Tell me about your summers as a child

[FrangipaniDeLaSqueegeeMop]

Inspired a bit by another thread where people are getting nostalgia for simpler times.

My summers were:

Me and my 3 siblings getting booted out at 8.30am as mum and stepdad went to work, with one backpack between us (we used to fight over who'd carry it) containing 4 packed lunches, plasters, sun cream and a house key ONLY to be used if we needed the loo and not for going back in to watch TV (not that we ever wanted to). We lived near Nidd Gorge in Yorkshire and would head into the woods and spend all day there. Exploring, digging, playing Pooh sticks, climbing trees, walking miles and miles together (often from Ripon to Starbeck in a day) making up games until it was time to go home for tea. On rainy days (doesn't it always seem like there were never any as a child) we'd either do the same or head to a friends house (preferably one whose SAHM mum would cook a hot meal ). I couldn't imagine letting my kids do that now, but we always felt safe and those summers were the best time of my life.

They seemed endless!

Lots of playing and fun, going to the park, seeing friends. Going on holiday - Devon, Cornwall etc, always seaside.

No school was marvellous.

My childhood summers.
In the 1970's
Were long.
Always hot and sunny.
We'd go for a week to the same hotel we always went to every year in Wales.
And somewhere in Spain for 10/11 days (no idea why we never went for the full 14)
Always with a 1 year paper family passport that my dad got from the Post Office. He would never get a proper blue 10 year passport because that would be showing off. And never ever anywhere but Spain because that would also be showing off.
The rest of the summer we spent playing in the garden building dens or playing on our bikes.

Riding my Pony.
Riding my bicycle.
Butterflies, Ladybirds, dragonflies, bees and wasps.
Crawling through tunnels that the boys had made from building a 3D maze from straw and hay bales.
Ice cream that came in a block.
Skipping ropes.
Playing Jacks.
Making daisy chains and holding a buttercup under a friends chin to see if they liked butter!
He loves me he loves me not - plucking petals from a daisy.
Looking for a four leaf clover.
Scrumping.
Playing out all day and coming home at tea time.
Jumpers for goalposts.
Building a den in a tree.
Skimming stones in the sea or in a pond or lake.
Catching slow worms, lizards and newts. Watching tadpoles emerge from frogspawn.
Gymkhana’s.
Garden fetes.
Skipping not running but skipping through meadows and along the roads.
Handstands and cartwheels.

So much time in front of the television. And TV was shite in the 80s, I remember being so bored I'd watch old films like Ben Hur.

Endlessly boring

My Mum worked term-time only jobs so was at home with us during the summer. We spent a lot of days just playing in the garden or with local kids. It was also the time where we'd get dragged along for the weekly shop, which weirdly felt like a huge treat!

My Mum would arrange playdates with her friends and their kids, so we always saw a really weird mix of people in the summer- not at all who we would normally hang out with- a mix of genders, ages etc but could be quite fun. There were some families we enjoyed visiting more than others!

When we were young holidays were visiting Grandparents (handily all near the sea!) so that broke it up a bit,

They always seemed so long and always sunny!

Woods, ponds, tennis, skating, pogo sticks (in the 80s and I used my Dads from the 1950s! It was indestructible), bikes, badminton, spent a lot of time just looking at the blue sky with wisps from airplanes, acid drops, Mr Freezes, strawberry picking.

When the new mall and theatre opened, the bus into town and looking round C&A, Pilot and so on.

In and out of friends houses.

Holidays away were caravans and seaside hotels with lots of walks and time at the beach.

Water fights, riding bikes, ice lollies from the ice cream man, long walks down the canal towpath to the park and petting zoo, finding fasciated dandelions on the field, playing on the tennis court, playing on the old railway embankment and riding bikes down the hill, visiting my friends nan who would give us huge bowls of vegetable soup, pavement chalks, ball games, feeding the ducks, staying out all day till it got dark 😁