Growing Up In The 80's. Part 2 ( Leisure Time)

You know you're getting old when you start saying to your kids, 'When I was your age...' and they respond by rolling their eyes and turning up the volume on their phones.

I was a bit mean with my kids growing up because I always insisted we spent all our free money on holidays and trips out rather than designer clothes and computer games. That was in the late 90's, going on into the noughties.

Anyway enough about the other decades lets remember the 80's.

Our winter Activities.

In winter we would swap rooms in the house to be where the coal fire was. This was the bigger and better room and we had a 5 ft pool table at the end of it. Nothing flash, we didn't have a lot of money but what we had was spent on me for birthdays and christmas. I was very lucky in this respect.

Do you remember this little beauty?

Me and my nephew (only a year younger than me) would spend hours on this typing up the codes to create our own games. I cannot remember the detail of the computer just that is was an amstrad. My cousin would watch in awe as I typed in all the codes and then finally after hours we would play tennis that looked a little like this....

In the winter room me and my niece (a year older than me) would dress up in our best clothes to look like 5star. If you dont know who they are check this picture out...

With our big earrings and shoulder pads on, we would do cartwheels and flips behind the two settees that separated us. I would always follow my niece, she was better than I was.

Then there were the tape recordings. I always wanted to be a journalist, so I would terrorise the neighbours, in one or two ways.

1. Interview them like a BBC reporter
2. Fundraise for the RSPCA

I loved animals and still do which brings me onto the summer.

Our house backed onto a railway track which was surrounded by wild flowers and "The banking". We were a little naughty and I remember our street gang (a bit like goonies) putting together a picnic, and telling our parents we were going down the lanes. We weren't.

We snook onto the back garden and climbed up the banking to cross the railway tracks, cutting out 30 mins walking to get to the fields on the back. I lived at the side of fields, I miss that. I remember me and my next door neighbour, wacky, trying to cook beans with paraffin and setting the fields on fire. Luckily it was put out in time.

We would spend hours down the fields visiting the horses. My favourite was called Rainbow. We used to ride the horses sometimes. Here is little me on one outside my house.

I used to go horse riding and I would love to do that again...If it wasn't so expensive! Anway back to leisure in the 80's...

I was a bit of a tomboy and had a bmx, so when we wasn't chasing cows and swinging from trees we were on the local BMX track. I was quite good at bunny hopping if I recall.

There is probably a lot more including the legion disco every wednesday night and also the mud pie stall that we made, selling pies to all our friends and neighbours...

A little gross I suppose...