Dodging The Greenies

Growing up as a free-range kid in late ‘60s/early ‘70s south Dublin was fantastic. In the long school holidays, Mums kicked their kids out the front door after breakfast with the words ‘don’t be late for your tea’. It was a win-win arrangement. We were free to roam and get up to mischief while our Mums got priceless peace & quiet. Getting into scrapes, with other kids or with the scenery, taught us instant life lessons which we seldom mentioned at home. It’s how everyone grew up.

For pure adventure nothing compared with the paradise that was Belfield, then emerging as the new university campus for UCD. Surrounded by mature trees and dry ditches ideal for hiding in, it boasted football fields, a pitch & putt course, an orchard & kitchen garden, building sites with exotic looking earthmovers, and a man-made lake filled with the discarded fibreglass moulds used in the construction of the new Library building. We later used those moulds as punts for boat racing in that same lake adjacent to the Science buildings. Belfield had everything, even a secluded lagoon under a canopy of lazy trees ideal for suspending swinging tyres from. That was pure Huckleberry Finn territory, known to us as ‘the swamp’.

Best of all was the onsite security force, kitted out in bottle green military style uniforms. We called them “Greenies” and they were there to guard this vast swathe of private property. Of course we had no right to be there, so to be chased by the Greenies was the highlight of any day. Especially when they got tooled up with their walkie-talkies and new Honda 50s (“nifty fifties”). What a challenge! We dedicated ourselves to annoying the Greenies. Whenever any of us met up outside of Belfield, the first topic of conversation was always the latest scrape anyone had gotten into while escaping from the Greenies.

We christened the head Greenie “Blakey” after the Hitler lookalike character in the 1970s TV comedy “On the Buses”. Our daily mission, all summer long, was to cook up schemes to drive Blakey out of his mind but not get caught. In our minds, we were heroic characters from the War movies often shown at school on Friday nights – Bridge Over the River Kwai, 633 Squadron, The Great Escape, you name it. We acted it all out on this life-sized canvas, complete with an enemy force always trying to catch us –  it was Great Escape from the Greenies. Usually the trick to escaping was to run as hard & fast as possible, then split up into a dozen different directions, leaving the pursuing Greenie baffled as to his next move.

One afternoon we were so absorbed in our raft races on the Lake that we failed to notice four or five Greenies converging on the perimeter, closing off our exit routes. Two of our number were captured after trying to swim away, dragged out of the lake and questioned. They observed our agreed code, giving only false names and addresses, before being released with a stern warning, dripping wet but without charge. We later exacted revenge when one of our gang kidnapped a Greenie’s nifty fifty, left carelessly with keys in the ignition. He briefly made shaky progress on the Honda before they gave chase, forcing him to abandon it & run for cover.

In our most ambitious escapade, we decided to stage a spectacular stunt near Merville, a Georgian house at the Foster Avenue end of our Belfield kingdom. It’s now the home of the UCD Nova innovation and technology transfer centre. Our own early technology transfer project involved trying to blow up a dry stone wall behind a drainage ditch. The mastermind for this scheme was an older kid from Oatlands College, who had obtained the keys of the school chemistry lab. He assured us that the blue liquid and bag of mysterious-looking white crystalline powder would prove as effective as gelignite. Under his command, we packed a cake of the stuff between stones in the wall and laid a trail of it for a safe distance to the point where he would light it. This improvised fuse burned right up to the wall and exploded but, disappointingly, only dislodged a few stones. The bang had drawn the attention of the Greenies, and we scrambled towards the trees at the perimeter before scattering in every direction. A week or two later, our mastermind was tapped on the shoulder, pulled out of class and suspended from school. The Greenies had traced the discarded bag to Oatlands College, and he was in big trouble. We had underestimated our adversaries!

Moving on through the acned teenage years, our thoughts soon turned to the emerging attractions of girls, cigarettes and beer. In that period, a newly arrived American kid, sporting loud check trousers, tried to join our crew. We resisted all advances from “the Yank” until one day he arrived at the top field with a paper bag under his arm. “Hey you guys, wanna see what I found in my Dad’s garage?” he announced, producing his father’s Playboy magazine collection. His application to join was immediately accepted without further question, as this throng of goggled-eyed lads suddenly fell strangely quiet! Looking back now, even that was all so charmingly innocent. We really had no concept of how much the world was about to change.