Knocking on doors & running away.


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One of my favourite pastimes when I was a Kid on Glapton Road was knocking on doors & legging it, all nearby streets were fair game. :) You had to know which entries were dead ends, you didn't want to get trapped up one of them, (I was never big enough to be able to climb over the walls). Of course the peeps got fed up & told Mam & a good hiding soon followed. It didn't stop me though because it was so much fun, it was worth the odd slapping. :) :)

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These day the modern equivalent of knock-and-go will be someone trying to sell double glazing, or a student-type asking you to donate money to some charity.

They knock on the door and if you haven't answered within 3 seconds, they've gone (which is a good thing).

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Not me, but I recall near bonfire nite, peoplle leaving a lit penny banger in dog muck on the doorstep, knocking and running away.

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Not me, but I recall near bonfire nite, peoplle leaving a lit penny banger in dog muck on the doorstep, knocking and running away.

Strewth I wasn't that bad, Mam would have killed me. I was fessing up my Meadows crimes at work when a Lady who lived on Wilford Grove told us she used to pour milk through letter boxes (She looked very ashamed). That must have honked when it went sour..

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When I moved to Bestwood Village the local kids said "knock on that door & run, it'll be fun" I didn't know the Village copper lived there, but they did, the rotten toerags. :) He told Mam & another good hiding followed. :)

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That is what we used to do aswell mudgie49 and then put newspaper up the drain spout and set light to it so it made a right roar up the pipe.

Another good one (we thought) was to lift the gates off then swap them around.

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Another good one (we thought) was to lift the gates off then swap them around.

That's reminded me of a slight variation on that one.

Lift the gate off the hinges, but then leave it resting loosely so that it looked like it was still fixed properly. Then when the owner came to open the gate it would fall off in their hands.

Hilarious. We thought.

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The ingenuity exampled in this thread just goes to show that most Nottingham youngsters were actually criminal masterminds!

I have to confess to doing the door knocking thing (amongst many other japes). A bunch of us managed to tie a whole line of terraced house door knockers on James Street together one time and rat-a-tat-tat on all of them before legging it, pronto.

We used to have a 'special' victim in Arnold that we would prime ourselves for. For this man we termed The Runner as he would unfailingly give chase at a fair lick (and we knew it). I kid you not, on the times we were feeling particularly brave enough to disturb him we would actually get down in sprinter's blocks position on the pavement ready for the inevitable. Yes - he did catch us (once). It wasn't pretty.

Pretty soon afterwards I joined Notts Athletic Club at Harvey Haddon after all this training.

0511-1008-1201-0044_Terrified_Man_Runninrunaway.gif

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I remember a thread to a door knocker and rattled it from a distance.

Very frustrating that the door was knocked soon after the door was closed.

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I found that a very short length of thin white string, about an inch long could be inserted into the blue fuse of a banger. Light the string which would then just smolder. Place banger wherever you wanted to do your dirty work an saunter away. You could be safely in the next street before hearing the results.

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What a load of hooligans you all are...lol. We used to knock on doors and do 'spirit tapping' but we never tried to blow them up, like loppylugs...lol.

colly0410, you must have been a hard so and so to have survived all those good hidings...lol.

Another thing we used to do was cut out the center of a sugarbeet, cut out holes for the eyes, nose and mouth and place a small candle inside. At night we'd light the candle and scare people in the dark.

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Me and a mate, 'John the Mad One' used to frequent the top path of The Forest by the Graveyard at night.

Dressed in hoods (Dufflecoats) and swinging a lantern with a burning candle in, whilst howling!

Saw a few people run back up the path when we stepped out in front of them. :)

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colly0410, you must have been a hard so and so to have survived all those good hidings...lol.

Yeah I did get a few slappings, mind you I deserved most of them, lol. Mam used to say you're never to old to get a slap. She passed away 19 years ago & I still miss her, I loved her so much...

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Jeeze if my late Mum had known what we got up to, she'd have flayed me alive..

We called it "Ghost Knocking" a variation, as we nearly got caught a few times was to tie a long length of string to a door knocker, which gave us a long head start.. Then we found out with a bit of ingenuity we could tie several pieces of string top several knockers with the same effect.....

Yep the dog poo , sloppier the better, in a paper bag, set on fire on the doorstep and a rap on the door was hilarious, watching some poor mug in his bedroom slippers stomp the fire out on his step...'

