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.

Postcards, scented rubbers here as well! Laughing at the pig collection requiring special shelving and that 2 people made notes on estate agent’s adverts and then typed them up at home.

This is also why we spent long stretches of time feeling bored as kids. When the choice was getting the flower press out or staring aimlessly out the window, the window option was often most appealing.

Sorry that was naming snails and painting their name on their shells!

I had a chart in my wall of all the postcodes I’d been to. Driving through counter, as long as I’d seen the postcode on a road sign.

Oh the scented rubber collection!

Collected the tips off coloured pencils when they broke in a container. Used to press extra hard sometimes on my pencils in the hope they'd snap!

Forgotten, I did some of these,had the scented rubber collection ,made perfume from flowers,did flower pressing,I do remember drying out seeds and making necklaces.

Leaf pressing
Making ‘potions’ from garden plants
Collecting rubbers
Snail races

'Sculpting' soap into different animal shapes.

Our neighbours used to let me collect off-cuts of wood from their garage floor that I turned into little dolls.

I also liked to collect snails in an old box and try and encourage them to make baby snails . I used to play my mum's romantic music cassette tape and leave them alone together for a while!! They always escaped .

Sex music for snails

Wrapping mugs and other kitchen utensils in cling film.
Wearing a polo neck jumper swept back from my head to pretend to be a nun.
(Not at the same time.)

Sux2buthen I used to narrate my life too, with lots of added exciting extras. I had the soundtrack in my mind.

I also recorded my own radio show on my cassette player. With music, call ins, dedications, travel updates, the lot. Hours and hours of it. Broadcast to no one. My sister found some of those tapes a few years ago. They were hilarious. I had a very active imagination.

I published a weekly newspaper (I.e a sheet of a4 paper) it had a readership of 1!

I used to fill in all the coupons in my nanas copy of The Peooles Friends and pretend I was a secretary. I would cut them out and keep them in a box for later reference!

I used to do all sorts of crafty bits and bobs. Tatting, macrame (I used to tie the string on the back of my bedroom chair) and weaving little scraps of cloth using improvised cardboard looms. And I had a flower loom type kit as well, but that was a bit of a one trick pony.

I could never figure out what to make with them though, so my room was always full of these little random scraps of lace and woollen flowers.

I also used to make 'mixtures' of shampoo and whatever else was lying around the bathroom and kitchen. And here's a rubbish one - I used to melt the waxy coverings from Edam cheese against the radiators and make mini sculptures out of it.

I collected novelty erasers. Had them all in a Quality Street tin and I would get them out daily and stare at the lovingly...

I used to love making people dollies out of toilet roll cardboard tubes . Was always really excited to get a toilet roll tube.

One of most memorable highlights was when seatbelts become mandatory. For two weeks before I stood on our street corner and mad a graph of how many drivers were wearing seatbelts (by memory hardly any). Then I did the same following introduction. Again I think the number only marginally increased. I made a homemade bulletin board on the results and sent a copy to John craven thinking he would use it. He didn't.

This thread is bringing back so many memories! Yes to the perfume making, the felt pictures, painting by numbers, postcard and stamp collecting (does anyone still do that? Actually there is a philately shop in my town so I guess so).

My obsession though was watching films by the actor James Mason (this is totally outing for anyone that knows me). Of course, there was no internet so I just had to wait for them to be shown on tv and scour the tv guides in case I missed them. At a certain point, the whole project stalled so I wrote to BBC, ITV etc and asked them to put on more James Mason films! I still have the letters they sent back somewhere - very polite but basically telling me they were going to show what they wanted! I also spent a lot of time researching said films as well as other things in the libraries in our town. There was something very satisfying pre-internet days about researching a topic you were interested in. It took a long time for me to order inter-library loans, compile lists etc - now the same information is available immediately which is great but also sort of a pity. I loved the anticipation of it all.

I also made typed lists of my classmates and then moved on to making lists of characters for my books. One in particular was Clara van Hool. I never wrote books, just thought up the characters and their back stories.
Funny thing is, I’ve never mentioned this to my kids but my eldest (who is so similar to me) was making lists of his classmates in Kindy and now writes long lists of his “songs” that he and his “band” will play. No songs or indeed band members are so far forthcoming.

Both of my children adore collecting the paint cards from the hardware store. Even they can’t really explain why.

I also loved a good research project! Ladybirds, types of trees, different ballets, types of horses, I always had something on the go.
I don’t consider that odd at all though

We had a small garden that was entirely paved but on different levels. There was a small outhouse where the previous owners had left a load of bamboo canes and old plastic flower pots of different sizes. I used to make a different showjumping and cross country courses. The show jumping courses were just on the main flat part of the garden, the cross country included the tiered bits. I would spend hours being different riders and horses competing against each other and even included jump offs. I took it very seriously with refusals, run outs, knocking down fences. I was desperate to learn to ride. It was the 1970s and showjumping was huge then, used to be on BBC1.

I used to design houses with grass cuttings, the floor plan

i used to dig for treasure, collecting broken china

Mine started on a holiday abroad and continued at home... collecting sugar packets from cafes and sticking them in an album...

@managedmis - I still have my "Vimto book of knowledge" upstairs somewhere!
It was a shock to me when I moved down south in the late 80s and you couldn't buy Vimto here. I had to import it from up North!

My friend's brother used to collect bus numbers but they didn't live on the bus route. I did, so I used to collect the numbers for him