A little nostalgia

Plashing Vole's Friday conundrum was about what sort of leaves are the best for piling up and running through. I used to love doing this as a child and I still cannot resist the urge to kick a pile of crisp leaves, especially if someone else has tidily swept them up! I loved autumn... helping my dad collect up all the leaves in the garden and barrowing them to the compost heap (though the year I put the garden fork through my foot was not the best!), conker collecting followed by the conker fights, bonfire night. Now, just the smell of a crisp autumn morning can bring back all the childhood memories.
When I think back to all the things I enjoyed doing when I was young, it was invariably the things that cost no money that created the most pleasure for me- making perfume out of rose petals (smelled nice the day you made it but fairly rank once it had been in the jar a day or two!), making dens, recreating the Olympics in the back garden, playing 40-40 (a cross between hide-and-seek and tic with a base), putting on shows in each others houses, making things out of junk, ball games and skipping rope games, dressing up and role play games.
I loved bike riding and roller skating. Sunday mornings when I was about 10 were eagerly awaited as my Dad used to take me and my brother to the local roller-disco whilst mum was preparing the Sunday lunch...what could be better than skating round a sports hall in circles for an hour to the likes of Aha and Wham! In the winter (when winter really was winter) we made huge snowmen and igloos and we had a fab sledging field just down the lane- I used to get the same mix of feelings of excitement and anxiety the first time down the hill that in later years I got from going on a rollercoaster.
If you were to ask me what were my favourite things to do as a child, these are the sorts of things I would tell you about. What are your memories of childhood and the games you used to play?