School daze and nostalgia.

[fred the red]

Were they the wee coloured balls that went on the spokes?
Stunt pegs for the BMX was another bicycle addition.

Thats them.

Also mind getting a puncture kit and calling up to the neighbours house to get my flat wheel repaired on my bike!

[BennyHarp]

Collecting the Panini football stickers - think i only managed to fill the book once in 1987, it had a world cup special in the middle page and one of the stickers was maradonna scoring the hand of god goal - anyone mind the bubble gum cards which where actually a deck of playing cards for the 1986 world cup?

[milltown row]

taking my sisters to school every morning (they went to the school beside me) hated it for some reason

walking to school and doing my homework on the way up (thats why i failed)

school dinners, you couldn't be seen to bring the dishes up or you would have classed as a "lick" the VP would have made the whole table wait and at the end came over and ask you to pick a number, never got it right

walking past the remains of burt out cars buses and lorries during the hunger strikes, the roads were always re surfaced for June just in time for the Summer riots

Bullseye on a sunday, Worzel Gummage and Hillstreet Blues, met one of the actors from the show on the Falls one day, he wanted to know "whats it really like son" grand i said

as someone said great summers weather wise, water ballon fights and squeezey bottle fights.

winters were good also, round the streets we used to jump onto the back of cars and slide along the road in the snow, was good craic until ya hit a grate

the youth disco, red painted shoes, rupert the bear jeans and lemon jumpers!!!! what da F*ck

[Tony Baloney]

taking my sisters to school every morning (they went to the school beside me) hated it for some reason

walking to school and doing my homework on the way up (thats why i failed)

school dinners, you couldn't be seen to bring the dishes up or you would have classed as a "lick" the VP would have made the whole table wait and at the end came over and ask you to pick a number, never got it right

walking past the remains of burt out cars buses and lorries during the hunger strikes, the roads were always re surfaced for June just in time for the Summer riots

Bullseye on a sunday, Worzel Gummage and Hillstreet Blues, met one of the actors from the show on the Falls one day, he wanted to know "whats it really like son" grand i said

as someone said great summers weather wise, water ballon fights and squeezey bottle fights.

winters were good also, round the streets we used to jump onto the back of cars and slide along the road in the snow, was good craic until ya hit a grate

the youth disco, red painted shoes, rupert the bear jeans and lemon jumpers!!!! what da F*ck

I was a big man for the black trousers with a green fleck in them and a skinny black leather tie. Nobody like me
Anybody else have the jeans with the suede or leather side panels down by the pockets! Cool as!

[AZOffaly]

Dribbling a tennis ball to school because I read Georgie Best did it.

Lunch Boxes and Liverpool pencil cases.

The milk break.

Marbles at breaktime, and 30 a side soccer games at lunch.

Gaelic football and hurling at school with the headmaster, and playing corner forward in Banagher in my first ever game, aged 9 on the under 11s.

Winning Bord na Scoil football and hurling.

WWF (before the Pandas forced the rename) on UTV with Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant, Mean Gene and Gorilla Monsoon.

But most of all, Offaly winning All Irelands regularly '81, '82, '85, Liverpool winning everything.

Those were the days my friends, we thought they'd never end.......

Edit. A couple more.

Being sent over to Pat Joe Keenaghan's shop across the road for Pouch tobacco for our 5th class teacher, who'd give to 2p for a couple of 'penny joo-joos' for your trouble.

Scor na nOg

Those pretend cigarettes

The old cards of soccer players, before stickers. Remember them? They came with a stick of chewing gum that tasted like Cardboard. I think they were 'Topps'. There was no album that i know of, but I used to play pre-subbuteo subbuteo with them. Nottingham Forest v Liverpool. Aston Villa v Ipswich Town. Jimmy Rimmer, Ray CLemence, Ray Kennedy, Asa Hartford, Archie Gemmill, Gary Shaw, Paul Cooper.

As I said, 'Those were the days'.

