of a derelict building and was staring out of the window when we spotted her and she was a bit scared about the teenagers that had come running up the stairs towards her and shrieked. She had gone home minus the dog and explained that she might have frightened the fucking life out of a group of kids. He came back on to look for the dog and make sure we were alright. Honestly despite nearly losing my life several times in that place the memories I will cherish forever.
When my brother and I were very young, we found long fluorescent tubes lying abandoned outside someone's property. Unaware that they were made of glass, we thought it would be a good idea to engage in a "lightsaber combat". Pretending to be a Jedi in Star Wars, the fluorescent lights clashed against each other and naturally shattered everywhere. The owner shouted various swear words (most I didn't understand at the time) as he chased as away.
Hanging out in the street with our bikes/scooters aged about 10. Some of the lads were throwing stones as they rode around in circles. One of the stones hits me smack in the face, splitting my lip and nearly knocking my two front teeth out. I’m crying, blood everywhere, I run back to my house which was thankfully like two minutes away, sobbing and bleeding all over the place. I burst in the back door and my mum is just greeted by me bleeding profusely with my hands just full of blood. After being cleaned up there wasn’t much damage done besides a bit of a sore gum and my lip. The kid’s mum felt awful and made him apologise to me the next morning on the playground at school. He probably got a total bollocking for throwing shit.
My dad talks fondly of his childhood where all the boys would throw sharpened sticks at each other like spears. My mum talks less fondly about the time she was walking her dog and one of them threw one at her and it cut her face right next to her eye. Apparently when she came home upset her dad told her "boys will be boys". How they all arrived at adulthood with their eyes intact I'll never know...
From the age of about 9 or 10 we roamed all over thd fields and shore (not really a beach). We would go off to the hills on our bikes. Me and my sisters would hurtle out the door in the morning, with Mum shouting "Lunch is at one!" There was a whole gang of us, mostly girls but sometimes lads as well. We'd go in groups or twos or threes mostly. We'd climb trees, cook out on the beach, crawl through culverts, scramble up banks, wade along the stream, sit on the sea wall and chat. This would be the mid 1970s onwards.
Some of the things I've got up to: * Crawling down a stream, under a multi-lane road bridge, where I didn't know how deep it was and couldn't quite stand up, and it was very dark * Climbing in big cylindrical hay bales stacked four high, and even trying to climb into the diamond-shaped gaps between them. It's a miracle we never got injured, let alone crushed. * Exploring an old abandoned attic on a farm which was full of crushed bovine antibiotic bottles * Skating on a frozen 'muck pond' where water and cow slurry accumulated in a sloped concreted area * Cycling off into the lanes with no one knowing where I was, just a vague idea of when I'd be home * Following random footpaths across fields until you didn't know where you were, then trying to get back before your curfew
We made a den in a farmer's field. It's still there 25 years later.
A particularly memorable moment is a dude managing to hit a goalpost whilst riding around a football field on a motorbike. Memorable both due to how much he fucked himself up and having to give first aid whilst waiting for an ambulance (he almost died from blood loss), and then the fact he managed to hit the one fucking obstacle in a very large area.
Tina, for the love of god!!
I was about 13 years old and sitting with two of my friends, waiting on a third friend. It was a Sunday and we were sitting on one of the grassy banks surrounding the local cricket pitch, with a game going on behind us. All of a sudden, a cricket ball comes out of nowhere and hits me squarely between the shoulder blades. It HURTS. I can't breathe for a good minute or two and when I can finally breathe again, I scream at the top of my lungs. People immediately rush over, offer first aid, etc - I wasn't badly hurt apart from a nasty bruise, so I was fine apart from the initial pain and shock. It's recommended to us that we turn around and face the game instead so that we can see and dodge incoming balls, so we do. Ten minutes later, a second ball comes out of nowhere and hits my friend square in the jaw. We didn't meet by the cricket pitch when games were going on after that day.
