💯 Mum's Brother sent her this a while ago. 🤣

Your average day playin out that 😆

Theirs also included falling into water after making rope swings, climbing various fences they weren't supposed to and getting filthy on the pit 'rucks'🤣🤣

What’s a ‘pit ruck’? ~ Bobby 👋

It's the hill that's made from the dirt they bring out of the coal mines, loads where Mum's from, they'd been grassed over but the soil is only thin so you get pretty dirty sliding down them.😘🐾🐶

We could achieve the same look helping our neighbour with her coal hole delivery 😆

The coal hole was another good place to play and then get a good hiding for getting dirty🤣🤣🤣

Oh dear. Sounds terrible. 😱 - Bobby 👋

It was a brick building where they stored the coal, dark and good to hide in ( and get utterly covered in coal dust) 😈👋

That’s what I imagined. So much fun getting dirty, right? ~ Bobby 👋

And don’t think Mary had been for a pit ruck? Just asking for a friend. 😄

She had hidden depths Bob 🤫😆

Right. 😜 I haven’t seen her film, but I really liked Nanny McPhee.

😆😆

If it’s good enough for Mary Poppins it’s good enough for me. ~ Bobby 👋

Interesting. I’ve never heard them called that. I always knew them as slag heaps.

Funny local sayings, Mum's always known them as rucks. This is off one of the FB groups for the area she grew up in.

I love language and the regional/local variations and expressions for things. That’s a nicely descriptive piece.

It's brought back some lovely memories for Mum. She can 'speak' Lancashire dialect up to a point and once got asked to 'translate' for a very broad accented patient who was seeing a German Doctor who spoke beautiful English but was bemused by this old lady🤣🤣🤣

My sister had a uni friend who was from Bolton. She had a really broad accent and also spoke quickly. Lovely girl by she should have come with subtitles! 🤣 Ha, a friend who works for the NHS told me he had to translate recently for a Nigerian doctor, who was having great trouble…

We’ve heard that term too Adrian - usually in conjunction with historic gold mining. ~ Bobby 👋

👋 I think it’s quite widely used for the waste from all sorts of mining.

Ahhh - well that would explain it. Was the knee any better today, once it was warmed up? - Bobby 👋

It’s fairly early here, 9:25am, so I’m just starting to get things done. It does seem a little better again though, thanks for asking. I wish the open wounds would hurry up and heal over! I hope you had a good day, pal 👋

Ahhhh! That makes sense. Thanks for explaining Pluto. ~ Bobby 👋🙏

Sharing her proper northern credentials there! 😄

GG had to take the magnifying glass away from Ms brother vod he kept trying to set fire to all her plants 🤣🤣🤣

🤣🤣 Mum and her Brother both got slapped because she locked him in the shed and he smashed the window to get out😬 one of their many escapades🤣🤣

That must be a common northern thing, only I locked MYSELF in our shed with my sister and friend aswell when my parents were out. Dont ask why! None of us can work it out still. It was only when his dad came looking for him that we got out. He had to smash the window too. I wasnt popular that day 😂

🤣🤣 it must be, the shed was the centre of a lot of games. They can't remember why they did it either🤣🤣

🤣🤣🤣 #ShedLife innit? 🤷‍♀️

We were forever looking for a location for our Enid Blyton esq clubhouse. (Obsessed). A garden shed would have been the perfect spot, but we didn’t have one.

Our shed was in the back yard of a terraced house and had all Dad's tools and clutter like bikes in it. Technically it was forbidden to go in there. Very far from Enid Blyton 🤣🤣

M used to play darts in theirs so you stood at one end and the dartboard was on the door, better when it wasn’t raining cos you could have the door open and stand outside. A bit less dangerous depending on your opponent 🤣🤣🤣🎯

Either they had a big shed or you were near to the board 🎯

Near to the board, no one was very good at darts 🤣🤣🤣

This adds a new terror/russian roulette dimension to opening the shed door unexpectedly to get the lanmower out! 😳🎯

Terror darts new for the next Olympics 🤣🤣

BOL 🤣🤣🤣

We had a short-lived clubhouse in a tree made from a bit of a floor that someone had extended a loft opening, a car back seat and a couple of rusty nails. Great until it collapsed dumping us in the nettles below🤣🤣

A treehouse was another unrequited childhood fantasy of ours. That and a telephone in our bedroom. I think we watched far too much American tv! I’m impressed you managed any kind of structure…..even if only briefly!

