Childhood memories

This is the page on which I chronicle things that I got up to as a child. Except by child, I mean between the ages of about 12 and 14. As it happens, although I am now a civilised, courteous, charming and law-abiding citizen, I got up to all sorts of things as a child. Interested? No? Good, read on.

Note: Don't try any of this stuff at home; it's very naughty, and I have copyright on it.

Garden runs
The idea behind these was as straightforward as the title suggests: they involved running through people's gardens. Sometimes their front gardens, sometimes their back gardens. Running through people's front gardens, fairly obviously, was a lot easier and less daring a task. The most exciting things that happened on such garden runs included diving over hedges or transforming the street into some sort of floodlit stage, by the setting off of every security light. However, things got somewhat more exciting/complicated when the chosen route went through back gardens. To initially enter a back garden, we would usually find a house whose garden backed onto one of the local parks, getting in from there, climbing over the fence. We would then run through the garden in question, into the next, and the next, and so on, until we could go no further, at which point we would either go back, or, if feeling particularly wimpish and if it was possible, try to get out solely via the garden we were in. This was normally done in groups of between five and twelve of us. We would occasionally have a challenge of sorts to see which of us could go through the most gardens without chickening out/failing to be physically capable of progressing into the next garden. I usually did pretty well, being as I was daring and agile (how things change). You may be thinking "What the hell was the point; I've never heard of such a ridiculous thing in my life, you imbecile". The bottom line is, it was a dare. We were trespassing, we could get caught at any time, and as such, the whole thing would provide us with a buzz. I participated in many of these between the ages of about 13 and 14. Some proved eventful. Some not so. We'd often simply enter a garden, climb over a fence into the next one, through a hedge into the next, and so on until we could go no further, with some people having already dropped out. This was perhaps a typical garden run. But, like I said, some were considerably more eventful than others. One time, we had gone through a few gardens, and had decided we could go no further, and so decided to exit the garden we were in through its sidegate, and so marched towards it. There were 12 of us in total, and it was night (as it often was when we did garden runs, perhaps for obvious reasons). The house's curtains were closed, and their lights on. I was walking with a mate, and was at the back of the bunch. Some people were already getting over the gate, and heading for the street. We were just getting towards a door at the back of the house, when all of a sudden, a girl of 16 (two years older than I was) burst out and threw a bucket of cold water over us, but primarily me. The girl in question knew us, and was not in the least bit scared of the fact that people had just walked through her garden, probably because she knew we weren't up to anything really bad. She had obviously just noticed us out of a window and decided upon the water as a little punishment for us. Too bad she couldn't have been quicker about it, so as to share the soaking out amongst all 12 of us, which would have made the punishment considerably more equitable. After soaking me and dampening my mate, she just laughed and told us not to come back. Not many of the others knew about this until we all got out onto the street. I sure had some explaining to do when I got home, as to why my t-shirt and hair were wet, but I never got into trouble for it. This was uneventful compared to a couple of other times, however. One time, there were 5 of us. We ran into a garden in daylight, and then into the next one. One kid, and I'll never know how he ever plucked up the courage to do so, ran down the garden to the house, and hammered on the kitchen window. He then ran back to the rest of us. One of us had already gotten into the next garden, the rest of us were by this low fence which ran through a hedge, but came out at one end, leaving a small stretch of it to climb over. As such, one person only could get across