Crap 'hobbies' you had as a child.

[DrMadelineMaxwell]

I used to go around the village where I used to live with my notebook and pen and write down number plates. I can still recall my Dad's car plate.

This is a cause of much mirth to my kids who have clearly never known the heady excitement of a long sunday afternoon pre internet days.

@Charley50 I loved my squirmel. But I liked giving everything baths and well, squirmel was no more after I decided it was his bath time

I held individual funerals for all the critters that my cats brought me as gifts. I used my school issued New Testament for the readings and either twigs or lollipop sticks for the markets/headstones. There must have been more than 30 graves, the poor little buggers. Mainly small birds and grass snakes but the occasional small mouse was sacrificed.

I used to use freshly mown grass to make a bed for my garden gnome.

I made a database in an exercise book of all my books - including year, publisher and who gave it to me. I was 8.

I had one fuzzy felt set, I made more. I made dresses for my Sunday. I made mandalas out of long toothpicks and my mum's wool.

THIS is a thread that needs to go into classics.

Definitely Classics

I once read a fairy story with a magical stone shaped like a perfect white egg. Everywhere I went, I looked for a stone like that. —Still do—

I played the Argos catalogue game with a friend except ours was a bit different - we had to choose our favourite item on each page. Even the pages like extension cables or rubbish bins

I spent most of my childhood reading or cross stitching highlight explain my terrible eyesight. I still read but ditched the cross stitch for knitting.

In hindsight my crap hobby was collecting the cards the came cigarette packets from all my family members
Oh and collecting the Tetley cards with my grandad then getting the figurines.

I was obsessed with rubber stamps.

My friend was obsessed with Torvill & Dean’s skating coach, Betty Calloway. Every time she got a new diary for Christmas she would make a note of Betty Calloway’s birthday and other nuggets of Betty-related information gleaned from watching telly or her mum’s Woman’s Own.

Counted newts in the pond
Collected kinder surprise toys

@Astoatora54, I too had a thing for James Mason! It started when I saw him in ‘The Wicked Lady’ when I was a child. It’s one of my favourite films.
I also used to play with snails! And make crappy ‘perfume’. My friends and I also loved spending our money on fancy paper and envelopes.

I used to collect perfume bottles. I have a huge family full of women and they all gave me their old bottles so I had loads and loads. I used to play with them like they were barbies. They all had names.

For anyone who wants to relive the Argos catalogue game, they’re all online at dev.argosbookofdreams.co.uk/ .

I too had a thing for James Mason! I adore his voice!
I used to love paper doll sets, especially those you coloured in yourself as well as regularly redecorating my dolls house with old bits of wallpaper and carpet

I loved my paper dolls sets.

@Puffinhead Nice to see a fellow JM admirer! The Wicked Lady is on youtube - I watched it a few weeks ago and it was just as good cheesy as ever!

Can't believe how many of us used to make rose petal perfume particularly as it never worked!

Another one here who used to make rose petal perfume.

I also kept trying to make butter by constantly shaking a jam jar with the top of the milk in it for hours (churning it apparently). So much effort for such little reward.

My weirdest was probably my Fly Hospital. I used to rescue damp half dead gnats and flies out of the sink or puddles and dry them out in my sisters old eyeshadow boxes (now called palettes, ahem) which were lined with toilet paper. When they recovered I would set them free. Sadly, not all of them made it.

Used to live near large factories and joy was the day they had a skip and threw out boxes of old stickers with something like " octoco" on them.I would them stick them everywhere,doors,dogs,cats ,under the table in cafes .
Also stuck them neatly all in a row on every page of a littlewoods catalogue - think it took me weeks to do this - utterly poitless but today it could win the turner prize .
And the same with those ink stamps,the ones you could make your own words- i fancied working for mi5 so i make up" top secret" and stamped it all over every household bill,much to my mum's anger as she had to take it to the PO.

LIke others would have a trial for the ken doll which always resulted in a public execution by hanging.

@astoatora54, it’s brilliant, not at all cheesy! Can’t persuade my teenagers to watch it with me though. Do you have Talking Pictures tv? Great film channel showing old films. Recently saw ‘Spring and Port Wine’ on there. What film got you first hooked? Sorry to derail!

Just thought of a couple more...
I used to label everything I could get my hands on with a dymo label maker, really ugly labels looking back!
I also used to obsessively read/re-read Malcolm Saville's Lone Pine Adventure books. There were about 20 in the series, and I knew them so well I spotted some discrepancies in the timeline or character's ages or some such. I joined the Lone Pine club and wrote to the author pointing out the discrepancies. Looking back I was very annoying! I did get back a lovely handwritten letter from Malcolm Saville though explaining things.

@Redglitter Fantasy catalogue shopping - yes!

God this thread is amazing.

I used to start 'businesses'. Best one was getting rocks out of my grandparents' garden and selling them back to my grandad for a pound a pop.

On the topic of rocks, did anyone else make 'pet rocks' ? Pick up stones and draw faces and patterns on them in pen and Tip-Ex? I remember getting VERY emotionally attached to mine.

My grandma had a button collection, and I remember spending HOURS pouring them all out onto the floor and sorting them back into piles.

And then doing 'Art Attacks' in the garden, which basically meant pulling all the heads off my poor grandmother's rhododendrons and making big pictures on the grass out of sticks and leaves and flowers.

@BarkandCheese OMG the historical Argos catalogue link is fabulous! An 18 piece china set for £5.75! No wonder I could easily replace my household goods playing In-the-Event-of an-Imaginary-Fire with £100! (I was a slightly macabre child).

Ooooh, and making radio shows with my best friend on the tape recorder! Recording our favourite songs off the radio and then recording ourselves doing silly chit-chat about pop stars and doing 'the weather report'.... It was called Wild FM... I WISH I still had some of those cassettes.

@Puffinhead Sadly I am not in the UK as Talking Pictures would be right up my street. I think the 1940/50s were my favourites at first - TWL definitely one of the first but I also love Fanny by Gaslight, Odd Man Out, The Seventh Veil, Rommel Desert Fox, North by Northwest.

@BalloonSlayer. I did show jumping with space hoppers with my best friend. My dh thinks it's hilarious and laughs at me. We built water jumps, doubles and triples and used to time our rounds.