All Our Yesterdays

[undisputed 1,664]

aye funny how things change....anyone remember the old rope swings across the burn with the big tyre on it or the branch to sit on . Then you boarded when the swing came back and we'd all pile on...lol few times I'D thought i'd kill myself. keano you and asbo were still twinkles in yer da's eye back then...lol

 

 

I occasionally walk the dogs where I grew up and to look now through the eyes of a middle aged man it's scary, a big old oak tree rope swing (the oaky) which when you were out at full tilt over the river clyde was a hell of a height, coming back in screaming no boarders (two chances) as all and sundry (girls too) launched themselves at you.

Then there was the railway viaduct cat walk we practically lived up there in the summer, God only knows what height that was.

We pranced along rail lines without a thought, jumped on the back of any horse or cow (anyone have a cowshit fight?) waded rivers, left the house first thing in the morning and had to be dragged screaming in at night. Raided allotments ate what most people would consider inedible but got by. We got our arses tanned regularly, strapped at school but it didn't deter us, the only thing that struck fear in you was hearing those words, your getting kept in.

 

 

There were a few of us getting our arses skelpt....lol I know the bridge your on about we called it the painters ledge

[poacher3161 1,766]

That is without a doubt the BEST post i have read wile been on this site as it brought back a lot of memorys it was the same for us growing up in s.yorks [bANNED TEXT] you watched the film KES and realy could relate to it even at a very young age.Does anybody remember the I SPY books were their was pics and you had to write down were you had seen different species of birds or other subjects on nature.HAPPY DAYS sadley all gone for ever took over by personal greed. atvb dell

[kx100 66]

im 13 i have my own knive and make dens and oftes come home socken wet or muddey head to toe i love climbing bit trees and looking in nests i also have an xbox 360 but never on it always out doing stuff we also try 2 build rafts and build tree houses and hunt with catapults and have a look peoples veg paches and we go sledging with normal sleges on a big muddy hill its good and we make boogies i love the out doors and love playing chap door run lol

[poacher3161 1,766]

im 13 i have my own knive and make dens and oftes come home socken wet or muddey head to toe i love climbing bit trees and looking in nests i also have an xbox 360 but never on it always out doing stuff we also try 2 build rafts and build tree houses and hunt with catapults and have a look peoples veg paches and we go sledging with normal sleges on a big muddy hill its good and we make boogies i love the out doors and love playing chap door run lol

KEEP AT IT LADS your not young for long trust me.atvb dell

[frost 4]

Cracking read brings the memories flooding back

[BLUCHER 1]

Good read that its a wonder theres any wildlife about nowadays, every kid i knew had an egg collection, i spent days on end mooching round hedges and woods looking for nests. Downside was we used to shoot water voles, water rats as we called them in them days, they were so common then. Time didnt exist i frequently got my arse kicked for coming home at god knows what hour, you were so engrossed in what you were doing. Often got pulled up by an old keeper, always wondered how he knew where we were, know now he followed alarm calls from blackies and jays, all part of learning your apprenticeship. Do any of you lads remember Frank childs keeper on the risby estate in east yorks. ATB

[droid 11]

It was the same in Derbyshire when I was a kid.

 

I didn't go ferreting or nesting, but the ability to roam all over, up on the moors, through the becks tickling trout and going mushrooming more than compensated.

[desertdog 149]

undisputed, that was brill,brought back some good memories, when i was a lad i grew up in hatfield herts,we,d scrap with the welham green boys,my school was st,audreys,it was the worst school ever, but i had a good rural studies teacher mr goodwin, the one lesson a week id never miss. you could cross the a1, easy and get to colney heath, thats where we,d fish and hunt rabbits, and camp through the school holidays, we had the old gilbertson and page outlet, all the keepers would go there, i took my first job there when i left school,and learnt they ways of other country folk, i still have the old keepers hand book i bought from there, and when i look at todays youth, well,my daughter whos,nine love getting out with me,but how many youg uns will carry it on, kx100 you enjoy it while you can, savour every minute, im got the big 50 coming, i aint stopping yet, i can still keep up with them young uns, and with age comes knowledge so they say, the young of today dont have the freedom we had, i can still remember i went coursing at knebworth took me dog on the train,coming home on the greeline bus with two hares under the seat, no one bothered, good days.

