School Holiday-The Old Days

mintymoneysaver

I think we were all bored, we've just forgotten and see it all through rose tinted glasses. We surely couldn't make rose petal perfume, ( I can still remember the smell) play in Wendy houses, and go on our roller skates for a whole 6 weeks! I seem to remember a lot of time spent watching "Why Don't You?"

tanith

We used to play on the local bombsites , hang an old tyre from a tree was a favourite way to while away a few hours.. and just exploring the neighbourhood, going 'up the swings', collecting pop bottles and taking them back for 3d on the bottle . Running up the bakers for Mum for a large twist 1/- thats a shilling for the younger members lol... getting 6d worth of batter scraps from the chip shop.. collecting snails in a jar and yes I too made perfume from rose petals..

amani_2

I love this thread.
My childhood memories were back in the seventies.
Our house backed on to allotments, me my brothers and sister and all the kids on our street used to play there.
We used to play war throwing stones at each other:eek: my sister and her friend was the first aiders with plasters and bandages.
Climbed on the pylon:eek:
Made a tarzi (tarzan swing).
Made rose perfume
Made mud pies
Water fights
Played dikie de leevo (called something else now) you were in two groups one side hid and the other searched and you had to take them back to a base when you found them.
Made bobby arrows, making the flights from playing cards.
Went on long bike rides.
My next door neighbour used to make chips for all the kids in newspaper.
It always seemed to be sunny all through the holidays. It did rain but only at night when we had big thunderstorms.

Really really lovely days.

My children play out all day now with their friends, out at 10am back in around 9pm. (calling in for snacks through the day).

zaksmum

Is anyone old enough to remember sitting in the bath with jeans on to shrink them to fit like a second skin?

We did that in our early teens...!

And collecting old lemonade bottles from the neighbours because you got a penny back on them if you returned them to the shop!

amani_2

I just wanted to add when we came in from our hard day playing mum used to chuck us in the bath as we were filthy. All the cuts and grazes used to sting, and then when we got out mum used to get her tin of germolene out and put it on all our cuts and grazes. then down for supper and off to bed. Then out again the next morning.


Yes I used to do that with the jeans.

podperson

I remember my mum used to make us a tent in the back garden with some old sheets over some chairs and we would end up with half the kids in the streets coming in and out of it. We would also play cricket or rounders or when the local high school got a basketball hoop we would walk up to there and play in teams. Me and my brother would put on little plays for whichever poor unsuspecting relative might be visiting! I mainly remember how we used to use our imaginations to make up games - we would play at explorers or cowboys or pretend we were characters in tv shows.

SailorSam

This isn't memories of school holidays exactly but things you may have done as kids.
There's just been a Local Historian on the radio and he was talking about the Holy Land part of the Dingle, it was the only part of Britain were they use to have bonfires and celebrations at Easter, he said the kids use to make effigies of Judas similar to Guy Fawkes and go around knocking on the doors and pubs asking for 'a penny for Judas breakfast'
Bloke on the radio reckons it may have died out in the 50's.
Anyone remember that ?

candygirl

SailorSam wrote: »

If i get lucky i still play that now.

Same here, and docs n nurses;):D

balletshoes

I was brought up on a farm, both my parents worked on farms too all the way through my childhood. From the age of 7 up we went to the berries for at least the first 3 or 4 weeks of the summer school holidays, and the October school holidays was tattie picking. If the berry season was over before the summer school holidays finished, my auntie would be in charge of us at home, but unless it was raining we were never inside. We'd be out in the back garden playing shops, using leaves and redcurrants, gooseberries etc from the bushes as money and groceries, making tents with blankets hung over the washing line, or we'd be out on our bikes, or over the road on the farm itself playing, or away down to the beach for the day with sandwiches and a bottle of juice (between us).

When I was younger, we'd go with my Mum to the farm she worked on in the school holidays, and play with the other workers' kids all day. The farm was surrounded by a huge building site (new housing estate) so we had weeks of sliding down the earth piles on bits of cardboard, picking poppies and daisys, playing hide and seek in and out all of the sheds and workshops, climbing the hay bales in the cattleshed, and only appearing from wherever we were when we heard the farmer shout for teabreak or lunch time.

My DD has a completely different lifestyle to me, as she's not a farm kid, she's a city kid. When she's home and the weather's good, she's usually out on our street playing with our neighbours kids, or they're all in one of our back gardens. I do have one of the same rules with her that I had when I was a kid - be back home before its dark.

eamon

Footie, footie, footie and when we were bored with that more footie! Apart from that fishing, stamp collecting, chess, cycling, exploring, climbing trees, reading. Rarely inside except to eat & sleep. Details are all a bit vague now but I can remember that every August there would be a huge storm, with proper rain, thunder & forked lightning and the following day lots of localised flooding. This was rural Northern Ireland and all this weather was probably the tail end of a hurricane that had made its way across the Atlantic. Strangely I was talking with my big sister a couple of weeks ago and she has no memory of the annual storms. Oh and in NI summer holidays were eight weeks!