at a time. I noticed some bloke come out the house, having been alerted by the hammering on his window. It was a long garden, and I was obscured by bushes. With what was now 2 people ahead of me in the "fence queue", I realised that I wouldn't get over in time before the bloke caught me, and so legged it into a greenhouse and hid. The others managed to get away in time, just, with the bloke cursing. I waited, terrified of being caught, hoping that he would go in so that I could escape. However, I wasn't to be so lucky. A woman came out, and the two of them ended up sitting down at a table in the garden, eating. However, there was worse to come. Visitors appeared, and soon I could hear quite a lot of voices talking about this and that. I was terrified that they would come down the garden and spot me in the greenhouse, and to make things worse, I was sure that they knew more or less where I lived and it was broad daylight. The fact that they kept mentioning plants made me fear them inviting their neighbours for a tour of their greenhouse, which would have spelled tragedy for me. After what must have been nearly a whole hour, the visitors departed, and all except for the bloke went inside. However, the bloke started heading towards me, carrying garden furniture, but luckily went straight past the greenhouse and into the shed. He came back and forth twice more, but never noticed me. When he did go in, I promptly ran to the previous garden and to safety. I was as relieved as hell when I got back to the park. I didn't see any of the people I'd been with until the next day at school. They were much amused by my "ordeal". I was glad that someone found it funny. This was most certainly not the most eventful garden run, however. The most eventful one was the last one we ever did. There were 6 of us, and we entered a garden in the usual way, before going into the next one, over a fence and into the next one after that. When in this garden, the nutter of the group, a 15-year-old who was tall, well-built and who looked older, and as such could almost be seen as intimidating to some people, decided that it wasn't enough to just run through the garden, and decided to open up a shed and look inside. He was in front of the rest of us, and opened the door of the shed, only to find, to all our astonishment, an old bloke sitting inside, smoking a cigar. The shed had no windows on the side which we had approached it from, and hence the bloke had, until this point, been completely oblivious to the fact that 6 lads were in his garden. The bloke, probably terrified at having a large youth burst in on him, stood up, his cigar falling out of his mouth, and grabbed a spade, and ran out into his garden, waving it about, menacingly. We were all scared, and ran about in various directions. Two ran for his back gate and got to safety (perhaps the most sensible thing to do, and perhaps annoyingly, one was the kid who had got us into the mess we were in), one ran back into the next garden, while the other three (of which I was one) were too busy dodging the old bloke coming at them with a spade. At one point, all 3 of us crashed into each other and fell over, after running around in a circle, dodging him. The bloke was standing over us, threatening to call the police whilst still brandishing his lethal weapon, when all of a sudden, one of us yelled "The shed's on fire". This sounded like a cunning trick to avert the bloke's attention and to allow us to escape, but it soon became apparent to us all that this was no joke, and that the shed was, indeed, very much on fire. The cigar had set fire to the shed, somehow, it seemed, and already the shed was burning quite fast inside. The bloke yelled "hosepipe", and ran up his garden to get the hosepipe. It was at this point that the remaining three of us saw our chance and ran out into the street through his gate. As I looked back, the shed was burning like crazy. The Fire Brigade were called out, and the shed is no more. This made the local papers ("Garden shed burns as man fights off teenaged intruders"), from which I learnt that paraffin had caused the fire. Yes, it was very stupid to have been smoking near where paraffin was kept. Had there been gas cylinders there, there would have been an actual explosion. We never got caught, as the bloke knew none of us and it was dark. We were all, perhaps understandably, put off garden runs forever, though.

