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.

@Puffinhead what about you?

I'm looking at the Argos catalogue for 1979. It has the tape recorder my mum bought for me when I passed my 11+.

Making 'collages' with pictures cut out of catalogues. The sillier the better.

Painting my grandmother’s garden wall with water. My brother and I did this for hours.

Rose perfume.

I also had an elaborate riding school run entirely in an old diary with a garden marked up with bamboo canes to make stables and jumps.

Me and and the girl next door used to pick up balls of free leftover wool from Oxfam, knit them into squares and then give them back to the Oxfam shop for them to sew together for blankets for the starving children of Africa. Except our squares had so many dropped stitches and were so wonky we were asked to stop by the shop volunteer

I also used to have a book called 'send off for it' which had lists of companies who would give you free promotional things if you wrote and asked nicely and enclosed an SAE. Used to spend hours writing letters in my best handwriting asking for free magnets and stickers.

These are bloody hilarious 😂

Like something out of Viz

We had a lot of books at home. I used to spend hours using them to construct small 'staircases' that I could walk up and down. The higher and the more individual steps the better. I have no idea why it fascinated me but I remember those hours as really happy times.

My brother and I also used to love building a den under the dining room table. Mum used to let us use old bedding and table cloths to drape down the side to create a tent-like hidey hole.

I use to collect snails

I used to collect stickers. They are stuck to the inside of the wardrobe door at my parent's and the scratch'n'sniff ones still work nearly 40 years later!!!

Selling smash hits posters to the neighbourhood kids
Squirting the pavement with water from old fairy liquid bottle
Collecting broken coloured glass (red/orange from car taillights)
Chalk pictures on pavements
Rose petal perfume
Pressing my nail into the puffy wallpaper leaving an imprint repeatedly
Playing at 'Radio shows' with tape cassette player

Clapforcats I still have my childhood Magic Robot - I loved it!

I memorised all the names of the actors in The Forsyte Saga.

No, I don't know why either.

@verlaines @ClapForCats - I have magic robot, too. Stumped DS for ages! (NO SPOILERS)

I remember another!
My younger brother and I used to watch the cars going past my bedroom window and would record ourselves on my tape recorder, saying what they were
"Red astra"
"Blue ford Mondeo"
I have no idea why..

I'd forgotten about rose perfume! Haha it was so shit! We also used to sneak onto the golf course behind where we lived and look for lost golf balls, every kid on the estate had a bucket of golf balls they never did anything with.

My mum told us that as a kid she had a notebook and would write numbers to see how high she could go. Once got close to a million she claims.

Briliant thread

I used to pretend that my bicycle was Champion the Wonder Horse I'm another one who used to make showjumping courses all round the garden, using dad's plant pots and bamboo canes, and go round on my space hopper. And I had a whole imaginary riding school in notebooks.

My dad was an avid stamp collector, and I still have a comprehensive knowledge of all the old Commonwealth countries, from helping him sort his collections. Not so exciting were all the millions of almost identical stamps he got sent from a penfriend in India.

We had a pond in the garden, and would often find tadpoles, which would then come into a tank in the dining room. Amazingly enough, they thrived and it was wonderful to come down every morning to see whether they had started to grow legs yet. Once they were 4-legged, they would get transferred back into the pond. Where no doubt most of them ended their days by providing a delicious addition to the menu of the shubunkins.

I collected gonks, keyrings and Britain's models, I still have a whole load of the floral garden stuff - it is in the loft.

At one time there was a craze for making things out of clear resin in moulds. Used to drive DM mad as it stank the house out.

Another thing I used to do was read the 'It Pays to Increase Your Word Power' section in the Readers' Digest. I actually got pretty good at it, and it's left me with a lifelong love of unusual words.

Another Argos catalogue game - me and my sister used to point at an object on the page then whoever had chosen the most expensive of the two was the winner.

I also was a pony going over jumps in the garden. I had an obsession with long coloured ribbons tied to the end of canes which I used to do amazing rythmic gymnastic with. I always won Olympic golds.

My mum had a catalogue and to keep the payment accounts it came with a little book with bits of blue carbon paper in it. My utter delight when she gave me one so I could run my own accounts book. I also loved books of raffle tickets.

My lovely gran saved all small boxes and tubs. I spent hours and hours making my own dolls houses from them. Once I was given a book of wallpaper samples - oh my god - it was heaven to decorate my home made dolls house.

I learnt most TV advert jingles by heart and made up dance routines which I bullied my sister and friend to learn and perform.

Did anyone else shrink crisp packets in the oven to make tiny, crisp packet settings?

Keyrings

And of course there was always the button jar to play with.

I used to do those latch hook rug kits

My dad used to have a really old Army and Navy stores catalogue - it was amazing and advertised things like cummerbunds to wear in the jungle.
I used to trawl through it and pick out items for my fantasy boarding school life. (Camel hair dressing gown and actual steamer trunks).

This is the loveliest thread! Here are mine:

Recording songs from the radio onto a cassette tape
Re-enacting Charles and Di's wedding
French skipping (handy having two sisters)
Riding my bike with no hands very fast down a hill
Racing an old pram very fast down a hill
Making cigarettes using rolled paper, cotton wool and talc
Building camps
Trying to fly (unsuccessfully )

I used to buy boxes of paper clips at a time and make daisy chains out of them