Memories Of A Great Childhood

[MrPin]

Yes, just like in the The Professionals, when the streets of London were flooded with speeding Capris, and were paved with market stalls and high stacks of empty cardboard boxes!

I had a Granada with that "Airfix" plastic dashboard, and a brown Velour interior! I did hit some empty boxes once!

[Bruce Banner]

As with porca misèria's experience, the thing was too feeble to power anything. Everything I made ended up as a balsa-and cellulose-dope fuelled fireball.

I doubt it ever successfully powered a model plane, so how on earth could it have made a boat fly?

I learned more about false trade descriptions than about jet propulsion from those things.

To increase performance, add lightness.

[Guest TheBlueCat]

Nah i would have known !

Seems a hell of a lot for one school.

It does. My school was on a main road too and we only ever had one major maiming outside. We had a lot of deaths elsewhere though:

- 5 or 6 motorbike and car accidents once people were old enough to drive

- 1 or 2 deaths by farm machinery (very nasty those)

- 1 or 2 from disease

- 1 killed himself accidentally during basic training in the Army (he was 17 so that sort of counts as school)

- 1 suicide

That's probably a 5% kill rate across the year I was in.

[Guest eight]

That's probably a 5% kill rate across the year I was in.

[happy_renting]

I had a Granada with that "Airfix" plastic dashboard, and a brown Velour interior! I did hit some empty boxes once!

Glad to hear you didn't have a white 3.4 litre Jaguar Mk.1. They always, always ended up going off the edge of a cliff!

[happy_renting]

It does. My school was on a main road too and we only ever had one major maiming outside. We had a lot of deaths elsewhere though:

- 5 or 6 motorbike and car accidents once people were old enough to drive

- 1 or 2 deaths by farm machinery (very nasty those)

- 1 or 2 from disease

- 1 killed himself accidentally during basic training in the Army (he was 17 so that sort of counts as school)

- 1 suicide

That's probably a 5% kill rate across the year I was in.

In my day, making a pipe bomb was almost a Rite of Passage. A big f***-off size tin of nitrate fertiliser, sold to 14-year-olds with no questions asked, (I think Boots the Chemist sold them in those days), a bit of copper tubing, plus (censored for security reasons), then off into the woods, giving a quick wave to the lurking flashers and molesters in the hedgerows that were part of the rural scene.

I think every rabbit and vole within a 5-mile radius of my house must have had post-traumatic stress disorder.

Another item: I wasn't in the Scouts, but still had a scout knife from about age 11. i wouldn't have dreamed of using it on a person. Trees, yes. People, no.

In fact, just about all that was fun in my childhood would probably now be treated as a terrorist incident and would put most of south London into lockdown.

[Guest TheBlueCat]

In my day, making a pipe bomb was almost a Rite of Passage. A big f***-off size tin of nitrate fertiliser, sold to 14-year-olds with no questions asked, (I think Boots the Chemist sold them in those days), a bit of copper tubing, plus (censored for security reasons), then off into the woods, giving a quick wave to the lurking flashers and molesters in the hedgerows that were part of the rural scene.

I think every rabbit and vole within a 5-mile radius of my house must have had post-traumatic stress disorder.

Another item: I wasn't in the Scouts, but still had a scout knife from about age 11. i wouldn't have dreamed of using it on a person. Trees, yes. People, no.

In fact, just about all that was fun in my childhood would probably now be treated as a terrorist incident and would put most of south London into lockdown.

Fertiliser bombs of one sort or another were pretty common around my way too (rural area so we got ours from sacks of the stuff left out by farmers in the days before it had to be kept under lock and key). I don't recall any major injuries related to them but there were quite a few middling ones down to fireworks. One guy I knew made a genie (empty the contents of a packet of bangers onto the ground) and decided to detonate it up close and personal rather than at arms length for some reason - it took about a year for all his hair to grow back and for the burns on his face to heal.

[happy_renting]

I worked with a man who told me some great stories about his wartime childhood.

Apparently, German phosphorous incendiaries looked like grey tin cans. ARP wardens and police had the unwelcome and dangerous task of retrieving unexploded ones from rooftops, etc.

So he and his chums used to paint old tins grey and stick them up in trees to annoy the ARP wardens.

His best tale is where, aged about 14, he swapped some comics with a GI for a machine gun and some live ammunition. It seems that anyone could get their hands on a gun in those days.

He couldn't resist trying it out, so he sneaked up into the attic, wrapped it in some blankets and put it inside an ottoman chest to stifle the noise, and pulled the trigger.

He told me that "until her dying day, my mum believed my story that the huge scorched holes in her best linen were caused by giant moths."