I bet you are old enough to remember playing marbles in the street ? (I'm not being rude - it's just that I am )
It went in cycles, some times it was out and out marbles (did you have bombsies). On other occassions we set up stalls with Football Cigarette & Bubblegum cards resting against the curb in the gutter, they had to roll or throw a marble from behind a line and if they knocked over your card they won it , if they missed you kept their marble. Then there was always the flash kid with Ballbies (Ball Bearings) that reckoned they would get 3 goes for the price of one marble. Oh happy days when it was safe to play in the road.
We could start an "oldies" thread and remove all posts from "youngsters" We had bombers rather than bombsies - and "alleys" as well of course as ball bearings. We used to make a carad with holes at the bottom and you had to roll your marble through it - different sized holes won you different numbers of marbles. All in the street of course - as was our football games I suspect we may only get OFh and Vic on this discussion
I suppose I will admit to playing marbles in the street along with football and cricket. There was no problem with parked cars as there weren't any during the day and the only thing you had to look out for was the milk float being pulled by a horse that knew exactly where to stop all of the way down the road, or the lady who lived opposite and was in fear of her windows getting broken by a sweep to the mid-wicket boundary. I had a great big bag of marbles which include my favourite ones that only came out if I needed to win some back. Were there actually seasons for such games? Clearly there was a season for conkers before the days of H&S. I also remember playing "flick cards" where if you could land one of yours from a distance on top of another one you picked up both cards. The problem with such games was that if you won all of the marbles or cards you had to give some back, otherwise there was no one to play with the next day.
We made "tanks" out of cottorn reels... with rubberbands, a piece of candle as the washer and a length of meccano rouns poling as the motor to drive them on..... those were the days
...and of course the day bike rides out to chorley wood woods with a tin of beans and some spuds to cook on an open fire... we would be gone all day...
Are you old enough to be in on this Yorkie? I remember the cotton reel tanks. .. and the piece of card in your spokes to make your bike into a motor bike This all makes me laugh - the likes of BHD and jersey pie trying to read this and not think - boy I wish I had those to play with instead of my .......
Up in Scotland it was called Boolies, first to get into the hole then you had a free shot to try and win someone else's Boolie
Never really played marbles, but certainly played conkers. Also played Kurby down our road too.... and would invent new ways of scoring points. Also played football on the grass out front, and cricket using a tree as the stumps!
We had these tank things and building and running about games. I looked at marbles and do not remember anything like that. And bicycles.
I had a trolly made out of an old 'Silver Cross' pram, I'd play for hours on it, in the spring my Dad would give me some old sacks and a hand shovel and I used to go up the fields at the back and collect horse manure for his garden, put the full sacks in the trolley tto bring home. What about knock down ginger, or cats cradle? My sister & her mates used to used to play American skipping with a long loop of knicker elastic, this was a bit like cats cradle but using your feet & legs and not your fingers.
Did knock down ginger till we got caught and some officious *** went up to the school to complain. I never had a "cart" made with old pram wheels and boxes that all my friends had but me - I was a deprived child. My sister did hoola hoop
Frenchie - We had flick cards too. Also played "Run Outs" - a sort of "it" - around the South London estate where I was dragged up...
well wait longer! lol omg!! i remember those 'tanks'! we used to make those too! Oooh yes, the card in the spokes..omg...i did that! lol..i was such a boy lol i did the french skipping too..that elastic lasted for ages...it used to get higher and higher..."out, in, tread, out, twist, off!" flippin' 'eck, they don't have fun like we used to! lol
Cant comment on, or add to the 'toys from the old days discussion' - I was brought up in Leith in Edinburgh at a time when 'having things' and letting people know was fraught with danger, as was the simple act of walking to school. Tough times, tough place. We used to spend as much time as we could fishing in the harbour, or catching freebie rides on the buses to go to the posher areas and pinch apples from the gardens. Playing street football was too hard thanks to the cobbled stones - the balls (usually stolen from Woolies ) all appeared to have minds of their own & would fly off in any direction! Still think I had more fun than my kids manage though.
I remember playing conkers, my primary school having wooden 'hula' hoops (as we all know, proper ones were plastic) and my first bike having solid rubber tyres. I also had a Meccano set, but it was just the construction one and I didn't have any motors with it.
For carts we used to use the old type wooden fish boxes and any wheels we could scrounge from the local dump, or recycling centre as is now
