To ask you to remember a time when Health and Safety hadn't been invented (lighthearted)!

[CulturePigeon]

My work has always involved careful risk assessments for children doing a range of activities and of course, I've had my own children to bring up so I would like to emphasise that I'm not in favour of turning the clock back to a more reckless era!

But I'm horrified when I think of the things which I experienced as a child and the reaction they would get now. One example: I went to a schoolfriend's party (age 11) and her dad got 11 of us into the car by putting 3 girls, curled up in the foetal position, in the boot (not a hatchback boot - a big saloon where the boot was totally out of sight and sound contact with the rest of the car), 6 into the back seat, sitting on each other's knees, and 2 in the front seat. This was all long before seat belts were either compulsory or even commonly used. He then proceeded to drive at a good lick along some very hilly roads until we got to a local forest. I remember we were all helpless with laughter.

I think I knew this was not a good idea - and that my parents wouldn't have done it - but at the same time, I was happy to join in and didn't really question it. It makes me go weak at the knees now!

Any other horrific memories of hair-raising activities in those far-off days before H & S?

At my primary school we had a collection for the harvest festival each year which was then divided up into food parcels. Each one was allocated to an elderly person who had been nominated by pupils’ parents at some point - often years previously. They were usually just random old people from someone’s street. The 4th years, aged 10, were then sent off from school in pairs that afternoon to deliver them by hand. We were just given an address in our home town which we had to find (it might be a 40-minute walk away). We were also encouraged to go in for a chat if the recipient wanted company. My friend and I spent a good hour drinking tea and chatting with some old man we’d never met in a part of town we’d never been to before. He had a little Jack Russell to whom I fed some biscuits.

He was perfectly nice and not any kind of danger but he was a total stranger. Wondering how Mumsnet, where people call 101 if a man walks past a playground, would cope with that one.

I remember playing on a high haystack at my friend's farm

We used to play a game where we used to jump down off the bales. At the end of each round another bale would be added until we got too scared to jump. Imagine today

Oh and at my infant school, so kids aged 5 to 7, one of the play activities we could do was woodwork. Real saws, real hammers, real nails etc. We did our woodwork unsupervised, in a little courtyard. Just loads of five year olds waving massive saws about and accidentally whacking their thumbs with hammers. Amazing.

Crossing the road to go to the shops alone age 3.
Walking to school alone age 4.
Regularly going off with friends to play a mile away in the fields by the river all day, unsupervised, and swinging across the river on a rope tied to a tree trunk, age 7.
Being alone at home all day during school holidays while parents were at work, from age 10, and cooking my own dinner on the gas cooker.
Being left home alone for three days and nights, age 13, while parents went to a funeral 300 miles away.
I think we were just expected to get on with things much younger in the 1950s/60s. My parents had been raised in slums and fought in WW2, so weren’t likely to mollycoddle their offspring. Plus they were violent and abusive, so I was glad to avoid them as much as possible!

I'm 30 and when I was 12 I attended a summer holiday club. The leaders of the club set up a game where we all lined up waiting for our turn to get on all fours and fish an M&M out of a bowl of condensed milk with our tongues. A bit like bobbing for apples. Must have been about 30 of us all fishing out of the same bowl.

It was a response to the USA imported potential for Law Suits that basically turns a one off tragedy into a potential boot filler.

We lived in a large Victorian conversion-there were several bedsits with the middle section having communal kitchen and bathroom. As you can imagine this attracted transient/“weird” sort of inhabitants but my brother and I used to invite ourselves in and just hang out. Sometimes the bed sits were unlocked and we would go in and snoop about and sometimes the occupants were there and again we would just hand about. He would’ve been primary age, I was prob no more than 12🙈

Some of these are great. I particularly like the 13-year-old estate agent.

I used to test the electric fences for the farmer next door by putting my fingers on them to get the snap. I can still feel it in my fingers today

Also lol at secondary you had to bring in home made “gift packages” to sell at the summer fair. Inevitably there was a lot of booze. My friends and I snuck into the holding area and drank loads of the booze but no one ever found out. We were about 16😂😂

We did this too.

1970's: 3 day week and power-cuts. I had a part-time job in a shoe shop. We still worked when the power was off (boss wanted to make every penny he could) but we did it by candle light. Difficult enough to show someone the shoes they were trying on, but massively dangerous being in the stock room full of cardboard boxes and tisue paper and naked flames

Our 2 adults, 5 kids and 2 large dogs, 7 hour drive to our annual holiday to grandparents in Argyll, Scotland was in an estate car with me, dbro and dogs in the boot and the luggage in every space possible.

