Neighbours
The Stevenson family lived next to the Cudworth’s, and their eldest son was called Patrick and his brother Hugh. Patrick Stevenson was a lump of a lad – did very well with computers in Trinity later in life. Mr. Barton lived next to them on the other side and the Stevenson’s created a lovely salutation when they used shout over the wall, ‘Ya boo, Barton’s poo’. I was never sure why Mr Barton’s excrement attracted such attention.
My brother Simon built a tree house at the bottom of Stevenson’s garden. When I asked him did he own it he replied very firmly, ‘Yes – if a letter gets delivered to the next door house in error, it still belongs to you’. This logic was beyond my arguing skills at the time.
The Kinsella family lived opposite the Cudworth’s in a tall house with a great granite stairway up to the front door. Here, social strata collided, as the Kinsella’s were a tough bunch and there were loads of them. Lisa was the eldest, then Frankie, Morgan, Paula, Michael, Mark, Johnny and Lisa. There may have been a few more that I’ve forgotten. Mrs. Kinsella had curly blonde hair and a chin that protruded; something her girls inherited. Paula and Frankie were lovely girls and good fun.
Mr. Kinsella was a man to be very afraid of, he used appear at the back door and bellow instructions to the youth of the road who were congregated in his garden. Pointing his finger like a scimitar, he would shout, ‘Yew, punk, hoame’ and indicate with his finger that you’d better skidaddle pronto before he got a hold of you. Then, he’d point at one of his kids and shout, ‘Yew, punk, in’. This was how he dispersed the crowd of people in their grassless back garden. Occasionally he’d get mixed up and issue departure instructions to one of his own children which would be met with a plaintiff, ‘But Da-ah’, and then he’d reverse the order. We didn’t take much persuading to leave the garden.
The Dutchman lived in the house between the Kinsella’s and us in our house, The Boulders. He was a very quiet man and had apple trees in his garden which we raided every autumn. One of his trees blew down into our garden which Dad arranged to get someone to chainsaw on the understanding that we could have the wood. Before we could stack it, the Kinsella kids swiped every last stick and whisked them off to their house. This necessitated a rare parental intervention when our mother stomped over to the Kinsella’s and pointing at a roundel of wood at their front door, proclaimed to Mrs, Kinsella, ‘THAT is a piece of our wood’. The entire tree was returned with some discussion about confusion of ownership.
Michael Buckley-Jones lived diagonally opposite the Cudworth’s and went to Wesley College as well as Simon, Rebecca and Sarah. He looked like Peter Parker aka Spiderman and wore thick rimmed glasses and had a heavy dark fringe. He lived with his aunt or granny – my memory fails me. His great attribute was that he could pee his height in an arc of wee. We younger kids were amazed by this prowess.
Lisa and Freddie lived down the bottom of the road. He was as naughty as she was pretty. Freddie used join us on cycle rides up to the Three Rock Mountain. The highlight of the ride was daring each other not to use brakes on the way back down the hill and shooting the crossroads as fast as possible, ignoring the stop sign. This cavalcade would always arrive back in one piece on the road in a whirlwind of dust and laughter.
