Trips to Mill House

Every summer we drove to Stranraer, boated to Larne and drove down to Dundrum to Granny and Grandpa’s. Granny used to order a crate of milk every day when the Scottish lot stayed. That’d really impress the milkman I remember thinking at the time…

Summer meant fruit, playing poo sticks, horse riding at Dudgeons and out-eating the cousins up at the Boulders. They were a bit younger than us but they could eat. They were a pretty fun lot – two girls and two boys then the baby. We often got sent over the road to Miss Mellon’s for ice cream when they arrived so we quite liked seeing them even if they did outnumber us.

Most of the summer was spent in this huge garden which was John the gardener’s domain. He was a huge but skinny giant with clicky teeth that he used to draw breath in through. And he had a funny accent but he always had a ripe tomato or a fat peach or plum to give you.

Like Uncle Myles, we were often told not to pick any more fruit as we’d be sick, so we didn’t – we just ate it off the trees. We had an endless summer of apples, strawberries, peaches, pears and lashings of cream and ice cream. We had circular soda bread made by Nora and we used to cut all the sides off as we all liked crusts and when Uncle Myles came in he always ask who had been manipulating the loaf?  All guilty but no-one owned up. We didn’t know what manipulating meant anyway.

I remember once racing into the sunroom looking for my brother and sister and asked Granny, ‘Do you know where Mick and Bug are?’ (the nicknames for my sister and brother). She thought I’d called her ‘a Mick and an old bugger.’ It gave my Granny an apoplectic fit but funnily enough I wasn’t sure why.

We roamed and had days of innocence and fun. Smells of a peat fire, meat hanging outside in the meat safe under the eaves, endless home cooked meals, always around this huge dining room table, no telly, no Internet, just family, food and fun.

My Dad recently said he never questioned nor reflected on the generosity of his in-laws, never really appreciated their unfailing generosity every summer until years later.