Reply to: Rediscovering Your Youth

[bogeyman]

The amazing thing was, one used to go and buy weed-killer, a bag of sugar and matches and nobody battered an eyelid.

True. I used to regularly go the the chemists when I was a lad and buy several pounds of saltpeter (Potasium Nitrate). The old boy behind the counter used to give me odds and sods like test tubes and conical flasks to encourage me in my boyish enthusiasm for mayhem and destruction!

P.s. this was all started by borrowing a library book ('for boys') that explained how to make explosive fuses (soak window sash cord in super-saturated Potasium Nitrate solution) amongst other things! Can you imagine that now?

[Paddy]

Now yer talking... dear dead days beyond recall, before the Irish troubles, making weedkiller bombs and mortars and rockets... and I've still got all my fingers and eyes... got tinnitus though...

You'd have the armed response unit around these days before you could say "light the blue touch paper & retire immediately"...

The amazing thing was, one used to go and buy weed-killer, a bag of sugar and matches and nobody battered an eyelid.

[Paddy]

Had to make do with balsawood glue and paint and later on making short wave radios out of copper wire crystals and a cat’s whisker, (the cat wasn’t too happy about that)

[wendigo100]

Worked with one guy who was really into model railways (toy trains if you wanted to wind him up) but the guy was an artist! He created worlds in a small scale that I could only marvel at.

I worked with a bloke like that. His choo-choo club owned a big three-storey house in Harrow, one floor of which they had knocked about to create a massive railway world. One tunnel went through the bog, over the cistern, so you could listen to the trains behind your head while you had a shit.

The thing is, it took about 16 of them to run it, most of whom seemed to be sitting UNDER the layout, just changing signals and ringing bells, and never seeing a train.

Fecking incredible.

[bogeyman]

not boys though as this is sodomy and evil in the eyes of the lord.

Chico.

I dunno. Most of the world's greatest philosophers got off on it. As did most of the world's greatest explorers. Bummers all!

[MarillionFan]

I have found that the secret to internal youth is to have sex with young girls, not boys though as this is sodomy and evil in the eyes of the lord.

Chico.

[bogeyman]

This is true, such are the perils of working in IT I guess

Mailman

I have worked in IT for all of my adult life and never really experienced such things.

Occasionally, blokes would turn up with a new putter and everyone would wank around all day putting a ball into a paper cup with it.

Worked with one guy who was really into model railways (toy trains if you wanted to wind him up) but the guy was an artist! He created worlds in a small scale that I could only marvel at. No way could I ever posess his level of dexterity, observation, patience and skill. He had three sons and they were all mad for it too. One of his lads is now an up-and-coming, world-renowned architect.

More Meccano and Lego for the masses please.

[Mailman]

What sad, sad, sad fecking place do you work in? Sound like that 'IT Crowd' show.

Grown men bringing in (and bragging about) kids toys. FFS

This is true, such are the perils of working in IT I guess

Mailman

[DaveB]

In my previous life as a permie the office I was in had two shades of carpet tiles laid to show the path around the office so the harder of thinking wouldnt get lost on the way to to the coffee machine. It also made an excellent race track for a couple of miniature RC cars. We ended up putting down red and white striped tape on the corners and black and white for the finish line

[bogeyman]

I once worked with a bloke who had scale model star trek tng toys all over his desk.

We used to steal one every day, replace it with one we'd stolen the previous day just to feck his brain up.

Sounds like his brain was sufficiently fecked up already.

[Churchill]

I once worked with a bloke who had scale model star trek tng toys all over his desk.

We used to steal one every day, replace it with one we'd stolen the previous day just to feck his brain up.

[bogeyman]

One of the lads here at work brought his star wars lego toys in (the rolling robot one that pops up) to brag about so the following day I took in my die cast battle cruiser from the late 80's (which still has the princess laea, or how ever the hell you spell it, ship in its hull)...he took one look at my cooler toy, picked up his lego star wars rolling robot thingy that pops up and left without a further word

Mailman

What sad, sad, sad fecking place do you work in? Sound like that 'IT Crowd' show.

Grown men bringing in (and bragging about) kids toys. FFS

[Mailman]

One of the lads here at work brought his star wars lego toys in (the rolling robot one that pops up) to brag about so the following day I took in my die cast battle cruiser from the late 80's (which still has the princess laea, or how ever the hell you spell it, ship in its hull)...he took one look at my cooler toy, picked up his lego star wars rolling robot thingy that pops up and left without a further word

Mailman

[wendigo100]

Apart from that, I mis-spent my youth in the woods with improvised explosives knocking over trees :P

I know someone else who did that. Have you ever worked at Abbey National in Glasgow?

[Xenophon]

I loved my Lego, but have no idea how many kg of it I had. All I know is it was heavy...