There's more, but I doubt the 4th, 5th and other amendments would protect me.......LOL

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WE DID GHOST KNOCKING TOO ON DEBILL ST USED COTTON TIED TO SEVERAL DOORS THEN TOOK IT TO AN ENTRY ON OPPOSIT SIDE OF THE RD THEN PULLIT TO BREAK THE COTTONAND WATCH ALL THE PEOPLE COME OUT THE DOORS. OUR MUMS ALWAYS WONDERED WHY THEY NEVER GOT ANY COTTON LEFT WHEN THEY NEEDED IT.

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These day the modern equivalent of knock-and-go will be someone trying to sell double glazing, or a student-type asking you to donate money to some charity.

They knock on the door and if you haven't answered within 3 seconds, they've gone (which is a good thing).

Or they could be "Nottingham Knockers " ! Seems like there has been plenty of training !!

I don't know if they operate on their own turf but there are groups of lads that buy stuff like dishcloths and ironing board covers from a Nottingham wholesaler and travel to other towns in a shared car and try and sell them door-to-door at inflated prices .

We even get them down here 300 miles away and they look puzzled when I ask what part of Nottingham they are from , after hearing the accent .

http://www.essex.police.uk/news_features/features_archive/2011/march/warning_over_nottingham_knock.aspx

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And the village of Radcliffe was not immune from door knocking, bell ringing, newspapers up the drainpipe and lit as well as crackers thrown at front doors. We thought it was great fun, particularly when there was nothing else left to do at night.

Amazing the number of adults back in the 50s who had no sense of fun!!

I got the belt or the back of the hand when inevitably it got back to my old man what I had been doing and yes, it bloody hurt. Strange thing was that my father in later years told me of the very same things that he and his mates used to get up to when they were kids.

Talk about 'do as I say but not as I do'.

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Or they could be "Nottingham Knockers " ! Seems like there has been plenty of training !!

I don't know if they operate on their own turf but there are groups of lads that buy stuff like dishcloths and ironing board covers from a Nottingham wholesaler and travel to other towns in a shared car and try and sell them door-to-door at inflated prices .

We even get them down here 300 miles away and they look puzzled when I ask what part of Nottingham they are from , after hearing the accent .

http://www.essex.police.uk/news_features/features_archive/2011/march/warning_over_nottingham_knock.aspx

David, we had those lads door knocking and trying to sell us all that rubbish when we lived in Hertfordshire. I recognised the accent and this lad said he got the stuff from Rolleston Drive, Arnold. He looked very wary at me when I said I grew up there and knew the area really well. I didn't want or need their tat but would send them off with a couple of quid. Get the odd doorstep seller here in Nottm but not that frequently these days. They all give you the sob story that they're trying to get back into work after spending time in a young offenders institution.

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David, we had those lads door knocking and trying to sell us all that rubbish when we lived in Hertfordshire. I recognised the accent and this lad said he got the stuff from Rolleston Drive, Arnold. He looked very wary at me when I said I grew up there and knew the area really well. I didn't want or need their tat but would send them off with a couple of quid. Get the odd doorstep seller here in Nottm but not that frequently these days. They all give you the sob story that they're trying to get back into work after spending time in a young offenders institution.

Trouble is when the Nottingham Knockers called on us , we had our own discount store and some of the things they tried to sell us for a fiver we had a load of in the shop , probably better quality too , that we had paid 50p for !

Having said that , we used to have a local "knocker" that would come and buy from us at full retail price (say £1) and then go round the local streets and sell door to door for 3 or 4 times the price . On a good day , he would come and replenish his stock 2 or 3 times in the day .

Always the same stuff , packs of dishcloths , yellow dusters ,tea towels, black bags , gardening gloves , shoe insoles , could never get him to try any other "hot" lines but he did that for years .

Another old salt....well he claimed to be an "old soldier" but looked a bit like grandad from "Only Fools and Horses" used to buy a pack of 20 pencils from us for £1 and then go out in the street and thrust a pencil at anyone approaching him . Most people took it and said "Thankyou very much".

He would then say "Got a pound for an old soldier " ?

A few told him to get lost but didn't take him long to make £19 profit on a box . Then he would use his bus pass and do the same thing in adjacent towns .

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