Back in the day....
There's a lot of nostalgia in the media about playing on the streets,
of entertainment that isn't centred around TV, Videogames, Music, or Computers,
but I think it's just a bit last generation head-up-arse.
Or wanting to shake their heads at the current generation,
or indulge in their own nostalgia pretending things were better in their day.
Three examples.
1) Reality TV show It was Good Enough For Me, where parents give their children an experience of how they were raised - the father in today's episode reminisced on the freedom they had playing in the streets, and the ability to have fun without money, finding sticks and turning them into bow and arrows or such like.
2) My Mum claimed a child she knows, didn't know what a "hobby" was, and had never heard the word before.
3) Lucy Looks Back - on Channel 4 now, her Grandpa teaches her how to have fun with a simple piece of string, or a rope. He reminisces on how it was a challenge to use it to swing around a lamp post. He claimed you could cuff your feet, or bruise your knees.
Well,...!
When I was a lad, I slammed straight into the centre pole, when swinging round it at podgy's playpark, and knocked myself unconscious. [My Sister was pissing herself, as she wanted to get our parents, but didn't, as podgy's playpark was further than we were allowed to play, and she didn't want to get in trouble...I came round eventually, with my sister and ann peering over me...]
But seriously, I may be a geek who, stays indoors, likes videogames...but we used to out and make dens. We had some woodland near by, and we'd go out, and crawl into it, and make it our world.
I remember there were some gangs taking over different parts of the forest, and I explored it with Chris, I think Chris was into taking his pen knife, and chipping at bits of wood, to make wooden weapons to fight the gangs...[ we never thought of using the pen knifes themselves as weapons...shows how civil it all was ]. Whereas I used to just find a quiet spot, and drift off into a dream world. Ohh...we used to see some well weird insects, like a yellow and black striped catapillar.
I used to find my little tranquil spot and just chill out there, whilst Chris went off on his territorial disputes. The reason I remember this, is because one time Chris got really worried, and called my sister out, and they spent ages looking for me, but I was just chilled out quietly in my little peace hole....but Chris had gone to my house, and told my parents a gang had got me...=P....to me it was just one big game of hide and seek, since I didn't like violence, and kept my head low when I heard voices. When I finally realised it was my sister and Chris looking for me, it was like- it was like - oh - why the big deal? Of course I wasn't captured by a gang. Tsk.
I remember there were a bunch of Wickes catalogues thrown in one part of the bushes, and Chris told me that area was a tramp's home. For ages, I thought tramps regularly collected or delivered Wickes catalogues. =P
So my point is, yeah, we have computers, and videogames. But we still used to go out and play.
I used to love exploring the neighbourhood on my bicycle too.
But don't mention Peter Goodfellow please...the bike rides he took me on were exhausting, so I pretended to love Monopoly the board game, just so we'd spend all our time indoors on marathon monopoly sessions and not have to go coursing through building sites, or stinging nettles, or whatever crazy jaunts he had planned next. Haha...I remember we started going swimming, I might have thought that would be safer, but he started a fight in the changing rooms with some gypsie kids who had some weird bodyguard with them. Peter said something to piss them off, and they made a threatening advance, and before you knew it, this massive geezer escorting them, grabbed these kids and whacked them up against the lockers, accusing them of starting on us. They kinda were about to, but Peter had started it, and yet now they had this massive bodyguard geezer whacking them up against a locker, which looked more painful and violent than any spiff between the two boys themselves might end up being, and we had the cops come in, and Peter was blaming the gypsie, and the gypsie was blaming Peter...and neither one was telling the truth. I figured they'd ask me in a moment or two, as I was sat with them as they were interviewed, to get an unbiased account of what happened, but they didn't ask me at all. We did get a ride home in the cops car though.
It was quite funny.
My parents saw me go off swimming with Peter, and then come home in a police car.
I eventually managed to stop hanging out with Peter somehow. He's an alright bloke, I've nothing against him, his activities are just a bit too extreme for me, that's all. Something that was cool was he had some stones and string rigged up in his room, so when you opened his bedroom door, a system was activated whereby something would drop onto the enter key of his amstrad computer, and run a basic program to trigger an alarm. Was pretty cool.
I did something similar with my spectrum, and some lego, or some other toy or something, back at my place.
I think we all tried to set alarms in our room at that age, I seem to have memories of my neighbour Mark doing similar too.
Oh...he had a hologram poster on his wall.