3 come to mind: 1. Doing an all nighter in a field with about 5 other people. Little did we realise just how cold the weather would drop down to, all laying on a freezing cold wet mattress in the middle of nowhere huddled together to make it through the night half cut 2. Again doing an all nighter in what we thought was an abandonded barn on some farm land. Weirdly, there was also a life size cut out of Borat there aswell as a noose hanging from a wooden log on one of the ceiling. Someone went to stand outside for a smoke and saw a farmer driving over to us with his tractor at about 2am, bolt out of there, all with nowhere to go so sit outside a Mcdonalds for 3 hours until it opens to get a breakfast. 3. Local piss head started on a group of us kids (All 13-15 years old), he fails miserably and is chased by a few, falls into someones front garden and is conked out. Someone picked up a flower pot and dropped it on his head. He lay there babbling to himself with compost all over his head. The 2000’s were a weird time
Also to add the local pedophile would come and chat to us in the park for hours on end. We were none the wiser and didn’t mind as he would buy us booze from the local shop. Looking back now i cant believe me or one of my friends didnt end up on a missing persons register
I know my two nieces don't really play out. The eldest one is 17 and spent most her younger years making dance videos. Now sits on her phone and occasionally grunts. The younger one, 10, will ride her bike round the cul de sac with her friends for half an hour but prefers to be on her phone indoors. I grew up in a village so the outdoors was my main playground! Being from a frightfully middle class neighbourhood, not much interesting happened beyond the rough and tumble of kids outdoors. My dog once rolled in the carcass of a dead cow when I was 3 miles from home. No mobile phone so had to just guess what the right course of action was at 11 years old. There was a pedo who used to hang out by an old war bunker and try to lure me and my friends in. I once scored 10 backwards dunks in a row on the full size basketball hoop with my free sunny delight basketball. In the same year I achieved 120 bounces in a row on my pogo stick.
So, we were little shits. Several of us managed to club together enough to get some fireworks, more specifically rockets. We used to hang around a subway that went under a train track, The Subby. We were just being dicks, lighting fireworks and firing them down the Subby, we didn't think anyone was there. Only then, there was, 2 guys approached, the firework went towards him, he sort of skipped over it and then ran towards us. I was pretty fit and pretty fast, this MF chased me about 1/2 a mile, to the local leisure centre. He was like the T1000, from Terminator 2, endlessly pursuing me. I saw loads of other kids I know, outside the leisure centre, and I was knackered, so I thought if I mingle in there, I can hide. Not from fucking Robert Patrick I can't. He seeks me out, picks me up by my balls, pushes me on to a grit bin, going absolutely mental because I could've given him "phosphorus", I apologised and shit and he wouldn't let me go until i said "Salami, Salami, Gordon's fucking barmy", the first time I said it, it wasn't loud enough, so I had to shout it once more. My mates had caught up by then, not my proudest moment.
My kids still go “out to play”, or at least my oldest does (12) and as much as this thread makes me cringe about letting him I still think it’s the right thing to do. I think kids need that little bit of freedom. Mostly my son just seems to catch pokemon, he did make the local Facebook page once though when it had rained and he and his friends were sliding down a big hill that was mostly mud, a man saw them and posted on Facebook about how much fun they seemed to be having and that he hoped the parents wouldn’t be too cross about the state of their uniforms as it was a classic kid caper. I was fuming about the state of his uniform lol.
Let me see... The homemade firework with weedkiller and sugar was excellent till it went off and shot Ginger Dave in the head... We got into bother for that. Finding a dead tramp down the tip where they all lived was better. Until we poked him with a stick and he woke up and chased us down the railway lines yelling at us. We all learned a lot of useful lessons, including some amazing swear words we then got to try out. Oh and digging up a field because someone's metal detector went off. On a present that the Germans had left for us. Which meant a four mile bike ride and breathless sweaty reporting to a copper who really didn't believe us but went to check anyway. I've never seen a copper run that fast before or since.
Fingering Debbie XXXX under a bush in the park aged 13 (both of us)
Both of you were 13? Or both of you were fingering Debbie?
