The best thing about growing up in Teesside was …..

Back garden creeping - some of my happiest memories 😀
Having a long field just 100m in front of our house for foota/cricket/dens/hiding
Finding a porno mag in a bush
Charging lads 10p each to look at porno mag hidden under the lpg tank in our dads brand new tranny van
Stewarts park - fishing for stickle backs with worms tied to cotton
Hardly any cars parked on roads - hardly any during the day the all on drives at night - so we could safely play foota and kerby
Foxes and hounds
Playing out ALL day in the summer and lasting on one or two 5p Mr Freeze ice pops
Taking back stacks of Lowcocks bottles in carrier bags tied to each handle of my raleigh burner for the 10p deposits
Playing cricket and being the only lad in the area who actually owned a 'real corgy'
The Boro
Being in a gang
Junior Reds in Pally Park with Gary Gill - meeting Malcolm Allison and getting in the match for nowt
Getting picked at under 11s for Marton
Bee hunting with jam jars
Emptying the fairy liquid into a cup so you could use the squeezy bottle for a water fight on the road in the summer
Camping in the garden with your mates then wandering the streets at 2am and oggy raiding
Nike tracksuits/cagoules and beads on the laces of your trainees (nike division)
Spectrum48k
Spending most of the summer fishing at Poole lake
Going to Wembley to watch England with the school by bus
Farah trousers from Uptons for school
Going round the houses washing cars
 
The football pitches around Billingham always had a full scale match on you could join in with.

The youth clubs full of sober teenagers and the bloke who dropped the footballs, cricket gear, rounders gear etc off around town fields for the kids to use in the summer.

Billingham Forum, lots for kids of all ages to do there without costing the Earth.

Tennis courts at Billingham Campus and John Whitehead Park.
 
Footy in the road with few houses having cars then.
Going out at 9am with a bag of sarnies and a drink
beck jumping from Emmerson Ave up to Fairy dell and not coming back till 6pm. 8 hr games of footy at Constantine field or Tollesy field with people going home for dinner or tea then joining in again.
Hide and seek , Cannon , whizzo stop in the road.
Following the Boro home and away with my Mam ,Dad and Brother.
 
When working on Middlesbrough Station, during summer holidays, it was the Zetland, Bridge and the Grand. Home time was the Endeavour and the Grenadier on Trimdon Ave (whilst looking for the rabbit). Matchday was the Yellow Rose. School days was Acklam Hall and Head Joe Hurst - happy days
 
In the late 1960s/early 1970s - gangs of young lads getting together to have mega football matches on waste ground on Sundays.

Also living in a mixed urban/rural environment - with woods and fields next to housing estates and also urban things to do like Boro games, shopping centres. cinemas, old industrial sites.
 
All the mates I made growing up. Studying form with my Grandad as a nipper. Going rifle shooting at Wilton club with my Dad. Saturday tea at our Grans, when you couldn't have cakes if you hadn't eaten the sarnies. Playing footy on the common, playing cricket over the Stap school field. Going up Eston Hills, the SS castle. My first racer, a Claud Butler. Listening to our Gran and our Mam and some of my Uncles talk politics. Playing footy in the gym at Wilton club, where my Grandad was a caretaker. Playing clevio, hide and seek and generally just loving beinng a kid. Playing wall ball by myself on a Sunday morning when most of my mates, who were Catholic, went to Church. Figuring this Church lark must be good, if it's better than playing footy with your mates on a Sunday morning. Going to Catholic Church ( just the once), realising that it was a lot worse than playing footy and only getting told afterwards by my mates that they were forced to go to Church. Starting to go to Boro matches in 1964 and have never, not once regretted it. Who said, nostalgia was a thing of the past.
 
Rofesleg said:
Climbing trees in Fox's wood, beck jumping along a massive network of becks, messing about on a ginormous building site.
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We grew up as neighbours. I loved the old barn on the beck walking down towards low lane. There was a barn owl in there.
 
Personally, growing up on the doorstep of Ayresome Park, being lucky enough to be taken to the match from an early age, going to a school next door to the ground and meeting the players at dinner break as well as spending the holidays watching training at Ayresome and Hutton Road.
Apart from that, everything, golden years.
 
I saw a kid getting a croggy the other day and was telling the wife about three of us on a bike. We all had bikes but that would have taken the fun out of it.

I was sat on the handle bars, Spanna stood up pedalling and Micky Callan sat on the seat.

That was the summer I left school and one of the happiest and carefree times of my life. 👍
 
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