Climbing trees, bows and arrows, scrapes and madcap adventures... It was what childhood was like before the digital slavery of youngsters through screens and devices.
Memoir of carefree Ludlow upbringing written as tribute to childhood pals
And now that era is evoked in a new memoir by John Clegg telling of his upbringing in 1950s and early 1960s Ludlow. Called "Young Thoughts Of A Man," and published on January 16, it captures a time when in his neighbourhood only one house had a phone, until the late 1950s only one had a television, and laundry was done in the sink or boiler before being wrung with a mangle.
Yet it was a magical time in which children invented their own games and roamed far and wide from an early age without their parents fretting.
Countryside beckoned invitingly on the doorstep of his Clee View home, aptly named as in the distance loomed Titterstone Clee Hill, planting an ambition in young John to climb it one day - an ambition which would be fulfilled in an epic expedition.
"This book is a tribute to those I shared those escapades with, for we literally had the time of our lives," said John, who would become an antiques dealer in the town and now lives in Croatia.
"The first part has brief recollections of the Isle of Man, the move to the Compasses Hotel in Ludlow, then on to living in the remoteness beyond Orleton, before a year spent in Shrewsbury.
"The second section describes life and escapades living on the very outskirts of Ludlow, up to time of the dreaded 11-plus exam, and the third part is South Shropshire life up until 1964.
"I've made that the cut-off point, for that was the end of our age of innocence."
He said it was the book he had always wanted to write, and in an attempt to preserve some of his treasured memories he had jotted them down in verse form, explaining why the book is a mixture of prose and poetry.
John was born in the Isle of Man in January 1948, living there for the first two and a half years of his life. The family moved to England, but his father did not, and he was later told that he had died.
Among the more ambitious adventures he recounts is when he and his pals discovered that the Ledwyche stream joined the River Teme just before Tenbury, and the Teme flowed into the River Severn. They came up with a scheme to build a raft and make a trip from Ludlow all the way to Gloucester and the Bristol Channel.
Unable to get their hands on oil drums, they had to settle on gallon cans as flotation devices. Unsurprisingly, the craft failed its trials on the Ledwyche.
John also tells how he managed to pass his 11-plus exam, taking him to Ludlow Grammar School, which was then at the bottom of Mill Street. But the new school was to be an unhappy experience at first, the misery being aggravated by trouble at home as relations between his mother and stepfather reached crisis point, meaning he became a boarder at Dinham Hall.
Big changes were afoot as he and his young pals began to turn into young men, started to pay regard to their appearance - and the opposite sex - and The Beatles were in the vanguard of a music revolution.
In 1964 John and his friend Francis Lochbaum were to found a youth club at Friary Hall in Ludlow, raising the money to get it off the ground, and with local MP Jasper More coming along for the opening ceremony. The club was a success and ran for a number of years.
John says "Thoughts of a Young Man" is available at the Castle Bookshop in Ludlow, priced £11.99, and also at outlets on the internet such as Amazon.
He says he is going to see how it is received before deciding whether to write a follow-up memoir covering his later teenage years.