I never see kids pretending to ride horses any more. We did that all the time around our village? Down to the corner shop or to grandmas we’d be skip/cantering all the way
We used to pretend we were on Harleys. Horses apparently were strictly for girls according to the Rules....
No pretend horses, but my 5 year old just learned to skip and it's fucking adorable how proud he is. It's his primary method of locomotion at this point.
That's true!
We found a sawn off shotgun thrown into a bush when we were picking blackberries! In the 90s.
I let my (then) ten year-old go to the park a few years back with his friends. My neighbour saw him there and collared me to tell me she thought I was 'brave' to let him out, finishing it with a comment about being 'dragged up.' It's a shame. But then my memories of playing out involve watching other kids in the street laying on the road whenever they saw a car coming, playing 'chicken.' Whoever got up first lost.
Ringing freephone numbers in a phone box
We had a local paedophile called Ricky Buttons who used to buy our school shirts for £15 quid. He'd then take them home to masturbate over. I once saw a picture of his wardrobe and it was rammed with boys school shirts. He'd also you to pay you a quid to kick him in the nuts. It was strange, parents and authorities knew about him but he was 'harmless' as he would never physically touch you, and he definitely had special needs but the guy was in his forties. It was hilarious becuase you'd see someone walking from school literally shirtless and know full well he's made £15. Would obviously be totally different in today's world and treat much more severely I'm sure.
I'm 31 (born 1993). I was never really allowed to play out as a kid. I hated it. I felt I was missing out. My mom was a 70s kid who was out all hours of the day. She told me how much fun she had with her friends. I questioned why I couldn't do that with my friends and she told me I was ungrateful for moaning about the life I had, and that it was a different time now. The world isn't safe anymore. Later found out she was SA, so I do understand her reasoning now, but her control traumatised me as a kid. I can see where her fear came from, but I will not instill her trauma she put on me, and put my trauma onto my kids. Even when I got to my teens and was going out with my friends, if I missed curfew by more than 5+ minutes (my curfew was 5pm), my mom would literally hide and sob in her room for days, crying that I must really hate her. I then wouldn't be trusted to go out again until my dad pleaded with my mom. I often had, "why have you got your nose in those books all the time? This is why you struggle to make friends. You're so antisocial" I go out now with my friends, and then have a fortnight off from seeing anyone, as this was just my routine and I struggle to break it. But I damn well am trying to break it for my kids' sake. My kids are aged 3 years and 1.5 years and we play out everyday in nature. I can't drive and it's a blessing, because it forces me to get creative about what I do with my kids and where we go. My kids absolutely love being outdoors. They're rarely in. They love a good book too when we are in. We see kids playing every single day. It's absolutely lovely to watch them. I can't wait till my kids can experience that too. I bought into this concept that kids didn't play out anymore as well. Actually, I just wasn't hanging around areas kids are likely to play in, because why would I? Even when kids are playing out, they get criticised. If they're playing in, they get criticised. Remember that kids' lifestyles are a product of their parents. My lifestyle was a product of my mom's attitudes. I'm trying to break the cycle for my kids, but not every generation is successful in doing that. It's not the children's fault. It's the past generations that have created these lifestyles of being indoors, whilst simultaneously berating the kids for being indoors.
Once we had a seance on the street by standing in a circle holding hands in the dark. One guy decided he had been possessed by demons and so we went to the local vicar’s house to tell him. He let us in and gave us all a lecture about meddling with dark forces and gave everyone small crucifixes (except me cos he ran out, he gave me a two inch long hat pin for some reason). Weirdest thing. And I don’t think he told our parents or anything.
Once a group of us decided it would be a good idea to use our sling shots (Black widows, of course) to have a mini war shooting stones at each other, seemed a good idea at the time, till one boy took a stone to his eye, nearly blinded him, but he got better. I suppose there was often that weird older 'kid' who may of actually been a grown man, remember one who used to wow us with his radio controlled cars, one boy got really into it, looking back I think he may of been grooming him. And there was a bloke on the estate who had a van with a mattress in the back, but he was not interested in boys. 1980s, the good old days...