Egging
One of the memories of my childhood was when we used to go out egging houses. This was normally done within a group of anywhere between 3 and 15 of us. We would all raid our houses beforehand, to see whether or not we could get our hands on any cheap supplies. If, as per usual, we couldn't, then we would be forced to spend some of our hard-earned paper-round money in order to get eggs. I myself actually avoided throwing very many eggs, and was normally a mere innocent spectator, who went along for the ride. Anyway, we would normally go out on a weekday evening, during the Winter/Autumn months, so it was dark early. We would wrap up warmly, and wear clothing that disguised us somewhat, such as woolly hats. We would go around housing estates, and often merely pick a house at random, and then egg it. Before the person who was to throw the egg did so, he would alert everyone else in the group as to what he was about to do, and would then throw the egg hard at a window, normally a downstairs window. We would then all run like hell in any direction away from the unfortunate residence. Normally, we would manage to get far away from the house before its owners could get anywhere near us, although this wasn't always the case. I said above, that often we picked houses to egg at random, as was normally the case. However, we did have a few " favourites." Allow me to tell you a little bit about these " favourites." One was a house near me, in which a moody old git lived (and indeed he still does, I smiled at him only the other day...). Now this old git lived opposite a large green, on which there was a sign that read " Ball games prohibited." Naturally, we enjoyed playing ball games on this. Perfectly innocent, huh? For sure, but whenever we tried to, more often than not, this old git would be straight out of his house, as if he had been waiting for us, and onto the green, waving his walking stick menacingly at us (interesting that he didn't seem to need a walking stick), and shouting at us to get off, before he belted us, told our parents, called the police, etc. Often, this would be supported with sarcastic remarks such as " Can't you bloody read?! " I was once to brave enough to answer that I could read, but didn't know what prohibited meant, and was rewarded with a menacing look. Incidentally, he once got into trouble for saying about whether or not we could read, to the local retard, who couldn't actually read, who thought that he was being made fun of, and promptly told his dad. To cut a long story short, as you can see, we were entirely justified in considering this bloke unreasonable, and hence, in egging his house. We decided that anyone mean enough to stop us from playing football on the green, deserved their house to be turned into an omelette. More about him later. As for other " favourites ", there was some bloke who had been egged before, and over-reacted considerably, who hence, was a natural target. Also were a couple of houses who had slammed the door on us on Oct 31st, but had not yet had his trick; a woman who had dared to suggest that our voices were anything less than angelic when we went carol singing, and some house where a local bully lived. Now, one winter night, it was the moody old git who lived opposite the green's turn to be egged. There was a group of about fourteen of us, and a certain person alerted us, and then threw the egg slap-bang against his kitchen window. Laughing like mad, we all ran away, incidentally into the grounds of the local school, by climbing over their gates. Now this school, located almost nextdoor to the old git's house, had grounds that adjoined a small park. We ran through the school grounds towards the other gates that lead to the park, intending to wait in the park until the coast was clear. However, as we were almost at the gates, I noticed a car on the other side of them, that I recognised as none other than his car, that had his wife getting out of it. I was at the front of the fourteen of us, perhaps because I had been the first to run away from the scene. Anyway, as soon as I saw the car, I stopped running, only to have all the others pile into the back of me, knocking me flat. Never one to give in to pain, I got up and yelled out about who it was, and that we must go back the way we came in order to get away from her. So, we ran back towards the school gates that lead back out onto the road near to his house. However, unfortunately, who should we see standing next to these gates, but the moody old git himself.


