It was an adventure to live where we did in that Spring of 1969. Our house was a year old and the four of us were old enough to go off on our own during the day. We wandered around the neighbourhood and ventured out to the shops on our bikes as a gang, or perhaps a marauding horde. We raced down the Spinney path and cycled free-handed around the roundabout there. It is a miracle we all survived.

Being on the edge of the town was a special place. There were overgrown mounds of the soil; and rubble the builders had left; and the half-built building sites where men made noises and bricks were tumbled quickly to build the next veneer of the edge of town. The politicians put a halt to growth with a Green Zone, so this edge was made forever. The dog and the four of us clambered about destroying clothes, new and old alike, and got tanned, and scuffed our knees.

On the mound, the top had a hollowed out area where we could all sit out of sight of the parents, away from everyone. Our imaginations were ripe and fed by TV, but mostly by each other and the books we all read. We played cowboys and indians and treasure hunters and generally went wild for the summer holidays and were recalled to base once the weather got colder and the evenings were dark in the Autumn after school. Dark was the end of play unless you had a battery for your flashlight in bed. We usually did.