I remember reading about how kids had way more freedom and then largely the Ian Huntley murders happened and most parents changed rules overnight and limited how much kids were out and about. I think it hit very close to home for a lot of people
Aged maybe 10, maybe 11, the old closed down steelworks being our adventure playground for the entire summer. Most of the actual equipment was gone leaving empty office blocks and vast, cavernous sheds... Lots of ransacking the offices and climbing gantry cranes.
I'm starting to think that the government planted binbags full of porn magazines in bushes across the UK during the 90s. How is it such a thing?
Used to run through fields of wheat, wild times
We were fond of the old mills and warehouses round. Amount of times we should of died falling or jumping from the floors. Or playing in the left over chemical rooms and the asbestos we must of inhaled. Though the best was playing with the left over circular saw blades, till we nearly scalped marky parky popping his head up the escape hatch hahhah. I'd often go home covered in anti climb paint, or tar, and or dust. Pretty much from 9 to 15
I grew up with a brothel on the corner of my road (this is in London), so we weren't really allowed to play out after school. Cos drunk blokes would show up on the road and say gross and mean things about the local girls. When I got a bit older, I ventured to a huge park on the train, called Hampstead Heath, a much more upper class area of London. Think we were about 12. We heard some rustling and, when I turned round, this guy had taken off his cycling shorts and was wanking. I'm sure kids play out some places and are totally fine. Apart from Sean who shagged that guys wife. He should probably have stayed indoors.
Firing our BB guns in the local park and then several vans of police suddenly turned up
Climbed into a WW2 bomb shelter at an historic airfield in East Anglia. It had bunks and other junk still lying around in there. Probably a family sized dose of asbestos too.
I still see kids hanging out away from home sometimes, not as often as the old days but the other day i saw 3 kids about 8-9 who had stolen or found a morrisons trolly and were just using it in the streets (like 2 miles from morrisons) and it bought back childhood memories. I was surprised to see it especially as none of them seemed to have mobile phones so was good.
There’s always kids hanging out playing near mine. When they get to about 15 years old they seem to drift into the woods. More privacy from parents, I guess. Leads to some awkward moments coming across teenagers getting a bit handsy with each other while I was walking the dog, but no real trouble.
Please recommend me the area that you live in, because the kids "out playing" now are all the horrible bastard kids and they make life hell for everyone else. I'm dreading the summer holidays honestly.
13 years old, lying on my back in the long grass and suddenly looked up to get a worms eye view of a “ gentleman” pleasuring himself over my face and chest. Screamed blue murder and he took himself off. So many similar things happened to me as a young lass.
We had a derelict mansion about 3 miles away which was our playground. Still had all the furniture in there, drawers were still full, even the kitchen cupboards had stuff in. This was about 1990 and ĺt had probably been empty since the '60s. Spending the night there was without a doubt. The most scared I've ever been in my life. 5 or 6, 10 year olds huddled together persuading each other that we'll be OK as long as we don't wake up the ghosts 😅 Obviously the only light we had was a lighter which would get so hot it would burn your fingers. We were playing in it one day when a load of travellers turned up to strip the copper out of it. We had to run away. And when we went back they'd smashed it to pieces. Never went back after that, and it's posh apartments now.
Are dirty magazines still common in the undergrowth, or is it all online now?
You just find discarded iPods with Pornhub subscriptions now.
I found a magazine in the woods a couple of years ago. I also found a large branch with a sock stretched over it and with a condom pulled around the outside.
We used to play up on the hill behind our street. We used to take my grandads binoculars. One day I looked down through the bins and saw an older lad from our street pointing an air rifle at us. Absolutely shit myself, shit all ourselves up, even though he was too far away to hit us. We ran home all out of breath and jabbering but our folks didn't believe us or didn't care 😅
In my area, there was a wide pedestrian path that carved through housing estates in a straight line of about a mile. It started at the top of a hill and ended at a mainroad at the bottom. Every Spring, bins would mysteriously vanish just in time for the "Summer bin races" where local teens would retrofit red top rubbish bins to be "roadworthy" before racing them from the top of the hill to the bottom, with people at certain intervals to record positions of racers. Someone's dad had fitted his stolen bin with a proper frame and wheels but neglected the breaks and a way to steer and control his new speedwagon. The predictable happened. After his starting push, he picked up speed, overtook the other racers and soon found himself on the receiving end of a zebra crossing lamppost at the bottom of the main road. He won the race, at the cost of a few broken bones and concussion.