Aerial pic of my area. On it, can be seen the park I talk of (to the bottom left), my old Infant and Junior Schools (the Infant School being the one on the left, with the top of the adventure playground I talk of below being just visible). The path I talk of running down can be seen "above" the Infant School, between the school and the backs of the houses, running almost horizontally across the pic, with the gates (that were blocked, "trapping" us in) at the end of it, obscured by trees. The other entrance to the school is at the end of the path that can be seen running vertically between the two schools, and is also obscured by trees. The back of the old git's house can be seen to the right of this, above the white huts on Junior School grounds, with the green opposite. The gardens backing onto the park/path are all gardens we would run down on garden runs. Solihull town centre can be seen, as well as Birmingham (on the horizon).

So, we were trapped in the school grounds, as both exits were blocked by angry ppl. Now, although I am sure that fourteen of us could probably have managed to fight our way past one person, we didn't want to be identified, as he knew most of us. As the terrible truth dawned on us, we all interpreted the situation differently, and hence did our own thing. There were fourteen of us. One particularly wimpish and unresourceful member of the clan, simply couldn't handle the situation, and refused to run. Instead, he cried, and was rewarded by having the old git catch him. One extremely jammy git managed to run past the old git as he was throttling the wimpish kid, and escape out of the same gates that we had entered the grounds through. One climbed up a tree and refused to come down, nine ran for the gates and got past the wife, but had to go into the park as she was blocking the park exit in effect. The two remaining ones were clever and managed to find good hiding places within the school grounds. One in a dustbin, and one on the roof, apparently. I believe that the one who climbed the tree, plus the one who had a nervous breakdown, got caught and identified. The kid who managed to get past the old git as he was throttling the wimpish kid, got away without even a chase. The nine that ran out onto the street got into a chase, and the two who hid got away without even a chase. I was one who simply ran into the park. Now running into the park was the only option, which should have made us trapped. However, one of my mates happened to have a garden that backed onto the park, so I suggested that we all use his garden as a getaway trail. I jumped over his garden gate, and unlocked it for everyone else. Now there were nine of us going through the garden, and the residents of the house didn't know about this. Some of the group didn't seem to appreciate that the residents hadn't actually given us permission to use their garden as a getaway trail, and they just carried on talking as normal, thus making considerable noise, which wasn't very clever. However, we managed to get through without them finding out. I had to wait till everyone had got through the gate that led out onto their drive, and then lock it, and climb over, so that they wouldn't find out about it. Now we may have gotten back onto the street without being caught, but we weren't in the clear yet. As we soon saw the car of the people whose house we had egged coming towards us. We all ran, and when we came to the end of the road, some ran in one direction, some in another. About four people only ran in my direction, and the car followed us. Me and one other kid happened to be lagging behind a bit. I figured that we needed to get away from the road, in order to get away from the car, so I ran down this back alley where people parked their cars, and the other kid followed me. We didn't know whether or not the car had seen us go down this alley, so on the off-chance that they had, we decided we needed to find a way out of it. There was this strange sort of shed/garage, made of wood, and I climbed on top of it, in an attempt to get onto some wasteland behind it. However, as I got on top of it, the whole thing collapsed, and I fell to the ground, and in doing so, a plank of wood hit a car windscreen, and cracked it. Luckily, I hadn't hurt myself badly. Actually, some more was about to collapse on me after I had fallen, but my mate managed to stop it. We were s******g ourselves about what I had done to the windscreen, and so ran for it back out onto the street, and luckily, there was no sign of anyone, so we managed to get home. Everyone else, I learned later, got away. Only two people got into any trouble for it. Ironically, the one who threw the egg was the one who hid in the dustbin, who got off very lightly indeed. We went out egging for quite a while, but were forced to stop when the police set up vigilanties down nearby roads, and the egging problem was mentioned in the local newsletter.

Adventure playground
This is a small memory really. Near me, there's a small park (see above), that adjoins school grounds. This school has an adventure playground on its field. So, we would often go through the park and climb over the fence and onto this school field, in order to play on this. One time, we noticed a police car, or at least I did, by the school gates in the park. They had obviously come in response to a call from a local resident, that some youths were trespassing on school property. Luckily, I noticed, and ran for the fence, to climb back into the park. However, the mate that I was with, decided instead to hide in a hedge. As I was climbing the fence to go back into the park, I got stuck, as the back of my coat somehow hung itself onto the plank of wood that was part of the fence. So police were about to enter the school field to get us (it was broad daylight), and there I was hanging on the fence, unable to move. I called out as loudly as I dared to my mate, telling him to get out of the f*****g hedge, and to help me. He didn't. Luckily, my coat ripped eventually, and I fell to the ground, and ran for my mate's garden, which backs onto the park (the garden we used as a getaway trail, above). I got into his garden, and my mate hid in the hedge until the police had gone. This was all, but it was a great feeling to have outsmarted the pigs. In terms of this adventure playground, we went on it regularly, and once the local school caretaker almost caught us, but we hid in the roof of the tower type amusement on the playground, and they never saw us.

Revenge
Often, local residents would act totally unreasonably towards us, doing us great injustices. I mentioned above about egging, but sometimes we sought other forms of revenge, perhaps for people who had only done us small wrongs. One time, I was about 13, and was with two mates. One grabbed the other's wallet, and threw it onto someone's drive, for a laugh. The person who owned the wallet had to crawl along this drive, under the owner's front window, in order to retrieve his wallet. All was going well, when all of a sudden, a bloke from a house opposite came out of his house and marched up the drive of the house where my mate was trying to retrieve his wallet, and rang on the bell, informing the owner of the lad on his drive. Funnily enough, my mate trying to get his wallet back didn't even notice what had happened till the owner came out and innocently inquired as to why he was crawling about under his front window. When the bloke from across the road rang the bell, he was actually oblivious to the fact, and still crawling about. Anyway, the lad got into a bit of trouble, and that was that. But justice had to be seen to be done, and he couldn't let the bloke from across the road get away with his most heinous of crimes. He had grassed him up, and needed to be suitably punished. Such a suitable punishment was not decided upon until the following morning. It was six o' clock, and we were on our way to do our paper-rounds. We passed the house of this bloke, when all of a sudden my mate decided what had to be done. He got off his bike, putting his paperbag down, and proceeded to urinate all over this bloke's brand new BMW. We then rode off, absolutely hysterical about this. Note that it was him who did it, and that I was, once again, a mere innocent bystander.

