Wacky stuff you did as a kid; and what might you be up to were you born this past decade….

Never sure either. There are days recently where I take my 11 year old daughter to capture live rabbit to eat - to go horse riding - and to go training with a friend of ours on how to handle and care for and use rifles. When her friends call over and we find out what they have been doing with their time - it seems they have been doing much the same stuff online in "Fortnite" or one of that ilk.

Seems a lot of her friends call over now because she is guaranteed to take them out of the house and do stuff they do not know how to do on their own without her. If they call around to anyone else they end up on a phone or console.

Not easy where I live now - but when visiting the kids grand parents recently I taught them the old game of "kerbs" where you stand on opposite sides of the road with a ball and try to hit the Kerb on your opponents side (for 1 point) so that it bounces back and you can catch it (bonus 5 points).

Had totally forgotten about that game and playing it as a kid but was just standing outside the parents house and I saw the kerb and it suddenly rushed back at me out of nowhere so I had to run off and get the ball and show the kids.

Not just football on the roads though. I remember "rounders" which was like a very small area form of cricket/baseball. Can't remember the exact rules or play style now but looking back on how tiny my cul de sac road was I can not remember how we never broke the window of a car or house.

Kick the can definitely is a phrase I remember well but right now my brain will not remind me what it actually was or what it entailed. In fact now I think about it the specifics of Rounders escapes me too. I know I played it a lot and it was some kind of baseball/cricket derivative but I can not remember what the goals and rules and specifics actually were.

Which is odd cause I know I played both a hell of a lot with the kids around the Cul De Sac and from "over the wall". But no notion now what I was doing :)

ok - so what was kick the can? Was that the one where you had to creep up on the coke can before the person who was "it" spotted you coming?

I am probably crediting him with more than his due - but a few years ago the singer "Glen Hansard" made a music video for one of his songs which he recorded somewhere in Africa. And during the music video we get to watch one of the locals - an adult male - swing off a contraption made from a tree - and I wondered was Glen doing that to hark back to the old days when we used to do things like that hanging ropes off trees in St Annes Park. Back when throwing ourselves down stairs was a game and not an insurance claim or a medical emergency :)

I miss the days when I used to literally sprint along the rocks in Howth without anyone screaming at me that I might break a leg. Though I was lucky - and I am sure the parents who had a kid who did break a leg look back on it differently :)