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.

I used to collect rubbers. I had about 200, my favourite were the scented ones.
Also used to collect Garbage Pail Kids stickers - should have kept them as apparently highly collectible now!

Also used to make rose petal perfume which never worked properly, I just used to end up with mouldy rose petals. DMum used to diligently pretend to love it when I presented her with a bottle 😂

@MrsCastiel Hello to a fellow fan! I'm glad I jogged a happy memory for you .

This has been a lovely thread OP such fun to read. Hopefully it will help people come up with ideas to entertain their children whilst we are on lockdown. Next time my son says he is bored I'll suggest he writes a book on ferns and see what he says, ha ha.

I used to write down the details of 'abandoned' cars in case they came up on crimewatch. In fact, i used to record anything and everything that i thought might turn up on crimewatch.

I collected postcards which i stuck in books with dates and details of where I'd got them from.

My friend and I designed horse body parts to be cut out of MDF and attached to black bins (would have been the bodies) although we never actually made one. We used to make detailed tack out of paper.

I made a patchwork blankets for my Sindy doll. I knitted the squares on cocktail sticks for appropriate stitch size.

I used to set up clubs that no one ever joined but they had rules, badges, certificates etc.

I also used to design to scale drawings of my dream house (was a small thatched cottage), draw detailed floor plans of each room and cut out pictures from the argos catalogue to furnish it. I particularly liked the Eternal Beau dinnerware range...

I had a petite typewriter and spend hours typing up and filling in order forms in my office. I really wanted to work in a post office so that i could stamp stuff.

Another friend and I wrote musicals. I remember one about 2 cleaners who worked in a theatre but had aspirations of being performers. They were shit.

Good times!

I used to make radio shows or read poems on my tape recorder. I know. Also had a vast collection of china thimbles.

I also had a 'knitting machine' that made 3 rows of wonky knitting before jamming. Some things aren't worth the effort of the setup.

Oh and we never had a kite, so I tried to make one myself out of what materials I could find, which was twigs, newspaper, sellotape and string (no fancy bits and bobs like tissue paper or ribbon in our house let alone dowelling rods). I was sorely disappointed when it didn't even try to fly in a strong wind.

One of the surprises of parenthood is that now, I have plenty of materials around so if my kids wanted to create or make or build something they wouldn't struggle for materials like I did, and if we didn't have it (plaster of Paris for example) then I'd get it for them, also I am willing to help, but they aren't bothered

I remember spending ages knocking rocks together trying to learn how to make stone tools like a caveman. I was very persistent at this but never managed to make an arrow head.

That really made me laugh. I used to do this too. And trying to make fires by rubbing sticks together.

I catalogued all my books and made library tickets for them.

And me!

Ah, so many memories...

I collected leaflets. Usually leaflets from the post office about various savings accounts and total mail services 😐

I used to make stationery storage.
Little drawers out of cardboard. Toilet rolls holders for pens.

Make perfume.

Collect rubbers.

Collect little mice ornaments I can't think what they were called now.

I used to love getting a new address book and re writing everything into.

I might chuck away the electronics and see how the kids do in lockdown.

I used to make up really elaborate and clearly unbelievable stories that I would tell my primary school classmates. I had a little plastic case that I would keep my 'notes' in, so I always managed to remember the details of my various lies in, and was fiercely protective of it.

Highlights include:

• Going to a Bon Jovi concert and being asked to go up on stage with him. This concert took place in Amsterdam, but remarkably, I still managed to make it into school in Surrey the next day.

• Breaking both my wrists in a roller blading accident. I remember crying and pleading with my mum to buy me these weird 'wristguards' out of the Argos catalogue to help make my story more believable.

Brother and I regularly tried to dig a swimming pool in our backyard. Used to make our mum so grumpy.

We had a tree that we could climb to acess the roof of our shed and we would perch up there and spy on the neighbours mowing the lawn and doing other riveting activities.

We would make elaborate obstacle courses and “fun”fair rides for our cats who wouldn’t have a bar of it.

