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.

We spent endless days making up "clubs". The tennis club, the bike club etc... basically if we decided to eg, play tennis, we'd start a club (me, my sister and our cousin). We'd then have our first meeting in our tree, at which we each had to pay the entrance fee (5p). Then we'd elect a president (always our cousin) and a secretary/treasurer (always me). We'd write the names of the office-holders in our notebook, along with "Other Members" (my sister - I've no idea why we didn't split Secretary/treasurer into 2 roles so she could have one).

Then we would discuss the rules of the club, and what equipment we'd need to buy. We would check our funds (15p) and then walk the mile to our nearest village to buy supplies (tennis balls, sweets etc) and then come home.

THEN we'd play tennis.

@BrokenNails - I too spent hours sliding down the stairs, and climbing up the banisters..

Spent hours upside down, doing headstands while watching TV or in the hallway.

Various 'crazes' me and my friend Susie had; darts, roller-skating (she had proper ones, I had the shit ones that strapped over your trainers), making fires in the metal waste paper basket, sweets club, Tiswas every Saturday morning religiously with DCM sandwiches to eat.

Loving this thread!
Mine were:
Stamp collecting
Cutting things out of an Argos catalogue.
Collecting soaps (mainly from the body shop)
Don't think any of my dc would be impressed with any of these now!

I knew someone who collected "bits" of herself in a little tin - teeth, eyelashes, nail clippings etc. Always found that a bit weird!

My bed was a ship which travelled round the world with me and all my cuddly toys. I wasn't a cuddly toy kind of child so when we got into stormy seas I'd have to choose one to throw overboard.

Collecting fancy erasers.

Using my 'Speak & Spell' to death.

Handstands.

My God, some of these hobbies are so incredibly cute and endearing!

I collected buttons and beads

write down number plates

@DrMadelineMaxwell, yes I did that too. In the late 1960s we used to go on hols to South Wales. Those were the days when number plates were regional. There the local cars all had numbers ending in CY, so I used to "collect" ACY, BCY, CCY etc.

We didn't have catalogues, Mum once "had a look" at a neighbours and I think ordered me something in "mint green" (there was also a choice of pastel lilac, pastel lemon, pastel pink it being the early 80s) but we never had them in the house. I think she was suspicious of the "credit account" element, she was old fashioned and preferred paying cash up front for things.

Also I was amazed the catalogue also had toys in it and I think she didn't want me to see them. I always wanted to be a "catalogue" type family. And have caravan rather than camping holidays. And have a parasol garden set and a garden swing, and a room decorated with Snoopy. And order things from Avon.

Oops, I digressed....

Anyone else play "elastics"? This is where you'd have a length of stretchy sewing elastic (usually stolen from a mum's sewing box, where its ordinary purpose was for attaching mittens to the inside of your coat).

You'd tie the ends together to make a big long rectangular piece. Then you'd need two friends stood about five feet apart facing towards each other with the elastic round their ankles, holding the elastic rectangle taut. The third child would then do a jumping game to various chants, where they'd jump in and out of the elastic lines, sometimes landing on the top, sometimes hopping.

Flower pressing, still got a book of crappy dried flowers from the 70s. Making perfume out of rose petals.
Collecting plastic tat in national dress.

Should say Dolls in national dress .

@BrokenNails
That was the most popular playground game at my school!!

I would paint snails from the garden with nail varnish so I would recognise them if they came back!

I would also prepare raffles for my dad when he came home from work having a butter mint as the main prize!

'Elastics' was known as French Skipping round our way.

Massively popular as was sticking a tennis ball in a cut off tights leg, standing against a wall and whacking it at various points about your person (you missed, you knew it) while chanting inane rhymes

Snail racing on a track I painted on the wall with my mums nail varnish. The track is still on the wall slightly. We used to make flick knives out of old lolly sticks (random ones we found on the street 🤢) and elastic bands.

We lived on a corner where all learner drivers practiced their reversing round the corner. My brother and I would spend the whole summer holidays spying on them... we’d have lists of number plates, all the different driving schools.... this then fed into a crime fighting newspaper... not sure how crime fighting and learner drivers came together?!?! hours and hours we spent doing this

I was a child of the 70's and did so many of these:

I made my own library by making little paper pockets inside my books and making the little 'slip' of paper where you marked down the dates

I made a supermarket by spending weeks / months collecting the empty packaging of our household things - cornflake boxes, coffee jars etc. I pretty much had an entire range! We had a toy cash register and a toy trolley

I spent many many hours making houses and families to go in them out of plastecine and a cardboard box and old scraps of material

I wrote books in copy books regularly

I used my much longed for tape recorder to write, act and record plays with sound effects (clopping horses, creaky doors etc)

I collected ladybirds in matchboxes

I collected scented erasers or rubbers as we called them

I roller staked (over the shoe type)

I rode my bike for hours

I climbed a lot of trees and built dens

I made outfits for Sindy out of old socks - very inventive!

I drew lots and lots of pictures and when a bit older (very young teen) I collected 3 series of a magazine 'How to Draw' and the binders to put them into by threading little tabs into the staples on the magazines. I revered those magazines and used them a lot and I still have them all now on my bookshelf. They were an indulgence for me at the time and I knew it and was appreciative.

We had a game of bouncing tennis balls off a wall with various 'moves'

I also played elastics and skipping and hopscotch with a shoe polish tin

Great thread!

I used to:

Make ‘books’ with cover art, a story with pictures and sleeve notes. I was so proud of them.

Make furniture for my Barbie house (Mum stretched to the house one Christmas but couldn’t afford the fancy furniture sets, so it was matchbox coffee tables and yoghurt pot sofas etc).

Collect rubbers (had a huge collection! My favourite was one in the shape of an ice cream cone that smelled of vanilla)

Slide down the hill we lived in on a milk crate. Me and my sister were always adapting the crate. At one stage we tied it on to a skateboard. Then we tied two crates together to make a double buggy. We had a good few years of crating fun .

I also got weirdly obsessed with vivisection when I was about 10, and spent a lot of time writing angry letters to my MP about how it should be outlawed. Earnest little thing, I was.

I chatted with my 11yo today about this. I told him about car numberplate logging, and he was very quick to point out "that sounds creepy and stalkery. What if a grownup asked what you were doing?"

A valid question, I feel. What WOULD I do if a small, earnest human stood next to my car and made notes in a notebook in this day and age?

I agree! My dd told me it was creepy too.

BikeRunSki and mine! I don't know why elastics seemed to have disappeared as a game! It was great.

Does anyone know of any current-day kids who play elastics?

I love this thread!

I collected dolls in national costume. My GPs started it when they brought me a man and woman couple in Turkish National dress.

I had 21 pen pals at my peak. I was addicted to letting IYS find me friends all over the world.

I wrote stories and got a typewriter one Christmas which was my prized possession.

I created languages. My 14 year old is often found drawing maps and creating languages and I have never told him.