When I were a lad
We lived in a place that was a famous WWII fighter base, about 20 miles south of London. This is going back to to around 1973, I reckon.

There was a road in the town that had a lot of derelict, but mostly intact houses in it. We used to go at weekends and basically smash these places up.

This casual vandalism became an increasingly organised (and dangerous) enterprise. Having trashed the inside of the places as far as we could with sticks or stones/bricks etc, we moved on to removing swathes of roof tiles, and general structural parts of the houses.

Sometimes there would be several 'gangs' working on the same house. You'd turn up, and there would be a bunch of kids you'd never met working away at it. You'd just say a casual 'Hi' to them, and set about a different part of the house.

Fond memories include me and my brother senselessly smashing a stud wall down, and shortly afterwards being slightly surprised by the top 1/3 of the chimney stack (I'd guess probably 2 tons of bricks) coming crashing through the ceiling and passing through where we had been standing 5 minutes before, on it's way to the cellar. The kids that had pulled it down had come with hammers, chisels and a block and tackle to effect this operation.

Bear in mind that we were all around 8 - 9 years old.

The last I remember is someone pulling the whole gable end down on one of the houses, which made such a terrific noise that the nearest neighbours, who were a good 1/4 of a mile away, called the police. The whole area was shortly afterwards fenced off, and not long after the houses were all pulled down by grownups. Bastards.

Man, that was fun. But thank Christ the world has changed, and my kids won't be able to get up to shit like that now. lol
( Not Pineapple anymore, Thu 7 Oct 2010, 15:43, Reply)