My Dad raced a fixed wheel bike for a club in London who raced at Paddington rec, I tried riding it once as a youngster , what a nightmare, once you take your feet off the pedals you cant get them back on , as the pedals are whizzing round like a combined harvester , and you either slow down or stop, or go along the road with your legs sticking out to avoid the spinning pedals.
Never did get into pushbikes, where as motorbikes 
Am i dreaming this, but i seem to recall the fixed wheel had no brakes!
It was a long time ago.
Iām surprised no one has mentioned fireworks yet. I recall the days fifty years ago when November 6th was a day for counting the casualties from the day before. Back then bangers really were bangers!
One year a local lad tied twopenny āCannonā bangers to cheap rockets with the idea of an air burst. One fell into our garden. In the stupidity of youth, having watched it fall, I inspected it, decided it had gone off and carried it inside to show my father. He had just come home from work and was in his usual position, crouched with his heels on the coal fire hearth so he could warm his backside whilst reading the Derby Evening Telegraph which was spread out on the carpet. Having had a short conversation with him I absentmindedly threw the remains of the firework on the fire. The twopenny cannon exploded a few seconds later, with a very loud bang and the fiery contents of the hearth erupted out against my fatherās back. He leapt up and almost head butted the wall opposite. The Derby Evening Telegraph caught fire and hot coals burned holes in the carpet. To say I was unpopular is a big understatement! To his dying day I donāt think he ever believed me when I said I was sure it had already gone off!
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Great! I visualised that in comic strip mode, brilliant. 
I remember those tuppenny āCannonsā, Iām sure that they were re-labelled, surplus MOD āThunderflashesā! 
What memories! 
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I know that (on the face of it) has nothing to do with being deadly or dangerous, but does anyone else remember the SMELL (wonderful! 
) of REAL DENIM that was used in the STAND UP ON THEIR OWN JEANS we had in the '50ās and early '60ās until that wimpy denim appeared for āhippieā jeans 
. One of my fondest memories of youth, 
and sitting in a bath of cold water to get them to shrink to size! Maybe the original dye used now banned elements, who knows! 
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Yes.
And the Leviās guarantee to replace them should they rip? My mate Pete had several pairs of Leviās over the years on that guaranteeā¦
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Yeah, I remember the original Levis , they were like cardboard and took a dozen washes to soften them up and fade them a little, they were as tough as leather.
As for fireworks , I remember the real Canon bangers , us schoolkids could buy them anywhere, one kid pushed one in some dog poo and lit it, youāve never seen a bunch of kids run away so fast , aināt kids gross! 
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I have to say it but the original Leviās were great, they were made in the USA, but once they started making them overseas the quality plummeted! I guess that the originals were in fact work clothes and therefore hard-wearing but once they became more of an item of fashion the durability was unnecessary so a lower grade of cloth was used. I donāt know, Iām just thinking out loud!
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We used to stick the bangers in a metre length of plastic hosepipe. They fitted really tightly, which multiplied the force they went off with by many times. Then we used to hold the other end like a wand, playing chicken. The explosion blew the end off the hose (and probably damaged eardrums). We then passed the remainder of the hose to the next idiot in line to repeat the exercise. After a few goes, the hose got really short and the excitement factor grew! If you refused to accept the challenge, you were chicken but got to keep all your fingersā¦
The son of a colleague of my late Fatherās had apparently filled old brass bedknobs with gunpowder from bangers and made hand grenades. He had one explode prematurely and lost a hand!
Looking back, Iām surprised I survived as long as I haveā¦
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We can laugh about it now , but regarding fireworks , thatās just reminded me , we used to make a Genie out of the gunpowder in a half dozen or so bangers, we would put it in small pile, place a small rocket with the touch paper by the edge of the gunpowder pile , one of us would chuck a match on the gunpowder which would instantly go whoosh with a blinding flash leaving a small mushroom cloud , this would in turn ignite the rocket would shoot down the then empty road, Iām suprised none of us where injured 
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Strange how memories come back like opening a dusty old book that youāve not read for years!
Some acquaintances of mine apparently got into big trouble in the very early 1970s by making explosives. I wonāt publish how they did it (and being ex military I do know) but they needed one chemical ingredient that couldnāt be sold to minors, so they persuaded the unwitting mother of one of them to get it from a local chemist! The father of one of the group was a plumber so they had easy access to off-cuts of half inch copper piping for cartridge cases. They got more adventurous and made bigger and bigger bangs. Then they got hold of a length of three inch diameter copper pipe and they made a really big banger. They lived by the river and jammed it in the river bank in a field next to the local ārecā. When it went off, it was very loud indeed and blew a big hole in the river bank, and caused a mushroom cloud and shower of debris, causing local panic in their village. An old chap recalled that a German bomber had jettisoned a stick of bombs in that area during WW2 so the police called the Bomb Disposal Team out. They soon found traces of fresh copper pipe and realised it wasnāt from WW2 at all! I donāt know what happened to the lads but I do know that the mother of the one who bought the chemical ingredient soon put two and two together! One of them, many years later, got involved in a serious firearms offence and did ātimeā inside for it.
