That was it; I was running away from home. Due to some minor altercation – perhaps having to tidy my room after breakfast or comb the knots out of my hair after swimming before lunch – my idyllic childhood life had turned topsy- turvy and was no longer worth living. … read more →
Dundrum was serviced by five routes which touched the village and then split off to far away exotic locations, some buried deep in the Dublin mountains. Punctuality was regarded as a guideline rather than a rule. Once aboard, a whole new world opened up. First was the objective of trying to dodge the… read more →
Dundrum harboured many youth gangs. There was little organisation involved in the formation of the gangs and most fell into place depending on where you lived and the school you attended. The local national school was a hotbed of gang recruitment and they were much tougher than us nambies. We had… read more →
Fireworks were banned in Ireland in the 70s and 80s. We regarded them as foreign treasure. Exotic, beautiful and exciting, but always belonging to other luckier countries. Terrorist organisations were using the gunpowder to blow up society in the North of Ireland, so we grew up deprived. Before The Troubles, they were available north… read more →
In 1940 when I was about ten years old, our family was living in New Delhi. My parents and a good few of their friends decided to have a midnight picnic in the grounds of the Qutab Minar which was built by Qutab-ud-din, one of the great Mughals, and I perforce was… read more →
My best mate Duncan and I spent many an hour collecting frog spawn from local ponds and transferring it to our pond at home, ponds were a great source of amusement in the 1970’s when the only thing on telly was the test card or football results. The endless fascination… read more →
It was the summer of 1990 and life on 27th St. in Woodridge, Seattle, USA, was truly grand. I was 16 and in the incredible position of having a father away for the summer on business, and a mother who worked the graveyard shift as a nurse. This meant that… read more →
The one story that springs to mind about Sydenham Road is when Mr. and Mrs. O’Connor were away on holidays, no doubt somewhere exotic at that time, like the Canaries! Brian O’Connor was looking after the house and keeping an eye on the two girls, Tricia and Rosie, while they… read more →
A quick escape route from The Boulders was over the back wall into the Mullen’s garden by their enormous greenhouse. There was an intricate technique which involved swinging on a tree and scrambling up the protruding rocks over the top of the wall. This came in quite handy one day… read more →
Espionage and adventure, those were the key things for the Simps and their operations extended far beyond the old railway line – all the way across the road to the Digbys’ house. There was one target that presented a particularly exciting challenge: a room stuffed with treasure – silver trophies,… read more →