Boy's fun

Well, of course there are many that will disagree. Oh but he did, for the first years of his life, I think he would have done, and he more than most. When he was small I believe he would have done - again his tribute to Diana, I think we will all remember. Maybe we should blame the Romans.

My early years of fun was taken up with things like marbles, tiddlywinks, conkers, snakes and ladders. As I got older, they became brook jumping, newting, bikes, then football, cricket. At 14 I took up fishing (still go now 56 years later), air gun shooting. Schoolboy football was great fun, school teams from 10 to 16. In fact as a young boy, all sport was great fun!!

Mick. Then just look at mine, 1937 to 1946. You should see what I and others crammed in. At around 18 asked to guard about a dozen 'lifers' from what had been death row, who the Yanks had about three weeks beforehand - was just one of life's little things. At twenty camping out on a railway platform for several days - yes, shaving in cold water - because of plague. Fun to recall right now but oh my, at the time - ugh.

Now as an older boy during lock down, I am having great fun completing 1000 piece jigsaws. In particular the WASGIJ versions.

I also enjoy 1000 piece (and larger) jigsaw puzzles, but I'm not keen on "chocolate box" ones. Most of mine are old maps or something similar. When I have finished them I frame the ones I want to keep to hang on the wall. I've got more puzzles than wall space so from time to time I change or move them around - it's a bit like having your own art gallery

Wooden trollies, made with old pram wheels and any timber you could find.

Yes, we had a few different version - attempts - at those, starting at age eight. We had tons of wood as our old wooden garage was falling down so Dad demolished it. The first attempt had two 3x2 longitudinal rails for the chassis, with floorboard planks nailed across and sawn off flush. It looked impressive. It was "designed" to accommodate at least two people, with an even larger wooden raised seat at the rear. And it was at least a yard wide. Dad's first comment when he saw it was that it would need a licence to be taken on the pavement! The hard part was the front steering, which we didn't have, so we got the bright idea of it having 4 fixed wheels, with individual brake levers for the rear ones. The brakes were simply a piece of wood, with a round nail for the pivot, that made contact with the rubber wheels The idea was that like a tank, you'd steer round a corner by slowing down the one side. Guess what - it didn't work. Back to the drawing board. Someone had dumped a kiddie's tricycle in the bushes, so we brought this back, as it had a nice big front wheel with handlebars and pedals. Brilliant. We hacksawed the front part off the trike, drilled a couple of fixing holes through the steel using Dad's Black and Decker, then fixed it to the underside of the huge wooden trolley by bashing in a couple of 2" no. 6 woodscrews using a hammer. The front wheel was so big that the whole thing appeared to be going uphill, but the idea was that the thing could be pedalled by sitting right at the front. What could possibly go wrong? On its maiden voyage, we pushed it all of 30 yards from our house to the start of a descent, but after about another 5 yards the whole thing fell to bits, the front wheel and its accoutrements having parted company with rest of the trolley. A useful lesson learned is that woodscrews might be made of steel, but no. 6s are piddly weak things, not up to the job. Eventually we got it right, and had much fun, nearly killing myself once when a front wheel hit a concrete wall at speed and it pitched both me and the trolley into the main road which was a busy bus route. Part of the learning process.

Many, many hours of fun with our trolley, or "go-cart" as we called it back in the 70s. I did get a bit carried away though, and pimped ours up with bits of carpet, my mum's old coat, cushioned seat, side-walls, and even a boot at the back to store sweets - modelled here by my "little brother"....

What a great pic Rob. The Rolls Royce of carts with a leopardskin interior.

Cheers Mick. Of course, we didn't exactly treat it as you would a Rolls Royce - it got thrown about a bit. We'd try daft things, like seeing how many of us could balance on it at once, while whizzing down the pavement! I think it only took three of us though, before the back axle gave way and snapped..... good ol' dad to the rescue with a home-made bracket and big screws!

You ain't changed a bit Rob!

Well.... apart from the thinning hair, specs, fatter belly..... and the fact that it really isn't me - it is my younger brother in the photo, who was 9 1/2 years younger! (Still is, actually!)

You can see the family resemblance though. The shape of the go cart is familiar, but ours never had a covering. Our go cart run was a right hand bend on a slope which resulted in elbow damage and a fair bit of gravel rash. Injuries which would have seen an adult in a hospital bed were washed off under a tap and threatened with TCP if the Acriflex didn't resolve any infection. We were bonkers.

That's the traditional design of home-made go-cart that we used to disdainfully refer to as "a plank on 4 wheels". We thought ours would be superior to everyone else's because we had an unlimited supply of wood, so it was going to be Rolls-Royced. It had three long 2x3" timbers for the chassis, the central one eventually added to make the steering work (after a fashion), and numerous floorboards (=planks). We though the bigger and heavier the better. In reality it weighed a ton and was cumbrous, and took a lot of pushing. Plus, it was much more difficult to stop once bombing downhill, especially with its non-existent braking system. It was so wide that the larger (pram's) rear wheels' axle was too short, so it was sawn in half, and each short half axle was fixed to the woodwork by means of nails bashed into the wood and bend round using a Brummy screwdriver (hammer). You can imagine how often one of the rear wheels' axles came off. So a bit of ingenuity was called for. I decided we need a longer composite axle. One evening, my mate and I, in black coats, under cover of darkness, visited the rear yard of a nearby factory where I knew they kept a pile of long steel rods. All left outside (probably to weather) in an open car park, no security lights, camera or even a locked gate. A length of the correct diameter (about 3/8", okay 10mm if you're a youngster) was brought back to our garage. We only needed 3' 6" of the stuff, but had to carry a whole length which was several yards long. Once fitted, we never had another wheel come off.

Hi Slim, spot on about the bent nails to hold the axles on with. We had the same problem until my grandad showed me how to use pipe clips that were packed out to hold the right diameter.