To ask what stuff you did as a kid that now seems weird and/or wildly inappropriate

[CheeseyToast]

For whatever reason, today I was reminded of being three years old and lunching with the street cleaner. He drove a little cart/sweeper thing and would take his break sitting on the grass outside our house. I called him The Jigger Man.

When I spotted him, I'd run inside and say, Mim! The jigger man is here! Can I take my lunch outside?

She'd give me little sandwiches wrapped up in paper and I'd rush out to sit beside him on the grass.

Oh I loved my jigger man picnics.

Was I a complete weirdo or did other kids do stuff like this?

This one's very appropriate, given coming Easter: when I was 7, maybe 8 we were shown a film in the church about Christ's Passion. It was black and white but I still remember the gore and pain. I may have cried. A lot. It was terrifying! Probably would be a 15 cert now. Mel Gibson may have taken inspiration from it for his butchery of a film, for all I know.
(that's Polish Catholicism for you...)

We did contemplate starting to blackmail these men after it proved so easy to lure them into meeting. But, being sensible and straight-laced we decided not to. Our reasoning was that if the police or school ever got involved, up to that point we could easily play the innocent/naive children but once we started asking for cash, we'd basically become hardened criminals

Keeshy not the same, but you have reminded me in my mid teens, when I stayed at a friends house, and we would ring the public phone boxes in the centre of town on a Friday/Saturday night. We'd chat to ramdom drunk blokes who answered.

My friend actually met up with one, after chatting and swapping numbers! I believe she's still friends with him now, nothing ever went on between them, he's only a couple older then us.

Don’t shout if it has been mentioned but does anyone remember the film about building sites? I was in an English primary in the 80s and it was bloody scary. So was the railway one.

TreesAgreen That sounds fun. I can't believe your friend is still friends with one of these random phone-box dudes. That's like the storyline of an amazing British feel-good film

Being allowed to buy and drink Top Deck Shandy, and Lager and Lime, as well as Bass Shandy as it had a low alcohol content. And my 9 year old brother being allowed to buy cigars for our Dad for Christmas!

Having a climbing frame set into a block of concrete! 😂

The Top Deck thing I remember from about aged 5...

The local farmer was also our milkman. The farmer had an old horse which knew every house to stop at and would just do the streets nearest the farm. The farmer would walk alongside it and deliver the milk. The farmers son had an open pick up truck and he would do our estate. He would let all the kids sit on the back and he would whizz us round the estate in a Sat morning. I am only 44 but this seems like another age.

When I was 10 years old, my best friend and I set up two "companies", one dog-walking, and the other car cleaning. We knocked on doors in our neighbourhood - there were hundreds of houses and we didn't know the inhabitants. This was in 1990 and nobody thought it odd.

I use to go to the cafe in BHS with my Mum some weekends and would be allowed to eat a few packs of the sugar cubes that were on the table.....I'm surprised I still have my own teeth!!!

My sister and I used to open the front door, then go down the stairs on a blown-up lilo and shoot out of the front door into the street.

How we didn't break our legs I'll never know.

I have noticed that things changed very quickly - I'm 38 this year and have lots of friends in their early thirties who didn't have the kind of free childhood that I did

Car washing. We'd knock on strangers doors and ask if they wanted their car washed. We did make some money doing that!

Carol singing. Does anyone do that now where they randomly knock on doors and sing a carol and get money?

Going to the beach all day with just siblings where the eldest was only around 11/12 years old. We all played in the sea, sometimes with giant crashing waves and we used to swim out of depth holding on to a lilo too No parents in sight because they were at work! This was only the 90s too!

Fwend, my DC used to toboggan downstairs in a Bilibo (if anyone remembers those). They thought I didn't know. They were all born in the early 2000s.

In fact, there ought probably to be a thread on 'things that we dare not admit we let our DC do now'...

A housing estate was being built at the rear of our cul de sac. When the workmen/builders went home we used to go and play in the empty houses. Sometimes we used to go and play cards with the nightwatch man in his hut!!! I don’t think our parents knew!. In the school holidays we would go out to play at 9.00 am return for lunch and be back out again until tea time. This was the 70s. We never felt afraid! My dd has never known that freedom.

I don't remember a film about building sites,too old for that,but I do remember playing on the one opposite our house.Every evening in the summer we all congregated and had a wild time leaping off walls and jumping down into the foundations.Apart from the odd splinter I don't remember any injuries.Barmy when you think about it,but we were fit as fleas from all that playing out.

We had a book when I was about 6/7 which was about avoiding accidents at home and had graphic pictures of children who had fallen down stairs, or who'd smashed their bikes through french windows (lots of blood and smashed glass) or falling from the top of a really high metal slide. I still shudder when I think of those pictures, but we were honestly read it as a bedtime story! It was one of those books you hated but couldn't help looking at.

Playing on building sites.
Knocking on total strangers' doors and asking if we could take their dog for a walk. Amazingly,most of them let us!
Nicking ' 3 pence deposit back' coke bottles from the backyard of the sweet shop then taking them in the shop and claiming the 3 pence deposit back 5 times over
Cycling for 5 miles to friend's house at the age of 8.
Wedging a lump of putty in the door lock of the local Jehovah's Witness Kingdom Hall,then watching from a nearby roof terrace, pissing ourselves laughing as they tried,in vain,to get in.
This was all in the early to mid 1970s.

Fwend Your lilo story story made me laugh out loud!

Just remembered the walk to my primary school. It must have been about a mile and a half away,and involved crossing 2 pretty busy roads (one usually had a policeman on crossing duty,if a policeman wasn't available,our headmaster would do it!),a long walk through an alley way with dense woodland on one side and farmland on the other,crossing a bridge over a stream with next-to-useless rails on,then through several more shorter alley ways. I was allowed to do this journey without my mum or dad from the age of 8 (although I was always with several friends).

nightcapers I think you and I must have been in the same class! I remember going on a school trip to France in the mid 70s and the coach driver taking a shine to one of us 11 year old girls! It all seemed so innocent at the time but looking back now,I'm . Did your primary school name begin with 'H' by any chance?

Not me but a slightly older relation used to knock on the doors of neighbours with babies and ask to take the baby out for a walk. This would have been around 1965 -1970 when my relation would have been aged 11 to 15ish. Apparently it was perfectly normal. Her and her mates would all descend on the local rec with their borrowed babies in tow and spend a happy afternoon cuddling them and feeding them and changing them whilst the grateful mums caught up on housework or sleep.

When I was little, I remember my older sister & brother use to dial (using the old dial phones) a random phone number & when the person answered they got me to say something silly like 'poo poo' & hang up!

When I was about 9 we moved onto a new housing estate. They were still building houses around us. We'd play on site in the school holidays, weekends, only scarpering when we saw the gaffa shouting, I remember going into the empty bricked houses, playing on site! 😳

If we'd been naughty, we were sent to bed early. But we used to wait a while, climb out of the bathroom window, onto the car porch, jump down onto the garden & onto our bikes to the sweet shop to get a bag of sweet or a bag scraps from the chippy!