Neighbourhoods have always been happy and active places throughout history.
Well my history certainly. At a young (primary school) age, my brothers and I would often be found playing various iterations of football on the streets outside our house. This usually meant the odd dive into people’s gardens to fetch balls, both with permission (“pleeeeease can we ‘ave our ball back?!”) and without permission (“you’re smallest, you go in through the hedge… go! SHE’S WATCHING! RUN!”). We were mischievous in the extent that we often preferred the latter in our ball fetching techniques, mainly because it seemed rather pointless to knock every single time (I might point out that at that age we were all very erratic kickers of the ball, leading to us entering gardens almost every 5 minutes).
So having a reputation for horrific ball kicking, we moved to a larger house on the outskirts of town. It sat in a tidy little cul-de-sac complete with green expanse just perfect for playing football. Which we did. As a result we gathered a motley crew of fellow football ragamuffins and we all played together in 3 on 3s, FA (every man for himself with one goal, score to “go through”, last man drops out, repeat to fade…) and, as we grew older (read: more stupid), we also played “Rosy” (a.k.a Doggy / Headers and Volleys) which was a game revolving around punishing poor ability. The idea is to score past each other, without missing or being caught, till their lives run out, which results in them having to stand on the goal line, bent over, whilst people take it in turns to boot the ball at them. There’s a much worse version too, which we played once but then decided to avoid. “Tunnel” was exactly the same except as a punishment you have to run through a tunnel of boys hell bent on kicking lumps out of you. It only takes one slightly erratic boy and you have what amounts to a gauntlet of death.
We were all in the teenage phase of life, the one where you do insanely stupid things because a) there’s alcohol involved b) it’s funny to do it c) there’s a camera involved or d) all of the above. I think we’re far enough in the future that I can openly talk about this without my mother climbing into her car, driving for 3 hours and banging on my door shouting “I TOLD YOU NOT TO DO IT!”, so, I’ll let the world into some of the antics we got up to.
We skated. We were all entranced by hopping about on shin destroying planks with wheels. We also had plans. We built 2 – 3 ramps for use to use. the first few were the simple wedge designs for the street, where we’d push to break-neck speeds then go over a ramp that inevitable sent us skyward… well, at least a foot higher than normal. We progressed. We constructed mini pipes. Initially, a friend constructed one in his garage. It was 2ft high, complete with ply and curves. We spent nights in there, listening to Sum 41 (…wow…) and skating. We’d put on Pain for Pleasure and then watching as Kemp then went spastic crazy all over the ramp – skating twice as frantically to the music. It was like 90 seconds of madness followed by minutes of laughter: inevitably he’d fall and hurt himself so bad that he’d just be foetal on the base of the ramp, rolling and repeating “AHHHHHH AHAHHAHAAA AAAH!” whilst the rest of us just.. laughed.
As we were doing this, a group of guys in America had just been handed a TV show to display their acts of stupidity. Jackass played the warnings. “Do not try this at home” it said. So we didn’t. We did it on the streets, in the park and in town. We had a camera, and a friend with video editing software. We made our own Jackass. Admittedly, though much inspiration was taken from the show, a lot of the things we did as past times already: the ramp and street skating, dares and suchlike were already part and parcel. So was bridge jumping. We had two bridges on the river near to us, both of which had a nice 18 to 20ft drop from their tops to the river below. So in summer, when it was warm, we jumped. This sounds madly dangerous, but we did check before we started – we swam out, and dove near the impact area to check for trolleys and the like, and whenever we were trying something new (front flips, back flips etc.) we’d have someone in the water on standby (we were safe idiots). By the end we’d had some true stories to tell – Kemp (again) had a “special” where he’d pump himself up to a frenetic scale, then scream “TEMPLE… BABY”, jump, and punch himself in the temple of his head. Why? I forget. I remember watching it for the first time though, and it was so funny we were on our knees with laughter. We’d jump in twos, having mid air punch ups, we’d run along the bridge then jump, if someone was stood on the bridge waiting too long sometimes they’d find themselves falling sooner than anticipated, seeing laughing faces rising above them…
There were many more stories that I haven’t space to put in. We built a lake ramp on the river. We held monster parties. We interacted with girls. We acted like most teenage boys, stupidly. However, I don’t think there were many regrets from that period in our lives. Yes, we all had an embarrassing moment that the rest of us held over us. Yes, I seem to have more than the others. But they remind me of a time spent with very few and very minor cares. There was no employment unless you wanted extra cash, no bills. It was a childhood well spent. People always say that they’d give anything to be young again. I think, teenage angst and moping aside, that my childhood is something I’m quite happy to keep. We all lived it up pretty well. Reliving it just wouldn’t be the same.
From left to right: Jab, # Marc (a.k.a Buddy 1), Pete (at the back), Bob, KEMP, Tat, # Nigel
), but one particular night shone brightest – her, one of the other housemates, 
If I had a nice enough image of myself, I wouldn't keep using a small furry monkey creature.