Jammy git. =P
I won't blog about the time I played strip hide and seek with his sister Ann, and was found by her, completely naked in his wardrobe though. That would be too embarassing to disclose on a blog like this. =P
of entertainment that isn't centred around TV, Videogames, Music, or Computers,
but I think it's just a bit last generation head-up-arse.
Or wanting to shake their heads at the current generation,
or indulge in their own nostalgia pretending things were better in their day.
Three examples.
1) Reality TV show It was Good Enough For Me, where parents give their children an experience of how they were raised - the father in today's episode reminisced on the freedom they had playing in the streets, and the ability to have fun without money, finding sticks and turning them into bow and arrows or such like.
2) My Mum claimed a child she knows, didn't know what a "hobby" was, and had never heard the word before.
3) Lucy Looks Back - on Channel 4 now, her Grandpa teaches her how to have fun with a simple piece of string, or a rope. He reminisces on how it was a challenge to use it to swing around a lamp post. He claimed you could cuff your feet, or bruise your knees.
Well,...!
When I was a lad, I slammed straight into the centre pole, when swinging round it at podgy's playpark, and knocked myself unconscious. [My Sister was pissing herself, as she wanted to get our parents, but didn't, as podgy's playpark was further than we were allowed to play, and she didn't want to get in trouble...I came round eventually, with my sister and ann peering over me...]
But seriously, I may be a geek who, stays indoors, likes videogames...but we used to out and make dens. We had some woodland near by, and we'd go out, and crawl into it, and make it our world.
I remember there were some gangs taking over different parts of the forest, and I explored it with Chris, I think Chris was into taking his pen knife, and chipping at bits of wood, to make wooden weapons to fight the gangs...[ we never thought of using the pen knifes themselves as weapons...shows how civil it all was ]. Whereas I used to just find a quiet spot, and drift off into a dream world. Ohh...we used to see some well weird insects, like a yellow and black striped catapillar.
I used to find my little tranquil spot and just chill out there, whilst Chris went off on his territorial disputes. The reason I remember this, is because one time Chris got really worried, and called my sister out, and they spent ages looking for me, but I was just chilled out quietly in my little peace hole....but Chris had gone to my house, and told my parents a gang had got me...=P....to me it was just one big game of hide and seek, since I didn't like violence, and kept my head low when I heard voices. When I finally realised it was my sister and Chris looking for me, it was like- it was like - oh - why the big deal? Of course I wasn't captured by a gang. Tsk.
I remember there were a bunch of Wickes catalogues thrown in one part of the bushes, and Chris told me that area was a tramp's home. For ages, I thought tramps regularly collected or delivered Wickes catalogues. =P
So my point is, yeah, we have computers, and videogames. But we still used to go out and play.
I used to love exploring the neighbourhood on my bicycle too.
But don't mention Peter Goodfellow please...the bike rides he took me on were exhausting, so I pretended to love Monopoly the board game, just so we'd spend all our time indoors on marathon monopoly sessions and not have to go coursing through building sites, or stinging nettles, or whatever crazy jaunts he had planned next. Haha...I remember we started going swimming, I might have thought that would be safer, but he started a fight in the changing rooms with some gypsie kids who had some weird bodyguard with them. Peter said something to piss them off, and they made a threatening advance, and before you knew it, this massive geezer escorting them, grabbed these kids and whacked them up against the lockers, accusing them of starting on us. They kinda were about to, but Peter had started it, and yet now they had this massive bodyguard geezer whacking them up against a locker, which looked more painful and violent than any spiff between the two boys themselves might end up being, and we had the cops come in, and Peter was blaming the gypsie, and the gypsie was blaming Peter...and neither one was telling the truth. I figured they'd ask me in a moment or two, as I was sat with them as they were interviewed, to get an unbiased account of what happened, but they didn't ask me at all. We did get a ride home in the cops car though.
It was quite funny.
My parents saw me go off swimming with Peter, and then come home in a police car.
I eventually managed to stop hanging out with Peter somehow. He's an alright bloke, I've nothing against him, his activities are just a bit too extreme for me, that's all. Something that was cool was he had some stones and string rigged up in his room, so when you opened his bedroom door, a system was activated whereby something would drop onto the enter key of his amstrad computer, and run a basic program to trigger an alarm. Was pretty cool.
I did something similar with my spectrum, and some lego, or some other toy or something, back at my place.
I think we all tried to set alarms in our room at that age, I seem to have memories of my neighbour Mark doing similar too.
Oh...he had a hologram poster on his wall.
Jammy git. =P
I won't blog about the time I played strip hide and seek with his sister Ann, and was found by her, completely naked in his wardrobe though. That would be too embarassing to disclose on a blog like this. =P