The estate I grew up on (council estate not a private country estate manor), it was all concrete paths, walkways, garages, greens dotted about with no ball game signs which we ignored, and the adults let us ignore them, noise from us kids would echo around the place as we played in big groups from morning until the street lamps come on. We were sometimes noisy, sometimes not, adults sometimes would move us on to another part of the estate, tell us to shut the hell up or sometimes just leave us to it. Sometimes they would piss themselves laughing at us, sometimes tell us off. Sometimes the adults would argue with each other and we would stare like dogs looking at a cooked chicken then burst out laughing when they all walked off and slammed their doors!
we would get up to mischief with stuff we found, old shopping trolleys or junk, we would roam around on our bikes, skate boards or roller skates, we were kids, that was life. If one of us got hurt, whichever mother was at home in the flat or house nearest would rush out and scoop us up or we would get given squash by someone else’s mum, the whole feral group of us, if we asked randomly.
Ok so sounds a bit like a council estate Enid Blyton novel, but it’s actually how it was. Obviously as is life, it wasn’t all roses, but I think we are getting more intolerant in some ways as a society, I hope childhoods like this still exist (without all the indoor smoking and no seatbelts in the back of cars with hot plastic seats and full ashtrays 😂), but I doubt it reading Mumsnet!