Youth clubs

Listening to Johnny Winter just now took me back to youth clubs. We had a `circuit` based around a bus route-well why not?

Great stuff,listen to records,play table tennis(that was competetive and luckily I was a decent player),net ball for the girls,5 a side footbal for the boys.

Learn how to flirt and have your young heart broken.

It sounds so innocent now I guess but they were some very happy days.

Re: Youth clubs

So true - such happy times
I took some records with me each time, one was Connie Francis (78) and after having a dance, came back and sat on it

Re: Youth clubs

Such a shame the youngsters don't have youth clubs to go to, would put so many wrongs 'right'

Re: Youth clubs

There are very few youth clubs left in the UK now. They have been decimated by a combination of local authority cuts and moral panic over paedophilia.
When I started my first full-time job as a youth worker back in 1976, my local authority (a London council) ran 20 youth centres and supported hundreds more through a system of grants. My centre was open 7 nights a week and had something like 1000 young people each week coming through the doors for a huge variety of activities. Then in the mid '80's our youth service faced 66% cuts and we lost almost half of our centres. The gradual drip, drip of cuts continued for a couple of decades followed by huge cuts after 2005. Today my authority has just a handful of youth workers and 3 or 4 premises.
As I said, the cuts are only half the problem. Since the growth of paedophile paranoia, the supply of volunteers for youth projects has more or less dried up - who wants to go through the hassle of a police check (which in some authorities the volunteer themselves has to pay for) just to work a couple of hours a week as a football coach or youth leader?
In my 40 years in youth work I came across several paedophiles - all of them had passed their police checks.............

Re: Youth clubs

That is so sad to read I`m going back to say,1968-1971. Of course we knew there were `queers` (and I do not mean gay) around but not one was ever a youth club leader. It was an innocent time yes-but maybe not so.

Not for me to name names but a couple of what one at that age might be called `adults` found themselves with a bloody nose. Nobody listened to us so we had to do it ouselves. That was a tiny part though,best to remember the fun we had away from the tyranny of school and parents

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Aah the fond memories of the Youth Club "Social" remember them? A party evening based around dancing to records and silly games.

Re: Youth clubs

Table tennis was serious though,I was 2nd string and won all three games so Marston beat Cranfield. Much kudos and a snog.

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In those days there were only two types of bat worth having a Victor Barna and a Johnny Leach.
I was known for my deadly backhand flick.

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And if you were lucky enough to be dancing at one of the “socials” with the young lady who was the light of your young life when Dean Martin’s “le vie en rose” was on the record player then it was truly a magical evening.

Re: Youth clubs

I'll have to keep me eye out for that VM.

They were happy days indeed for me OJ, I wasn’t so much into the sporting activities, just the swimming and dancing, we had a great swimming pool, that was the first thing to go for lack of money to heat it, then there was the girls, you couldn’t dance without girls in those days, although a lot of the girls danced with each other, probably because the lads were too shy to ask them, especially the good looking girls.
What a shame there are no youth clubs today, plenty of sports clubs but that’s not the same thing, well I suppose you can’t blame the men and women not going forward to volunteer, fear of being accused of child molesting, why put yourself through all that. I think it’s a shame really.