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 have been crying with laughter reading these... I did quite a few of the things mentioned upthread. I also remember trying to make dolls furniture out of conkers and cocktail sticks putting little pearly stickers on my earlobe so people would think I had pierced ears as my mum wouldn't let me have mine done, cutting my barbie dolls' hair when I fancied myself as a bit of a hairdresser and following all sorts of dodgy tips for homemade face and hair treatments from teen magazines when I was a pre-teen 🤣

I would make endless pom poms and then stick them together to make things like chicks or owls. Felt beaks and eyes.

I’d also play libraries on the stairs. Set out all the books like they were on shelves. My dad brought home a date stamp and an ink pad once and then I’d stamp the books with a return date for the soft toys to borrow and take home.

When the whole row was divided up that was it - game over and we put them away

Love this!

I think a lot of these are great!

My sister collected scented rubbers too.

Flower pressing
Tree recognition
Collecting snails and snail races
Hiding from my abuser this turned into a hobby of some sort

Oh and I forgot one, my mum was a merchandiser in the 80s, so she worked for a confectionary company and used to go into supermarkets and put her products on their shelves and price them. (This seems like a really odd way of doing things these days)

So the back of the car was always full of her merchandising guns, which had rolls of the blank price stickers and you could twiddle the price bit to set the price and then pull the trigger and out came your price sticker with the price printed on it. I borrowed one and used to price everything in the house. (The dog was £99.99 - the highest price I could do. My sister was £0.01p which I sneaked onto her bum without her noticing)

My mum quickly got annoyed at everything in the house being covered in price tags.

Oh gosh I did so many of these.
Smelly rubbers
Teddies going on holiday on the stairs
Flower fairies
Learning about aeroplanes - I loved reading Biggles
Perfume
Hurdles in the garden
Bike jumps in the garden
Building houses (i.e. Lines of grass) with dried up grass cuttings from the field behind our house
But the best one is opening up a daddy long legs hospital with my cousin. We phoned a 'chat line' to find out what they ate.......

Furry stickers which I collected in an album and swapped with my friends.

Until school banned them.

I used to play schools with my teddies but I got REALLY involved with it- designed a curriculum, taught all the lessons, wrote detailed report cards for each of them

I also used to make Pom poms and walk them on leads like they were pets??

I used to collecting slightly broken bricks from piles of rubble when I was 4-6, I thought my mother was doing it for fun so I often joined in. It didn’t dawn on me until I was quite a bit older that it was her job.

This thread has given me proper belly laughs. Thanks OP!

The story about the felt tip characters brought tears to my eyes (of hilarity in case not clear).

I thought I couldn’t disclose one of my oddest hobbies but @MilesJuppIsMyBitch has done it for me:

Also, my brother and I would roller-skate out the front with two broomsticks. The one at the front held the broomsticks under their armpits, and the one at the back held on. Train!

I would tear pages out of lined notebooks and age them up by rubbing them on the pavement then cutting the edges in an irregular pattern to look like ancient parchment (in my opinion). Then I would write on them, in biro naturally, in my best ‘copperplate’ script, something like, “here be ye treasure in ye garage”. I’d leave the bit of paper on the pavement weighed down by half a brick for passers by to find. Oddly enough not many were fooled that it was from the 18th century. We lived on an estate built in 1970.

I’d get the plastic trays out of boxes of chocolates (the technical term I now know is ‘VFTs’), turn them upside down and type on them like a typewriter. Taking dictation from my grandma whilst she was trying to watch Harry Secombe on ‘Highway’.

I used to go around the house and collect things that had a barcode on, then I would use the red light from the bottom of my Dad's computer mouse and pretend it was a scanner and spend hours scanning the items. Even now I love going on the self-serve checkouts at the supermarket, I know childhood me would have been so excited to use self-serve checkouts.

I would also pretend to be a teacher by writing on mirrors with whiteboard pens (didn't have a whiteboard). One day my grandad found an old projector in his loft (the ones they had in primary schools assemblies for the hymns) and he let me have it and I had so much fun pretending to be a teacher.

Just remembered another one. You know the thin card inserts you get from posh brand packs of tights? I used to use those for all sorts. They were thin enough to cut easily with standard scissors but stiff enough to hold their shape, so I made craft templates out of them, stencils, fill-ins for junk modelling, and in a time when art supplies were expensive and not that easy to find, I used to paint watercolour pictures on them because they didn't buckle up when wet.

Arthur, as someone who is just getting into art, that seems very wise!

I ran a motorway service station from a room in our attic, complete with meals on plates (old vegetables and porridge) which my mother found many months later, growing mould and stinking.

I think she thought there was a dead body up there.

I also ran a sanatorium for boarding-school boys, complete with record cards about their ailments. I was the school Matron.

And MadelineMaxwell I also wrote down car number plates randomly. I mean, how pointless?

Nowadays I write and read blogs. www.the-robbing-butcher.co.uk

I spent many anxious months working out how the Magic Robot worked.

I was so excited when I figured it out.

I used to set myself quadratic equations

I also collected Waves Whimsies.....still have them.
Also used to make my own catalogues....found one recently😅😅😅
And collected tonnes of Royal Family books and memorabilia......wonder is it worth anything????

We can long ‘craft’ afternoons at the village primary. You were basically left to your own devices with some sewing stuff and art materials. For some reason I used scrap material to make a series of soft toy vegetables with funny expressions. Cucumber out of dark green corduroy, red felt tomato etc.

Then they brought in the National curriculum an all the fun stopped.

Throwing stones at other children was a bit crap.

I memorised all the names of the actors in neighbours....... I have no idea why!!

I collected rubbers, soaps and stickers. I don’t know what happened to the soaps and stickers but I still have the rubbers in an old carrier bag, although some of them have developed a weird sticky texture.

I used to have “archeological digs” at the bottom of the garden. I lived in a very old house and often used to dig up bits of pottery and clay pipe, although I also did the same in my grandparents new build garden to less effect.

In my early teens I was taken to see a production of Under Milkwood and became slightly obsessed with it. I bought a copy of the play and when I was home alone I’d read it out loud in a terrible attempt at a welsh accent.