Summer holidays spent in the local meadows, with no accompanying adults.
Packing the pannier on my Chopper bike with a glass bottle full of dilute orange and cheese and tomato sandwiches made with bread so thinly sliced you could see the wheels of tomato through it when, 3 hours later, you took them out of the paper bag re-cycled from bringing buns from the shop.
Spending all day out on the bike with your mates.
Building dams in streams and making dens in bushes and under willow trees. Cutting your fingers on the wide blade grass that you could put between the edges of your palms and blow through to make a rasping whistle noise.
Avoiding 'the nutter' who hung about near the path next to the river and sometimes jumped out at you from behind a tree.
Picking at melted tarmac with a lollipop stick and getting it on your socks.
Using a washing line to make a big skipping rope that stretched from one side of the road to the other. And only having to move for a car every half an hour.
Putting a tennis ball in the toe of a nylon stocking and with your back against it, swing the ball on to the wall from one side to the other getting faster and faster.
Your friend's Dad shouting at you all to keep quiet as you played on the road outside because he was on 'nights'.