[Square Ball]

Great thread. ahhhhh the memories

was on the CB myself, and I refuse to mention what my handle was, its embarrassing!!!

remember playing kribby\kerby whatever you wan to call it, rarely see that being played now.

never had a chopper, but I had a tour de France 10 speed racer, god I was the fastest on the road.

chasing frogs in the bog meadows and throwing frog spawn at the St Louises girls as they got out of school.

playing football in Celtic Park, which apparently was the greatest playing surface in Europe.

the aul swing park at willowbank.

the summer scheme in the Falls park

[Tyrones own]

Being so Afraid of getting caught smoking we'd walk about a mile to this big wall
to hide the new 20 deck of Bensons we'd gotten someone to buy for us, find a loose stone and stash them
then spend about 2 days looking for them cause we couldn't remember which stone they were behind..
only to give up and curse each other out of it for being so stupid....

I'd say it was more that one of your mates went back and robbed the fags for himself !

No because we did eventually find them, soaking wet ...not to be out done though we broke out the sisters blow dryer then tried to smoke them .. proceeded to throw rings around myself soon after.

[AZOffaly]

Roy of the Rovers and Tiger, including one of our regular posters here

Also Hot Shot Hamish, Mickey Mouse, Wee Wally Campbell, Charlie the Cat Carter, Blackie Grey, and of course the immortal Roy 'what a screamer' Race.

[Our Nail Loney]

Any of the lads that went to the College remember playing a football match with a handball in either the church alleys or the science lab bit??

About thirty fellas, chasing a tiny ball in a tiny space, no wonder there was so many fights!

[Square Ball]

Roy of the Rovers and Tiger, including one of our regular posters here

Also Hot Shot Hamish, Mickey Mouse, Wee Wally Campbell, Charlie the Cat Carter, Blackie Grey, and of course the immortal Roy 'what a screamer' Race.

I remember the first edition of Roy of the Rovers, a mate in school let me read it in music class. my favourite was "The safest hands in soccer"

[Tony Baloney]

Any of the lads that went to the College remember playing a football match with a handball in either the church alleys or the science lab bit??

About thirty fellas, chasing a tiny ball in a tiny space, no wonder there was so many fights!

We used a plastic bottle! Bottle Ball as it was called was about ten aside every day at break and dinnertime and was magic craic. Was very tough on the auld shoes!

This thread is class. It makes you realise how good you had it and how much time you spent outside compared to children now.

Two Man Hunt with about thirty people all around the village. It seemed massive in those days! Went on for hours long into the summer evenings.

[thejuice]

I suppose it was those summers days for me where we made makeshift goals out of ld steel pipes in the back garden and had just about every kid between the ages of 10 and 16 living in our side of the parish round to play a 5-a-side match that lasted from about 1pm till it got too dark. Then there was the An Oige holidays that we used to go on. This was when crossing water to go on a holiday was almost unheard of. Driving for what seemed like an eternity to Cork, Westport and Antrim with nothing but a double-tape of 50's rock and roll classics. I can still remember us kids in the back seat all singing along to Chantilly Lace by the Big Bopper.

[Our Nail Loney]

Another game we used to play was just called 'sign'

The NSPCC Centre beside my house had a big metal sign about a metre squared and all you would do is try to hit it with the football, there could be as many players as you wanted and you all went in order, hitting hot after shot, hours on hours, trying to hit this sign!!

Simple but brilliant.

Also loved a game called crossfire, we played it with two opposing sets of trees as nets and the road in between, just two fellas taking shots at each other, first to twenty normally!

Also used to chalk out the car park beside out school during Wimbledon and use bins as the markers for the net as we didn't have one...

[Treasurer]

Do you mind getting the wee 'spokies' the you put on the spokes of your bike that you got outta cornflakes!

We got a roll of "fragile - glass" tape from somehere and meticulously cut it into tiny pieces and put hundreds of them onto the spokes - I think it was the same idea.

[Puckoon]

You know what I like about this thread - not one mention of video games at all.

They really are the ruination of a generation.