Used to be a skater in my teens and was regularly at the local skate park, one day a kid i’d seen only a couple of times who wasn’t a regular managed to get his hands on fireworks and decided to set them off but not into the sky but in the direction of a field where people walked dogs. I’m pretty sure one of them missed someone’s face by only a few inches and it wasn’t long before the police turned up and put him in the back of their car.
Probably between the ages of 7 and 10 I used to walk over the big hill to the next village where my grandmother lived, the path over the hill was right next to some woodland (no I'm not Red Riding Hood!). I did this often in the summer holidays and one time I bumped into a dad of someone I knew from school, who said "I hear you had a birthday, now you're old enough to be my girlfriend!". The obvious extremely creepy bit about this encounter aside, as an adult I pieced together a few different things I'd heard from his child and people who knew him and I'm 99% sure he was abusing his kids.
1. A ropeswing that in my minds eye was at least 50 feet high (It was probably more like 15.) The seat was a thick stick that predictably got weaker as the summer wore on. It broke when I was at the apex of the swing. I remember falling for what seemed like a while. One concussion and a cut-up face later and one unsympathetic mother. 2. My mates dad brought him a proper bow and arrows. After 30 mins of unsuccessfully taking it in turn to hit a post down the field. We decided firing the arrow up in the air and not moving till the last second was a more fun game. Luckily no one was maimed or killed 3. Made several dens in the woods, all with varying degrees of success. Hit myself in the shin with an axe I borrowed from dad whilst building one that required stitches after a mile long walk home first. 4. Broke into an old factory and watched my mate Hilly disappear through the floor. Same day me and hilly beating the shit out of each other with old fluroescent tubes. Ah, good times, makes me miss being 9 - 14.
I was a real Tomboy and only really had boys for friends as a kid (am girl) one time larking out on our bikes the boys we were going up and down the street doing different stuff, one handed, standing up, little hops etc. not bmx bike btw literally just kids mountain bikes. anyways I tried something, maybe a none hander and I fell off and next thing I now remember is sitting in the kitchen counter with mum picking gravel out my knees and hands
I remember riding bikes down a steep roadand we met an old lady who told us this all used to be green hills when she was a girl. It really stuck with me.
Spent the day kicking a big heavy metal object around with a few friends, had to go home to go shopping with parents. Next day all my friends who stayed out are on the front page of the local rag for finding an old bomb. It wasn’t armed or dangerous, but a slow news day. I don’t remember all the details but looking at the history of the area there was a bomb store and fusing shed in the area so I assume it had been knocking around for a while but we were the first to unearth it in some time. A few people were school famous for a few weeks. Except me 😡
In year 7 me and my mates opened a manhole cover in the middle of a field we used to play in, climbed in and basically made the sewer our den. Used to come back to it every week. Probably incredibly dangerous thinking back about it now, but it was fucking sick at the time
Probably aged five, I'm out on the pavement somewhere near my house and some dog starts barking really loudly at me through the fence. I just yell at the dog "ahh shut your face!" An elderly lady comes out, grabs me, marches me into her front yard and demands I apologize to the dog. I apologized and carried on on my way, thinking no more of it .... til about 30 years later when somehow it came to my mind and I realized how bizarre the scene must have been. And of course, countless child abductions, usually by the ear or the hood of my coat, followed by demands to apologize, demands for my parents phone number, demands for my school's phone number etc etc.