Life was interesting back then. Instead of doing stuff on a Play station, folks did things for real!
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Our metalwork class at school circa 1957 once proved a bit dangerous. Weād been given the opportunity to work on our own projects(?), be it making or repairing something on our own initiative. One boy came in, went to the very large vice at the end of the room, fixed his project into it and then began to welt the living daylights out of it with a large hammer and cold chisel. The master very impressed by this show of youthful enthusiasm went over to inspect this work. The next thing he grabbed the lad and chased us all out of the workshop. It turned out the the boyās project was to dismantle an intact, live HE 20mm cannon shell heād found. The houses in his road backed onto land adjoining RAF Hornchurch which had been an active Spitfire station and was now being turned into a housing estate, and heād found it while exploring the site. Naturally the bomb disposal people were called and took it away. School could be exciting at times.
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The stupid things the Yoof do. I remember some of them all too well.
At Uni in the 1960s one of our crowd was a keen helper backstage in the theatre, and there was a ready supply of out-of-date maroons from the stage pyro-effects store.
Of course these needed to be safely disposed of.
What better than an open space? The common?
That soon paled, and the next Test was boosted by the old trick of soaking an expensive multi-layer soft bog roll in the usual accelerant (stage hand was a Chemist and knew about these things), allowing it to dry for a few days, and then detonate the maroon inside it. Much better bang.
How about in the centre of the hall of residence quadrangleās grass, for a bit of echo, preferably around midnight for maximum entertainment (of the mischievous few)? And two bog rolls for double enhancement? Excellent big bang! Shame about the small craterā¦ Doesnāt look like molesā¦
Someone (another student) complained.
So a cunning scheme was planned for the next night. The groundsmen had been putting some short fence posts along a path, and made the mistake of leaving the borer beside their supplies.
A suitable hole, deep enough for all five remaining bog rolls, was drilled into the soft grassy earth bank outside the complainants window, it was surprising he was not woken by the muffled giggles outside.
Then the final Midnight Maroon was set off. But instead of the much anticipated shower of mud and grass there was nothing but a muffled thud. The unhappy disappointed miscreants went to bed in their usual drunken stupor.
Next morning as those in the Hall was about to go to breakfast, a gardener was mowing the grass on that bank with the lightweight machine, and when he walked over the site of the Ultimate Underground Test he dropped into the hidden pit up to his armpits.
There was a great deal of new Bristolian vocabulary learned by the students that morning.
And not being a Chemist or a Stage Hand, no, I was not one of them, merely one of many amused witnesses.
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Now that story Richard will take some beating. Laughed with tears!!! 
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Oh, go on then!
My eldest boy was in the cubs, it was Dads n Lads weekend coming up. Scouts there too! Fantastic weekend. Anyway. The scouts had a spud gun, a monster of a thing, on a tripod too! 3" tube about 6ā long, the chamber got loaded with a massive potato die cut using a section of pipe with the leading edge honed to razor sharpness. Loaded, capped and about half a tin of elnette hair spray was introduced. Piezo ignition cobbled from an old gas heater or such like, provided the ignition. Seven, or maybe eight larch lap fence panels were erected some distance away, one behind the other about 18" apart. Excitement mounting, everyone stood waiting. A scout was chosen to pull the trigger and BANG! The projectile went through every single panel and continued in a downwards trajectory until it came to rest in the woodlands at the edge of camp! Was a fine spectacle to see (and hear) 
the remainder of the weekend was not as exciting apart from playing short cricket and eventually I had to miss as I was knackered!
Barrie
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Bloominā 'eck! Good job nobody was walking the boundary of the woods. Coronerās verdict - cause of death a low-flying King Edward potato!
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I reckon it would probably have killed someone at close quarters Roger!
Barrie
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Coronerās verdict - Heās had his chips. 
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Years ago you used to get a free toy/ model submarine etc in cereal packets, a mate of mine who always had loads of pocket money but was always in trouble, bought a box of sugar puffs for the toy , it was a baking hot day in London and there was a top less builder mixing up cement in an open basement area , and matey tipped the whole box of sticky sugar puffs overy him which stuck to his back and sweaty bald head , I wonāt repeat the language but he come running up the steps looking like something from a horror film
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Now that couldāve been a ādeadly pursuitā!
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