When we were young

[Weka]

I grew up in a rough street with guard dogs behind most fences, gangs living a few doors down and motorbikes being roared up and down. Sounds idyllic aye?

I'm still learning to trust dogs, which is not surprising when all the dogs of my childhood barked like they wanted to rip me to pieces.

It's also not really that surprising that we weren't really given a free leash to run around the neighbourhood, but we learned the houses to avoid. We use to go collecting circada shells during the summer, often get 3 or 4 hundred collected into a paper bag. Our neighbours at the back had a stream, so sometimes we would go there and build dams. There was lots of tree climbing. And at school I played elastics/French shipping for hours and hours till there was nothing I couldn't do. My best friend lived over the road so if I wasn't at hers, she was at mine. I didn't often play with my brother, he had a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde personality, and I never new if he was going to be nice or turn on me. But when he was nice, we would play Lego for hours, or in winter make mud pies, play in the water of the pool, or in the sandpit till we had no feeling in our hands as they were so cold.

I was never really one for dolls. My teen years saw me more likely to be tinkering with something like making telephones work, or building computers than playing with makeup.

[JoM]

I only had one roller skate, they'd been my sister's and the other was lost in a house move
My favourite toy was probably my space hopper. My friend Deb, who lived two doors away, and I would make jumps in our gardens out of upturned buckets and plant pots and bamboo canes and play showjumping on our space hoppers. When the weather wasn't so good we'd set up a hair salon inside with our Girl's Worlds. We also both loved playing with Sindy dolls.
It wasn't all dolls though for me though. We had some wasteland nearby and I used to love going over there with the boys and riding our bikes very fast down the hills

[Kaz]

I only had one roller skate, they'd been my sister's and the other was lost in a house move

Oh Jo that must be the saddest childhood story ever!!!

My sister had a space hopper - I had a pogo stick, I'd almost forgotten about that!!

[Workingman]

We had bogies - not the nose ones.

They were basically planks with pram wheels and rudimentary steering and we would race..... up and down, down and up. Shoes as brakes, and a good telling off when they got scuffed.

We also had Corgi cars, which we would propel down the street to see whose could go furthest. Then Spot-on arrived and we were stuffed, they were sooooo good.

This is a lad talking btw.