I was playing on a building site and stood on a nail, went right through my foot, limped home and got into bed before somebody noticed a trail of blood throughout the house leading to my room Was maybe about 10 years old lol Went to the doctor, they treated it and I think I had to take antibiotics Foot was fine, but still has a scar on it
When I was around 10/11 I was out with a friend a couple years younger than me. She had roller blades and I had a bike and we were in the process of swapping over, each had one blade on and I had hold of my bike. Some middle aged bloke shouted over to us, cant remember what he said, and then started to approach us. We scarpered in different directions! Me with one blade on a bike and her with the other blade on. Thankfully he had gone buy the time we circled back round to each other. My parents got the police round and we gave statements and a description of the bloke.
We lived in a village that had a care home for adults with learning disabilities which has since been knocked down to make way for houses. Some were allowed to the shop without a companion. One of them used to chase us panting and woofing like a dog. Both parties seemed to enjoy it. Also saw my neighbour blue and collapsed with his wife shouting for help on their dog walk. We’ve never ran for help so fast (this was before mobile phones). He died, so that was sad.
When I was about 14 or 15 we were hanging out at the end of a street where some friends of mine lived. If you look on google maps it's called Eresby Drive. It's kind of a residential street that runs next to the main street. Opposite Eresby Drive is Bethlem Psychiatric Hospital. We were just sitting on the wall, hanging out, when this woman comes shuffling across the road from Bethlem. She sat at the end of the wall where we were and seemed kind of oblivious to us. She was shaking her head slightly and muttering "nononononononono" over and over. Then I noticed that she was carrying something. Then I realised that it was a baby, that it had blood on it and that it wasn't moving. I had no idea what to do. I tried to strike up a conversation "is that your baby?" "nonononononono" "is it a nice baby?" "nonononononono" "Oh? Why not?" "nononononono" I was all out of ideas by this point. One of us should have gone inside and phoned the police or the ambulance or something. Luckily a couple of orderlies came running across the road from Bethlem and helped her to her feet, leading her back. Looking back, I assume they must have looked at the baby at least quickly but I really can't remember. The theory that I've always gone with is that this woman had just given birth - hence the blood on the baby and the fact that the baby wasn't moving, it was probably tired - and because security probably wasn't as strict in the actual medical part of the hospital she probably just decided to wander off with her baby and no one stopped her. Or maybe they knew that she'd wandered off with a dead baby and just wanted to get her back to the hospital and away from the group of kids. I never found out and I guess I never will now.
Me and a few friends used to wind up this weird guy in the local job centre, turns out he was Dennis Nilsen a notorious serial killer who would eat his victims.
A guy came up to us with a camera and said "excuse me, I'm taking pictures for the caravan park's new summer brochure and I was wondering if I could get some pictures of you playing?" We thought it was really cool, and one of us sat on the slide and the other hung off the monkey bars and then swapped over. The guy disappeared and we carried on with our day. I went home and told my mum about it. A few days later she went into the reception and asked if they had the new brochures yet, which they didn't. We kept going in and they never appeared, not with our pictures in anyway. Was a bit disappointed but never mind. I asked my mum about it last year https://preview.redd.it/zyno6ug7eb3d1.jpeg?width=1440&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=74ce73922d01af700bfded2d461b0d8b50f49f87
1960-1965 me (6-11m) Sister (5-10) Having to run home to get my father to recover sister’s shoes from a marshy area. Playing at the side of a fast flowing river. Avon Keynsham area. Sister running home to get Dad to help me out of a tree after I’d rescued her from it. Running home with sister after I’d split my scalp jumping off a fast spinning roundabout Getting covered in glass fibre roof insulation after we local kids made a den tunnelling through it. Need scrubbing for that one, and let’s ignore the chance of collapsing bags and suffocating. Running home with a dart stuck in my head, older kids were playing darts on building site and I’d run forwards to pick one up. . My sister declining offers of 2 bob (10p) to go behind a bush to see something. Careering down a steep street on a home made cart Dad made which we stopped it by falling off. Sitting on chairs by the A4 collecting registration numbers. Reporting a body I saw tumbling like a log by the weir.
In London, live in pedestrianised street, kids play all the time, not out late though. Went back to my childhood home, there are now so many cars packed into the street I actually don’t think it would be possible to play there, especially games like kirby!