[bird 9,872]

Great read , when over [50] mate , all them things come back to you. In the them days, i would go out 8 am ,and come back 8 pm. Have kick up the arse, when i got in. We used to build [Camps] ,they had to quite big as there was 6 in our gang. We used go[ scrum'in] apples , and that was our [dinner+tea] we were tough in them days . You are right mate, alot of the young'ns dont have the fun we had. My lad [22] loves football, ok he as done that since he was 8 years old. But when i tried to show him other [out-door-things] he was never interested unless it was just football. or he would go on his [play-station] and do f....games. I think they have missed out on alot of things

[Guest rodsmith]

i too used to to ferret,fish,shoot(my brother & song birds more than anything)but a few of us used to have a naughty day too which involved burning things,knock and run,hedge jumping etc..

i will always remember a lad desperate to join our gang,his parents were proper hard on him.to join we dared(well told him or he'd get a kicking)him to boot a fence some matey had just erected,so with a little encouragement( )he booted the fence,not only did he kick a hole in it the fat ginger twat got his foot stusk and matey that owned the fence was in the garden,we were gone unlike david.matey gave him a smack then took him to his parents which is near to where we were hiding.we could hear his folks leathering him and him screaming,we'd not laughed so much and still do when its bought up.Oh,the good old days!!!

[Catcher 1 639]

Something I read in here awhile back got me thinking about how we learned things as a kid. Also in relation to the amount of obese kids you see these days. Now this isnt one of those grumpy old men type rants lol(honestly) but those of us at that certain age can remember what it was like before the advent of mobile phones and PC's. The state of the art video games were two white lines and a wee white dot that went blip blip. There I go off topic already. Anyways it got me thinking about things like bush craft and how we learnt to hunt.

 

Most of our time as kids was spent out doors playing footy, building bogeys from old prams and sliding down bings on bread boards. Remember all the daft games you played as kids, chap doors run away, hunt, hide & seek etc etc. Our whole year was divided up so we knew when it was time to collect frogs newts & lizards from the old pond and brickwork. In the winter we made slides on the roads & pavements. I was always facinated by wildlife, projects in school were usually about birds (feathered variety) or animals. My mates uncle owned ferrets and if we were lucky we got to go out with him on a Sunday. Usually we were the bag men carting a big heavy ferret box over your shoulder or carrying what felt like giant rabbits for him (well we were only about 6 or 7yrs old).

 

It was bloody hard work at times and you learnt to be quiet and follow instructions to the letter with a boot up the arse if you did something that caused a rabbit to escape. We learnt to set nets the right way recognise signs that burrows were occupied or ones that hadn't been used in a while. Over time you become quite adept at setting snares under fences where rabbit runs went. All great learning experiences, I was about 9 or 10 before being trusted enough to go out on my own with dog and ferret. Most of these trips were pretty uneventful and never produced anything of great note. But I continued to learn from my mistakes and became pretty useful at the ferreting game with or without a dog.

 

Now of all the things I got up to out doors my favourite pastime was bird nesting. In between Coatbridge and Viewpark we had what we referred to as the Glen which was basically a 7 mile stretch of wood land that ran from our scheme all the way to Glasgow zoo. This was our playground as kids, there were ponds and old coal bings to explore all kinds of wildlife and birds and we knew exactly where and how to get to it. Egg collecting was one of the major pastimes for us as kids we could spend the whole morning and afternoon looking for eggs and often did. Manys the time I returned with the ass out my trousers skint knees and splinters on every part of my body covered from head to toe in muck. I remember finding a long tailed tits nest and sitting patiently till the bird returned and entered.. For those of you who have never seen one or its nest Its like a small round ball of moss on the outside with a small enterance to the front. Inside its a completely different, its litterally hundreds of small feathers from top to bottom and has a silky texture to it. Well I trapped this very small bird and gently removed it from its nest which it was still building. It has got to be one of the smallest most delicate creatures I've ever handled. The tail is almost bigger than its body a truly beautiful little thing. After I had held it for awhile I let it go it never did come back to the nest which was a shame. Theyre eggs have got to be among the smallest I've ever seen. Its funny although there are plenty of blue and great tits I have never seen a long tailed tit for years now.