In terms of other cases, there was the time when someone slammed the door in our faces one Halloween, so we flour bombed his car and ordered a large pizza to be delivered to his house. Or one person who confiscated our football, and had their flower beds trampled in return.

Penny for the Guy
At the age of 13, there were few lengths we wouldn't go to where making extra cash was concerned. The seven pounds a week we got from our paper-rounds just wasn't enough when there were football stickers and pogs to be purchased. So, when the month of November came, we decided to do penny for the guy, which we had learned was when you make a guy (as in Guy Fawkes, the dude who was alleged to have tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament) and take it out with you, knocking on people's doors, exclaiming "penny for the guy", expecting at least two pounds back for your troubles. Anyway, me and my mate had neither the time, patience or expertise required to build a guy, so we, or rather I, decided, that, as opposed to actually building a guy, we could take turns to pose as the guy ourselves. So, I got the wheelbarrow out of our shed, wheeling it to my friend's house. He agreed to be the guy first. I wrapped him up so that no skin was left showing, before wheeling him on the wheelbarrow, which he lay on, down the drive of a house. It went OK, with them giving us, or me, as far as they were concerned, around 20p. Anyway, next it was my turn to pose as a Guy Fawkes, which proved an unnerving experience, but which went OK. One time was rather unfortunate for my mate, as when it was his turn to be the guy, we went to some house at which some old guy (human variety), felt it necessary to hit the 'guy' with his walking stick, quite unaware that he was corporally punishing my mate where it hurts. This is hilarious, looking back on it. One other time, we almost gave an old woman a heart attack, as, after we had been to her house and she had given us a little bit of her pension, I set off wheeling the wheelbarrow back up her drive and onto the pavement (the sidewalk, to Americans etc), when my mate sat up in the wheelbarrow. The old dear was looking out of the window, waving goodbye to me when this happened, before seeing what she thought was a guy coming to life (I never saw her again after this). I don't know how we ever managed to pose successfully as guys, and in doing so earn ourselves over fifteen pounds in one night (a small fortune, at that age), but we did. Triffic.

Paper-rounds
Torture. Sheer torture. Getting up at 6.00 am to go out in the freezing cold rain, sleet, snow, ice etc, to deliver over 500 papers, over a 25 mile radius. Well, ok, perhaps I am exaggerating a bit there, but you get the picture. But it had to be done. Eggs, football stickers and Pogs didn't/don't grow on trees. During the Winter months, it was dark and cold, and I had to deliver a whole load of heavy papers across a wide radius, on a particularly embarrassing bike. My paperbag was always loaded up so fully, that it was very difficult, at first, to get the papers out of the bag without ripping them. Also, as it was too full to pull the flap over all the papers, some people's papers got wet when it rained, which they complained about. Also, a lot of people, especially on weekends, had really thick papers, or at least the whole delivery was thick, as they had supplements and magazines inside them. This made it near impossible to get through people's letterboxes (why can't we have mailboxes like the Americans?), without ripping them. Sometimes they had to be left on the doorstep, they were that thick and the letterboxes that small, which made the idiot customers ring up the Newsagent's to complain and ask why they had been left on the doorstep. Sometimes people argued that we could take the supplements out and put them through the letterbox bit by bit. Like we had time. If we had have done that, they'd have complained about their papers being delivered too late. Also, low down letterboxes made it awkward, as you had to get off your bike before delivering the paper. I had to do this six mornings a week, at a very low wage. My wage figure was arrived at by taking into account the number of deliveries I had to make, and the amount of travelling I had to do (more than 4 miles a day), but it was misleading in some ways, as most of my customers' drives were long, which increased the duration. Also, I seemed to have to ride up really steep hills, which made it more difficult. This is what I faced every morning, but there were some particularly painful instances. One time, my bike had suffered a puncture, leaving me in the most unfortunate position of having to leave earlier and to walk the whole four-mile route. So, there I was, carrying my (rather heavy) paperbag on this particular morning. About to go down this small cul-de-sac delivering papers, I decided that, as a means of making it easier for myself, I could remove a few of the papers from my bag and leave them on a garden wall on the main road, as I went and delivered papers to the houses down the said cul-de-sac. I did just this, my shoulder appreciating the easened load, but, needless to say, things didn't run their course as smoothly as they might have. Having finished delivering to the houses down this cul-de-sac, I was then approaching the main road in question where I had left my papers on a garden wall, when I noticed this big bus, driving at full speed, drawing close. I feared what might happen, and, much to my young horror, it did. As the bus hurtled past the house owning the wall on which I'd left the papers, it caused them to blow out all over the road, before a much amused audience of teenagers from my school. I did my best to retrieve the papers in question from the middle of the busy road and to put them back together, but wasn't too successful in this (ever tried putting back together even one paper?).

