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.

And of course using my mums catalogue to decide what I would wear as an adult and al the furniture I would have.

I also collected postcards that friends and family had sent and would always write postcards from even the most mundane holiday destination.
I spent hours practicing mirror writing.

We just had far less to do, I remember going to someone's house and them having a video recorder and me thinking this was amazing.

@LittleMissLumpy With the idea of collecting number plates being stalkerish… when my brother was a teenager, he was fascinated by traffic lights. There was a very complicated junction of six roads near where we lived, and he spent a lot of time studying it, and making notes. He told me that once somebody approached him to ask what he was doing!

I loved play scripts, especially when we read them at junior school. One of them was Hansel and Gretel. At home, I desperately wanted to have a real cage, so I could be the witch and lock my brother in; shoving him under the table wasn't the same. If I had known about big dog cages, I would have begged and pleaded with my parents for one. I wrote many drafts of the script (I thought the school one wasn't nasty enough), but we never actually acted it out!

Anyone else spend hours perfecting flash fingerwork for Cats Cradle?

I spent hours and hours playing double ball against the wall.

There was a whole sequence of moves, and I had to do them all once, then twice, etc, all the way up to seven. If I dropped a ball I went all the way back to the beginning.

Under
Over
Upsies
Dropsies
Slamsies
Under left leg
Under right leg
Under both legs
Backsies
Basket

@Pinkarsedfly
We played 2 ball, but we also put a ball in tights stand against a wall and bounce the ball and sing that song.

I used to collect the little fluffy things that look like a whole dandelion head. I still don't know what they actually are.

I had a roses lime marmalade jar to put them in. I was about 4 or 5 when I did this and it's one of my earliest memories.

I had a cassette player that used to record and me and my friend from other the road used to record our own radio show.

I also used to lie at the top of the stairs and try to predict when the light would flash on the smoke detector

I used to try and predict an exact minute in seconds on my digital alarm clock. Literally spent hours lying in bed (when unable to sleep) doing this.

Even now I'm pretty good at timing things to the second Must be all that practice!

I used to collect pine cones whilst going on nature walks. I brought them home and would put them on the kitchen table. Then I painted them blue! I also made bookmarks.

Organised my 'pet' ants. They were just ants that lived in the crags at the top of our street and were sprayed and killed every summer. Always thought I was providing them with a little happiness before their imminent death.

Made up secret codes and languages.

Re-write my favourite tv shows, probably more like fanfiction now but before internet.

Spent a good bit of time putting lots of grass down street drains to feed whatever creatures might be stuck down there.

Starting to see why I had no friends...

Was always envious of those who could do a good cats cradle Cathy.
And pine cones Discalculia, I still do that now except I paint them gold and call them a Christmas decoration.

I was obsessed with making up codes.
Who used to do the giant doodle art posters that are in a tube? Loved mine; it was a psychedelic disco theme. I spent months on it.

I used to do those...well I'd start them and then never finish them.

We played 2 ball, but we also put a ball in tights stand against a wall and bounce the ball and sing that song.

Yes! I remember doing that! Also used to put tights on my head and had them hang down like plaits... I wanted to be Laura Ingalls off Little House on the Prairie.

Also I spent many an hour trying to perfect writing with my left hand...thought it would be an interesting skill maybe? Can't remember why!

I would watch the Eurovision Song Contest and copy out all the results.

Also I liked drawing house floor plans and full housing estate plans.

Making a list of cat’s names- not real cats just ones I made up.

Planning a menu for my own pizzeria.

I’ve been reminded of many more now. Eurovision we would score as we went along and I would spend hours pretending I was the host and ‘speaking’ French and English. It was also one of the two occasions we had takeaway (the other being NYE).

I made bookmarks from the piece of card that came in packs of tights.

I went through a phase of trying to perfect my own version of the Bucks Fizz Eurovision dance with a netball skirt. Despite having 2 DB and a DSis, they didn’t want to make up the numbers, so I had to do it solo.

@LokiLocks it sounds noble but please enlighten us on how exactly you "organised" the ants?

@kikisparks are you Bob Mortimer?

I used to set up the dining room as a library and pretend to be a librarian with a pretend stamp and cards. Also sometimes as a post office. I loved 'stamping ' things

All these secret child librarians and interior designers (courtesy of Argos catalgogues).... who knew?

I must have spent hours playing with fuzzy felt as a kid too. My dds had some but it didn't capture their interest much..so much for nostalgic purchases for the unappreciative!

Broken Nails we played the elastic skipping game too. I think we called it Chinese skipping. It was such good fun. If you were really skilful you could criss-cross the elastic, jump up high and land again on the straight bits at the side. Not easy!

I loved the flat cardboard dolls that came with a range of paper clothes, fastened with tabs over the shoulders and at the side, and we used to trace round the shapes and design our own range of clothes for them.

I also collected scraps. Really floral and Victorian in design usually, often kittens in a basket of flowers or similar. You'd put them between the pages of a big hardback book and your friend would try to open it at the correct page and if she found one she won it. You'd take turns at trying to win them from each other.

We used to stick shells onto jam jars to make attractive vases too.