I grew up on the Rush Road in Skerries in the Holmpatrick Estate. To the front of our house we had the sea and behind the house we had the building site. That’s what we all called it; the ‘Building Site’. We were the lucky ones (the four semi-detached houses that had the building site over our back walls). The rest of the estate was developed out but the four-house gap behind our house remained a permanent feature of our childhood. We had a ready-made playground.

Two of the houses in the building site had brick walls and concrete bases. The other two houses didn’t make it beyond the foundations, leaving ditches and banks which were covered in a layer of weeds and wild-flowers. I remember, at a very young age, sitting on the banks picking daisies, dandelions, buttercups, poppies and these tiny blue and white flowers. There were lots of ladybirds and bees. We made daisy chains of course. We also used to hold the buttercups to our chins and if you saw a yellow reflection that meant you liked butter- just in case we weren’t sure. However, we were a bit wary of the dandelions. Something to do with wetting the bed. The poppies were my favourites though. Especially the closed ones because you could pop open the pod and gently tease out the petals to make a pink poppy. It was a bit creased and battered looking but I loved them – despite feeling a bit guilty. I often wonder where all those flowers are today.

Nothing went to waste in the building site. We smashed up the old plasterboard and occasionally prised bricks free and sent them crashing down. We used the wood to make ramps for the bikes and bridges between the mounds. We climbed and ran around on top of the walls and played endless games of chasing and hide and seek. The abandoned JCB was our den. 

My little sister Jenny and her friend took the brick throwing to another level. My father had a call to the door about an incident. Denis and Betty McGlougllin lived in one of the houses beside the building site. If you climbed up on the wall of one of the half-built houses you could look into their garden. A large brick had mysteriously landed in through their downstairs toilet window and broken their toilet bowl. Jenny and her buddy had been spotted in the vicinity. They had history- such as the day they broke into Reddy’s house looking for biscuits and were spotted looking out the upstairs bedroom window. And the day they disappeared for hours only to be found in Bob’s Casino trying to shake down money from the games with the cascading coins. They were like a miniature Bonny and Clyde at the ripe age of 5 or 6 years old. I remember the questioning from my parents “Jenny you don’t happen to know anything about a brick that was thrown in Mr McGloughlin’s window?” ‘No”. (She was very loyal to her friend). “Are you sure”? Again, the picture of innocence “No. Don’t know” My parents continued. “The brick that went into the bathroom window and broke the toilet bowl?” She thought about it for a while and then eventually came out with “Oh! That brick!” The game was up. Guilty as charged. Mr McGloughlin was very understanding. He saw the funny side. Of course, now Jenny is a fine upstanding little sister. She got her wild days out of her system very early on. She still makes us all laugh.  

I also remember the day in the building site when I stopped playing. I’m not sure what age I was, maybe eleven or twelve, but I remember the feeling very clearly. I was playing show jumping with my friend. We were horses, jumping over the ditches.  A thought suddenly hit me that what we were doing was very silly.  I tried to continue but I couldn’t. I felt stupid. It was crystal clear to me that there were no horses and the ditches weren’t fences. I sat down and declared I was bored. We both agreed to call an end to the show jumping. That was the day I stopped playing.

When I got older, I heard that the developer went bankrupt. A decent man according to my parents. Building had stopped overnight and the site came to a standstill. Everything was left where it was, including the JCB. It makes me think of an outdoor version of Miss Havisham’s table where everything was frozen in time.

As children we were oblivious to the human story that we trampled on and trashed in our innocence. There was no malice intended. There’s another story yet to be written about the Rush Road in Skerries. Not about childhood innocence unfortunately. I would call it Great Expectations but I think that’s already taken.