Mischief Night (4th Nov) was alive and well in the West Riding in the mid to late 60s. None of this soppy American *threatening* to do a trick *unless* bridbed with a treat....if you were targetted, that was it...no reprieve!

Gate stealing was our main thing. We'd pile them on our "bogies" (carts made with pram wheels and old palette timber) and take them a far away as possible. On one occasion we managed to get over 20 sets piled up at a quiet crossroads about a mile away without anyone seeing us.

Another thing was to link all the doorknobs and/ or knockers in a row of terraced houses (only worked on back to back terraces) together then knock on one or all (depending on how we'd got the knockers and knobs linked). Since back-to-backs (or "dubbel rows") had no back door, the poor sods were stuck inside until either soneone could fit a knife through the door gap to cut the line, or someone got out of a window!

Sometimes we'd throw bangers into pubs, but we stopped doing that after one year spending 2 hours shivering under a signal box near Cleckheaton station as 3-4 local coppers searched for us.

Another trick in estates with parallel streets was to "mortar" one road from another. Also dangerous. You'd take the barrel of a cycle pump and hild it upwards at an off-vertical angle. Drop a banger down it until the blue pper was visible through the threaded hole at the end. Drop a piece of scrunched paper and then a handful of dried peas (if you were feeling nice) or gravel (if you were feeling nasty) down the barrel, light the fuse and spray the next road over with projectiles. It was possible to break windows with this, but we didn't set out to do that. Mostly we just ended up giving passers-by unexpected aerial showers. You'd have someone as a lookout at an intersection to warn you when people were coming along the parallel street so you could time your "mortaring" to try and hit them. They could never catch you!