Down The Woods

A Memory of Ouston.

I grew up at 23 Alford, and just at the bottom of the street were "the woods". Our gang used to virtually live down the woods, climbing trees, lighting fires, making swings, bird nesting, damning the stream so we could swim and use upturned car roofs as dingys. We all carried Bowey knives to make spears and arrows to throw at each other, camped out in the summer hols, basically do all the things that we shouldn't do!! Apart from falling out of the odd tree and the odd scrap we never came to any harm. Better than any computer game of today!!! We used to love going down in the winter so we could sledge down the winding path in the "little wood". We used to play football on the grass at the start of the woods and on the corner of our street with jumpers for posts and only stopped by the odd car coming down or being shouted in by your mam for the bath on a Sunday night for school on Monday. Aye those were the days - though we were poor.

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