Mum and her brother were always making dens out of stuff that had been fly-tipped with their friends. It's surprising that no one was killed🤣🤣 We had a party line in the kitchen, so a phone in the bedroom was a dream too.

M liked the idea of a London double decker bus! Anyone else remember The double deckers? 🤣🤣🤣

Yes! Mum now singing the theme tune 🙉

I grew up in the countryside in the middle of nowhere. Not even on a bus route!! We came to London by train once on holiday. I was OBSESSED with double decker buses and the tube!! The double decker TV show was Saturday morning nirvana (when allowed to watch it).

I think its fair to say neither Plutos mam or me fell into the 'Enid Blyton' category of shed dwellers 🤣🤣🤣

🤣🤣🤣Shed or swamp, more like Stig of the Dump. Got it in one and you've never met her🤣🤣

We've led parallel lives for the greater part it seems Pluto 😆

You have🤣🤣

🤣😂🤣

So no picnics with lashings of ginger beer and midnight feasts?

Plenty of lashings but no cigar 😄

🤣🤣🤣

Oh dear! I’m sure it seemed a good reason at the time Helen. ~ Bobby 👋

Reasons I have so often do Bob 😂😂

I bet you’re a very fun person Helen. ❤️🐾

Only in my mind Bob 🤣🤣 The reality for others going along with my 'reasons' have often been less than funny 🙈

Such is life I’m told. As long as the others survived it’s all good surely? They probably learned a lot from the experiences - even if it was mainly on the ‘what not to do’ list. 😆 - Bobby 👋

😆😆 oh yes, being my friend gives you a great insight on what not to do in life!

🤣🤣🤣

😂😂

She was really upset when he set fire to her asparagus fern 🤣🤣🤣

🤣🤣🤣 mmmmm we can see why, at least it wasn't the curtains🤪

🤣🤣🤣

I can imagine!

I bet 🤣🤣

Don’t think she every really forgave him 🤣🤣🤣

🤣🤣

My HooGrandfather was a bit of a pyromaniac when he was a child. He accidentally burned out 235 acres of farming land when trying to smoke some rabbits out of their burrow. So one fern doesn’t sound too bad does it? - Bobby 👋

😱 bet he got in trouble! One fern is small play in comparison 👋

He sure did. Things could definitely have been worse. (I don’t take after my HooGrandfather by the way. ) ~ Bobby 👋

'Bit of a Pyromaniac'.....😳 I think we've bypassd Level Crikey and gone straight to Level Strewth for this Bobby! 😱😆

Yep. He was a bad’un for sure. 🔥

That’s quite a claim to fame Bobby! I’m sure it was an accident and he must have turned out alright to have had your hoomum or hoodad 😈😇🐶🐾😘

True - he didn’t intentionally burn all those acres of grass, but he should have known to put the fire out completely before he left the scene. Don’t worry 🤨 he didn’t let it put him off any of his other crazy future exploits. - Bobby 👋

Like becoming a firefighter 🚒🧑🏻‍🚒🤣🤣🤣

Ha ha! Hopefully their screening processes would have kept him out of the fire service. 😱

😳 bet he was popular! 🤣🤣

Hah! He nearly got sent to juvenile detention (I think that’s like jail for kids)! Not sure how his parents saved him from that cos apparently the farmer wasn’t best pleased. 😡 ~ Bobby 👋

It wasnt even his field?! 😱

Oh no, some poor innocent farmer’s field. HooGrandfather lived in a town. I’m telling you, he was a headstrong and naughty boy. A bit like me now that I come to think of it. 😈😜😄 - Bobby 👋

If you now tell me he was a Gemini i'll just get my coat and leave this scene quietly Bob....😄

Yes it is. He was lucky. The farmer must have been furious!

I imagine so. 😱🐾 ~ Bobby 👋

🤣🤣

Sounds familiar 🤣

I don’t know about all this stuff, but HooMum is smiling and has that distant look in her eyes. ~ Bobby 👋

😆😊

Absolutely! 💯% 👌