A incident similar to this was when I was doing another, morning paper-round, had placed my paperbag balanced precariously on my handlebars (this was a seriously heavy paperbag), and was riding down a road, downhill, when all of a sudden, I slipped on some ice, sending the bag flying off my handlebars and into the road. At least half of its contents seemed to have left the paperbag. I picked up some loosesheets of paper, but then, as (bad) luck would have it, a car came, forcing me to get out of the road. The car ran over a load of loose papers, rendering them undeliverable. I stuffed what I could into my paperbag, and shoved the rest into a Grit box on the pavement. Sod's Law, having already plagued my existence for many years, ensured that a few kids from my school were around to spectate this whole incident. I didn't actually deliver many papers that day, and got a proper bollocking for it.

Another similar instance involved this massive house I had to deliver to, which proudly sported a lake in its grounds, as well as two big, terrifying dogs, who the owner (as the owners of such monstrous beasts always do) insisted were harmless and only playing and being friendly when they ran up to me and growled, revealing their big teeth in all their glory. Anyway, on one particular morning, I had the paper to be delivered to this house in my hand, and as I was cycling towards the house, this dog which I hadn't had the 'pleasure' of being growled at by before, tried to pounce on me practically, or at least seemed to want more than anything else to get at the paper. I managed to pull it out of its grasp, but it refused to give in without a fight, leaving me with little option but to throw the paper, in order to keep my most important right hand, which was to be my sex life for years to come (perhaps unbeknown to me at the time). I did this, but unfortunately, I inadvertently threw it into their lake. All wouldn't have been so bad, had the owner of the house not suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Neither he, or my Newsagent, were particularly impressed.

Whenever I see a paperboy/girl, I pity them.

Most painful memory
By painful, I don't mean sad, but painful. It happened while a mate and I (this was back in the days in which I actually had friends) were outside a school. There were some metal railings outside the said school, the sort that are often put outside schools, probably in an attempt to decrease the chances of kids from running out into the road and being killed. Anyway, I decided to see if I could walk the full length of these railings (on top of them, in a similar manner to that of a tight-rope walker, only without theose things tightropers tend to hold). So, I climbed on top of the said railings, walking slowly and carefully along them. I was doing fine, with tremendous grace and looking every bit the budding tightrope walker until, halfway across the metallic 'tightrope' in school railing form, my grace was suddenly cruelly taken from me, as each leg slipped either side of the railings. I landed in a kind of sitting position, like that one might adopt when sitting on a horse, except that I was no jockey and this was no horse, but a considerably more lethal metal rail. Now, I slipped with such immense force, that when I hit the bar, I developed an agonising pain to the insides of my legs and the obvious, best left unmentioned parts of my body. After making some rather strange, high-pitched noises (resembling some creature or other I can only hope and pray is now well and truly extinct), I then made for home in an extremely peculiar manner, sort of dancing/skipping about with my legs wide apart, groaning and making these high-pitched noises all the way. My mate hadn't even seen what had happened, and was therefore rather puzzled by my sudden and somewhat strange departure. Stop giggling! I was only little :-) Looking back on this incident, which happened when I was about 13, it's a wonder that my voice ever broke. Some other, perhaps unmentionable things, are an even bigger wonder. Anyway, I can honestly say that that was the incident which caused me the most pain ever. 50% of people reading this won't even be able to begin to imagine how painful it was for me; the other 50%...still won't be able to even begin to imagine how painful it was for me. It's painful even to think about it. *Crosses legs*. The moral of the story is: However bad your sex life may be, never must you try and hump a school railing; railings and testicles just don't mix, let me tell you now.

More memories will be added shortly.

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