When we got there we spent a week with the local kids playing with the cows in the fields, climbing trees and making rope swings, out in a rowing boat in the kyles of bute (non swimmers with no lifejackets), playing at the bottom of the ferry ramp, stowing away on the ferry, building camp fires, playing with air rifles, climbing cliffs, riding up and down the main road with blind bends in a sinclair c5 (obviously no helmet either), all with no adult supervision (unless you count the mid 20s lad with downs syndrome who joined in with us). Our parents didnt know half of what we got up to.

Loved those holidays, but surprised we all survived 🤣

Being allowed to use bunson burners in primary along with electric saws of various sizes

My brother, an electrician, would push the bare wires into the socket if he couldn't find a plug, a screw driver would open the top gate!
We once took the children through the Blackpool illuminations sitting on the open tail gate, it was a snail's pace, they had time to jump off and go to McDs for a burger and run to catch us up!

In my uncle’s rust bucket van aged about 6 and going around the corner the door flew open, dodgy lock, him grabbing me by the anorak before I fell out (pre seatbelts), 1960’s. Playing dodge the waves on the rocks in the middle of winter, running across in front of the outdoor rock pool while 15’ waves crashed in. Playing in the disused quarry and jumping around the edge of it at the waters edge, my friend’s man sewing up the rip in my new anorak from climbing through the barbed wire fence to get in and keeping the conspirator secret for me. The only rules were be home for meals and after tea and homework be home by 9pm. I loved the freedom.

Grew up in a village in Lincolnshire. Entertainment was things like diving off haystacks into a stream and filching wine from our parents to hole up in a spare stable and drink. DM was a working single parent so my sister and I were on our own on Saturdays and school holidays from when we were 9/10ish. As young teenagers we’d frequently ride a few villages away with friends, turn out our horses in someone’s field and spend the night in the house of a friend whose parents were abroad, a mixed gender bunch of of 14 year olds with zero supervision.

Looking back, it was a brilliant way to grow up. Didn’t lead to us being terribly streetwise when we went to university though.

I grew up on a relatively new build housing estate (about 10 years old at the time) and can distinctly remember me and my friends playing unsupervised on the building site when they were extending the estate. It must not have been fenced off or anything and just left open for anyone to walk on in. It’s nuts when I think back!

No child locks in the 70s. Aged 3 I decided to open the passenger door and leap.out onto the road. Fortunately my dad was taking a corner so going pretty slow. My mum nearly killed him. 😂

80s. Would roam for hours in the pennines and along the canal. Climb the pylons in the fields behind our houses. Ride our bikes over the slag heaps. Roll down the hill and hope not to land in the stream at the bottom (sledges in winter).
Stand up on the back seat of the car with our heads and shoulders sticking our of the sunroof. Playing tennis in the middle of the road.
I'm sure there's more. We had fun. It was definitely a freer time

When we went to pick up our Christmas tree, we would put the back seats down to fit the tree in. And then me and my sister would sit in the boot either side of the Christmas tree, facing backwards. Obviously not strapped in but it was quite a tight fit around the Christmas tree! Now, me and DH take 2 cars so I can take the kids carefully strapped into their extended rear facing seats and DH puts the seats down to transport the tree

Oh and there's a photo of me at about 12 months old sat on a horse. A full size horse!

I travelled back from an Early Learning Centre sat on the sandpit my parents had just bought for me. They put the back seats down in the MG Metro (red seatbelts!) and I just sat on the back. This was the late 80s. I also know that when I was a newborn I went in the car in a travel cot on the backseat. Mum said they were just slower on the corners.

I also used to play on the building site on the new build estate where we lived.

We lived in the East Midlands and would drive down to Devon for family holidays overnight with the back seats down in the family estate car, and my parents would make a kind of nest in the back with pillows and sleeping bags for my brothers and me to sleep in. I remember being woken up at random service stations and going inside to use the loos, half asleep in our pyjamas. I remember it as a lovely, cosy adventure rather than a potential death trap.

The school minibus had those wooden bench seats and no seatbelts, so if the driver braked suddenly we’d all slide down and squash the person at the end.

I loved the 1980s, I remember getting about 12 brownies in a car to go to swimming, about 6 on the back seat, 5 in the hatchback book, one in the front seat passenger footwell. My mum now age 70 often remarks when looking at old pics that’s it’s a miracle we’re not dead

When we were 1st year Secondary (now year 7) We made pure alcohol in science by heating whiskey with a Bussen burner in a flask so it went up a tube and then
distilled into pure alcohol. The teacher then passed round the beaker of pure alcohol and we all had to dip a finger in and have a taste!! I loved the 80s

I remember being on a pgl type camp at age 8, kayaking and an older child tried to drown me by capsizing me. Struggled to get out. Could have drowned. No adults about and got told off when I tried to tell!