 

Now leaving aside the morality of the thing for a moment remember these were the days you could walk up the road with 4 or 5 rabbits over your shoulder and no one would give you a second glance, more often than not you would be patted on the back and told well done...lol. Anyway what it did do was give me an education I couldn't get in school. I knew all the types of birds by sight what their eggs looked like and where they nested, I could even tell what the bird was by looking at the nest. Some of the scrapes we got into trying to retreive eggs from nests that were in trees that must have been 30 odd feet tall quite a feat for a 10yr old. We would shimmy up cliff faces for rock doves or rock pipits wade waste deep in the foulest water to get to ducks or Moorhen eggs and even fight of bloody great big swans for our prize. Between us we had one of the most sought after egg collections in our scheme. From Linnets, yellow hammers, swallows and house martins, to Herons and kestral hawks and owls we knew where to look and how to extract eggs from the trickiest of places. Anyone who has tried to extract a blue tits egg fro a tiny hole in a tree will know what I mean.

 

Everyday was an adventure for us and without thinking about it conciously we learnt all sorts of things from the wildlife and the environment around us. We even had a kind of moral code that you abided by and if you didn't stick to it you were out the gang. We had a rule that you never "herry" a nest which meant you never took all the eggs. You could only have two of a kind of any egg and you never took anyone you didn't know to nesting sites. This was how I learnt my field craft and still to this day when I'm out I still look for tell tale signs of birds nests and I dont suppose this will ever leave me. I remember us being the envy of all the scheme when a mate of ours nicked an ostrich egg from a glass case in our school, no-one else had seen one nevermind had one...lol. Any this kinda brings me back in a roundabout way to the point I was making about fat and obese kids. How many of these kids have ever climbed a tree or would recognise a blue tit from a sea gull? not many I'd wager. As kids we had a great degree of freedom to explore our surroundings and take risks which we did on a regular basis. Does it make us better people I dont know but I would like to think so. We had respect for our elders we didn't rob or abuse old folk, will kids ever get that kind of freedom again? I dont think so which is sad cause theres a whole world of experience out there and things to be explored it would be a shame if it was lost to whoever follows us next in this world.

 

ATB

 

 

Great read ma man.I remember it well.Got a little tear in my eye Thinking about it.Can you recall the day i fell about 30 yards of a tree down the 100 feet.Cant remember what nest i was trying to get to.I was OK Landed on my head lol.The branches broke my fall.We could walk all day and no farmer ever gave us any hassle.Not like that know.Remember viky the fox.Told you i could train anything.lol.See you later mate. Catcher 1

[Guest STORM CHASER]

That is without a doubt the BEST post i have read wile been on this site as it brought back a lot of memorys it was the same for us growing up in s.yorks [bANNED TEXT] you watched the film KES and realy could relate to it even at a very young age.Does anybody remember the I SPY books were their was pics and you had to write down were you had seen different species of birds or other subjects on nature.HAPPY DAYS sadley all gone for ever took over by personal greed. atvb dell

 

I'm afraid i remember I Spy books

[Guest STORM CHASER]

KEEP AT IT LADS your not young for long trust me.atvb dell

 

Your as young as you feel, or the person you are feeling

You know youth is wasted on the young.

[desertdog 149]

KEEP AT IT LADS your not young for long trust me.atvb dell

 

Your as young as you feel, or the person you are feeling

You know youth is wasted on the young.

ill drink to that,

[Guest rodsmith]

i will have 1 with you on that.