Carving bits of chalk dug from the garden,
rock collections,
Making reports of stuff - neighbours’ movements, parents’ routines, frequency of siblings tantrums etc,
Counting things: I knew exactly how many trees/steps/etc there were between home and school - bonus points if the total was divisible by 7, no idea why

I used to collect things from aeroplanes and hotels like serviettes, match books and sugar sachets. My Dad and his colleagues would get them for me. I didn't go on a plane until I was about 14. It wasn't the idea of travelling that excited me, no it was the corporate identity of the items.

PrimeraVez

I did similar.

One particularly memorable occasion when I was about 10 was the time I told the children at my table in school about a story I'd seen on the news the night before about a boy who'd died after pushing his eyes back into his skull. But he didn't die until his eyeballs reached his stomach.

My parents received phone calls about that one and I remember there being much consternation that I was not "like the other children" (they meant 'girls' really. They were very concerned that I wasn't 'girling' properly).

My uncle used to hide pennies in his garden, then send me off with a metal detector.

I tried to teach myself French. I discovered that lots of things had French instructions as well as English printed on them (eg shampoo, toothpaste etc). I had a notebook where I'd write down the English version above and then the French version below, and match the words up.

I was a bit thrown by the fact that the words were in a different order, so early attempts weren't that successful. Once i figured out that the words weren't a direct 1-1 mapping, I got on marginally better. Wrote down all the words I figured out into my notebook.

I wrote in my news book.that I'd gone fishing with one of the boys in my class. He was a friend and we played at each others house, but never went fishing.
I was rumbled at parents evening when my parents read my news book.

@TheGirlFromStoryville - I still have my garbage pail stickers!

Another 'hobby' friends and I had, aged about 11, was getting the tube to Covent Garden or Harrods and following people directly behind them (like in Candid Camera, our inspiration). When they noticed and turned around to look at us, we would turn around too. We thought it was hilarious, it actually must have been incredibly annoying.

Anyone remember the scrapy foil pictures? There was a serious looking mob thing to use to scrape off to reveal the picture.

My brother invented a game that involved building Lego hotels which were then demolished with a homemade wrecking ball.

I was obsessed with Sylvanian Families and used to make up school assignments they were doing. At one point they had an Olympics with a swimming pool made from a shoebox.

Had a game where I would choose a house in a nearby street and make up everything about a family that lived there - names, birthdays, pets, the parents’ jobs etc. Wrote all of this down and drew pictures and floor plans. Nobody else was allowed to look at any of this.

Pretended I could travel back in time if I touched certain items in the house (presumably influenced by various kids shows), and would have to try to avoid touching them at times when I didn’t want to go back in time.

Thank you so much for this thread - definitely belongs in Classics.

I used to make wind breaks for my barbies out of paper and lollipop sticks when we were on holiday in our caravan.

Sorry...Sindy. Not Barbie.

My best friend Tracy and I went to the graveyard and wrote down the names on the really old graves. We then went back to her garden, stood on the wobbly swing and called out the names to see if anything would happen. I think we got this confused with Ouija boards.

We also devised crap magic tricks involving her shed. We invited other kids round and she said she would lock me in the shed and make me disappear. She then ushered out guests to a different of the garden. Halfway through the act she said she needed to go to the toilet, unlocked the shed and I escaped. Hey presto!

Twice a year for Miss World and the Eurovision Song contest I would sit with a notebook scribbling down the details of every song or contestant and give them my own marks and a critique of their act - Miss Brazil too much lipstick etc.

I loved our typewriter - was it called Corvetti or something? I spent hours typing up a local
newspaper with made up stories.

The catalogue we had was Janet Fraser and then Marshall Ward. I can still remember the smell of the new pages and the leatherette pouch my Mum kept all the paperwork for it in. I used to get so anxious and stressed whenever we got a new one as I couldn't take in all the amazing things you could buy.

Flicking through mum's dictionary of baby names and choosing a new name for myself, I think I chose Serena.

I can't believe children still do things like this.

I also shamefully remember going to the phone box where calls to the operator were free. When they answered we would shout "Get off the line there's a bomb on it!" Then drop the phone and run off. Little shits.