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 pencils

I was, however, a member of the Vimto club, so there!

Oooh! I also have quite a significant (hideously huge) fridge magnet collection that is still very active now I'm in my 40's... I feel I really need to take up unicycle riding or fire breathing to balance it out now.

I had a collection of plastic horses from Woolies. This would have been late '60's, early '70's, there were about a dozen different coloured horses, each colour was available either as a running or a standing model, and I wanted all of them. I made up stories with them, saved pocket money and birthday money to buy them, over months and months.

I'm now having a lovely sentimental moment recalling my paternal grandfather on an annual visit (they lived far away) when I was four or five models short, and he gave me enough money to buy them all. "Don't tell granny "

My brother & I.used to sit for hours with my Mums Great Universal winter catalogue. Wed go through all the toy pages and pick one thing each and write it down then compare notes - fascinating stuff 🙄

Our other equally exciting game was getting all his matchbox cars and putting them in a (colour coded) line across his bedroom floor. We then took it turns in picking cars. When the whole row was divided up that was it - game over and we put them away

We lived on the edge...

Sorry they went hobbies - just pointless games

Wow I did lots of these too - young ornithologist, fuzzy felts, wild flower perfume that went mouldy ...

I give you I-spy books for when you were on a long car journey or on holiday.

Rug making - very trendy in the 70s to buy a make-your-own rug kit. We had them everywhere and they had a particular smell.

I also collected badges.

This thread is really cheering me up, thank you!

Whenever we were out and about locally, my brother and I would select houses or buildings that would become ‘ours’. Between us we ‘owned’ half the village and would occasionally trade with each other. No idea what the point was.

Pretended I was a doctor and my bedroom was my clinic. Would put a very firm sign on my door stating that I was NOT TO BE DISTURBED and would sit at my ‘desk’ in an old pair of sunglasses minus the lenses shuffling paper.

Read an article (maybe in Girl Talk magazine?) that suggested ‘finger drying’ your hair. I took this to mean rubbing your wet hair with your fingers until it was dry. Spent a very long Sunday doing this whilst my dad and bro watched Grandstand. My arms really ached and my hair was still wet.

@DrMadelineMaxwell I did this! Actually I was only thinking about it the other day. I used to love watching Junior Police 5 and sometimes they'd give out registration details in order to find a car that had been stolen or used in a robbery. I always checked my notebook in case I had seen these cars in my local area.

@PrimetaVez The image of you "finger drying" your hair just made me laugh out loud (but very quietly so I don't wake DP).

Loving this thread.

That should have been @PrimeraVez

Grilling monster munch packets to shrink them into 'brooches'

Melting 7" vinyll to fashion an 'ash tray'

@ChandlerIsTheBestFriend i also collected pig ornaments! think they were made by a company called leonardo? my mum used to win them from bingo and each week on a sunday night me and my sister would sit up waiting to see which one we’d get that week! she also used to win pokemon teddies from the grabbing machines there, but they were for my brother.

I was a member of the Dennis the Menace fan club and had a vast collection of Beano and Dandy annuals.
I passed the collection on to my eldest son who at 17, STILL gets the annual for Christmas 😂

I used to narrate my life. And if I went to the bathroom there would be a musical interlude on a keyboard.
Weird thing to do, I'm just realising this lol

I used to walk around the landing and bedrooms holding a big mirror and looking down into so it looked as though I was walking on the ceiling and i had to step over the entrances to doors. Not at all odd.

I had a notebook that I carried around, which I completely filled with the names of the horses I would own when I was older. Literally hundreds of them.

Macrame. I learned from some 70s craft books. I also used to get a cardboard box and race snails when it rained.

i had a little notebook too that i filled with baby names from a book that i borrowed from the library. i think i was about nine 😂 i now have four kids and i’ve never used any of the names i’d written down.

Making perfume from petals
Smelly rubbers
Spirograph circles

Spirograph doesn't count as a crap hobby! They were brilliant.

I may have spent rather too long on ebay in the past, wishing I hadn't given my childhood one away and looking for the same version (a replacement in a different box just wouldn't be the same).

Not a hobby as such but I had one of these - chic-a-boo. I used to take it around the garden pretending it was a real little animal clipping it on to trees etc - hours of fun!

Postcard collecting. I won 1st prize at my school's hobby competition when I was 7. God knows how dull the other kids were.

Sux2buthen
You win! That's hilarious. Am having to go off this thread fir a bit now as have really got the giggles (for first time in weeks) my dh wont be impressed if I wake him up!

I used to collect stamps and was really into knitting. Not cool when you're 11