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Q2 Please describe the home of your childhood.
There was a crack in the wall above the kitchen door, and every time my father slammed the door I saw the crack get wider. I was sure, one day, the house would fall down. It never did.
Christine Wilks , Leeds, UK
One of the places I recall was in Mersing in Malaysia. It was a bungalow surrounded by jungle. Once there was a forest fire. I went out and stood on the lawn with my little brother. We watched the flames roaring all around us. The fire ran right round the bungalow only a few feet away from where we were standing.
James Sutherland-Smith , Belgrade and other places
The green and sunny garden at the back of the house.
Edith Hatchikian , Bulgaria
It is a place that exists more in the minds of those who live there, than anywhere else. You won't ever see the designation for it on any map reference. But, you will hear it referred to daily in a thousand conversations. Ask any of its residents where they live, and the name will spring immediately to their lips, even when they are far from home.
" South Buffalo" is as real and as separate a community as any city, town or village in New York State.
Geographically, it encompasses that portion of the City of Buffalo, that lies immediately South of Cayuga Creek and the Buffalo River. The creek, river and Lake Erie to the West, form an imaginary peninsula that abuts the City of Buffalo on its Southern flank. There are bridges connecting it to the city proper of course but the feeling, as a whole, is one of living on an island. The residents tend to inter-marry among the large extended families, patronize local businesses and generally act as clannish as islanders do the world over. It breeds an insular mentality that has kept South Buffalo separate and distinct, from the rest of the city, since the time most of it was first constructed at the turn of the twentieth century. Before that, it was mostly farmland and fields, the remainder of the Seneca Creek Indian Reservation that occupied the land for generations.
The people who live here are predominantly blue collar, working- class citizens who pay their taxes, go to church, serve in the military and eschew social welfare programs. They raise their children to get a good education and climb the socio-economic ladder, one rung at a time.
Ethnically, they are diverse. But, the traditions of the Irish are strongly rooted here. They are fierce in their identification with, and allegiance to, the misty Isle of Eire.
St. Patrick's Day can be a week long Holiday in South Buffalo, if the calendar co-operates and the liver holds out.
You will find many of the their number among the ranks of the Police and Fire Brigades. It is an area steeped in family traditions. Some of these civil servants are the second and third generation of their family to hold these positions. The sons and daughters of South Buffalo are also proportionately over-represented amidst the ranks of the politically connected, but more about that later.
Physically, the sprawling expanses of Cazenovia Park and nearby South Park, with the magnificent Paladian style Botanical Gardens Complex and picturesque South Park Lake, highlight the region. The mighty Industrial palaces of Bethlehem and Republic Steel Companies once dominated and colored the skyline. They are gone now and with them, 30,000 jobs. Most of their rusting bulk has, ironically, been dismantled for scrap steel.
The pleasant meandering concourse of Cazenovia Creek, with its large, old, Willow-lined banks and series of scenic iron bridges, further divides the Island. Curiously, there is a perceived social tratification that depends upon which side of the creek you live on. There are social gradations, even among the working class, I guess.
South Park Ave., Abbott Rd. and Seneca Street run South to North, along the length of the Island, and are lined with an eclectic array of bars, churches, funeral homes and
small businesses. The other major thoroughfare, McKinley Parkway, is a broad residential boulevard of solid, two-storey dwellings, that is as visually pleasant a place to live as any tree lined suburb.
Several imposing institutions, like Mercy and Our Lady of Victory Hospitals, with the adjacent OLV Basillica, serve as area landmarks. There is, of course, an indoor pool and ice skating complex and various recreational centers on the island. Bishop Timon, Mount Mercy and South Park High Schools are the institutions that train the area's young. The loyalty to these schools is both generational and emotional.
An active sports program has created legions of devoted fans, who follow the progress of the school teams with religious intensity.
Predominantly Roman Catholic by religion, the Island is administratively divided into several parishes. Prominent among them are St. John the Evangelist and St. Theresa's, both along Seneca St., St. Thomas Acquinas and St. Martin of Tours, along Abbott Rd and finally St. Ambrose, Holy Family and St. Agatha's along the McKinley Parkway and South Park corridors. Most of the residents know and acknowledge the boundaries of these parishes, identifying strongly with them for a variety of demographic reasons.
In an Irish Catholic neighborhood like South Buffalo, the Friday night fish fry is a ritual as regular and unbending as Sunday Mass. To miss either is something that just isn't done.
The tradition has its roots in a centuries old Catholic Church prohibition against eating meat on Fridays. The "prods," as we then referred to our ecumenical Protestant brethren, developed the term " mackerel snappers " for us because of it. We didn't mind however, because we knew that they were heathens and didn't know any better.
Growing up, with a large Catholic family in South Buffalo, meant sending one of the little darlings off to Trautwein's or Reidy's Fish Market, on Friday afternoon, for the weekly ration of Blue or Yellow Pike. In addition, coleslaw, potato salad and a massive amount of french fries and rye bread were customary. When Lake Erie died and the pike ran out, we settled upon haddock as the fish of choice. The smell of grease, cooking in the neighborhood, was a pleasant reminder to us of who and what we were.
As we grew older and married, the custom ordained that on Friday nights, we migrate to one of the local taverns for dinner. There, however humble the surroundings, could be found many of the neighbors partaking of this aquatic communion. Usually, a couple of Genesee beers accompanied the ritual. Sure, they have wine at the altar, don't they?
The new age, and cholesterol consciousness, brought on the advent of "broiled fish," but it wasn't the same. If the fish wasn't fried and of heaping proportions, something
seemed amiss. The local traffic, on Fridays, could be a hazard around the taverns. You could get killed crossing Seneca Street. People had thoughts of getting to the restaurant and securing a table promptly on their minds. Driving and parking were secondary concerns.
The business, to the Taverns, was in volume and what former Buffalo News Columnist Bob Curran fondly calls, " barley sandwiches."(Beer) Indeed, you could procure the fixings for the dinner, from Trautwein's or Reidy's Fish Market, for only a few cents cheaper than that charged by Early Times or the Red Brick Tavern. Many are the pleasant memories that I have, of arriving at one of these emporiums and being greeted, by now grown childhood friends, sharing the custom.They are honest and hard working people, indulging
in a level of social intercourse, that is tribal in its ritual and reassuring in its regularity.
Like villages in rural Ireland, taverns were the center of social life. Everyone had their favorite, in South Buffalo, and were fierce in expressing their loyalty. Social Clubs sprang up around the chosen place and many of the regulars often participated in athletic and social events, sponsored by the tavern. The camaraderie engendered
carried over into many other facets of our daily life.
Like most ethnic neighborhoods, there were a few watering holes in South Buffalo that served as front line positions, in the continuing political Tong Wars. Lads from differing factions and clans would gather nightly, for a few rounds, to talk over the happenings of the day.
"Smitty's," one of the more legendary such establishments, was like "Cheers." You always knew somebody and they always knew your name. The place was run by a prince of a man named Ed Smith. His family was large and both fierce and out spoken in their loyalties. One day, a prominent elected official, from an opposing political faction, was served his beer and advised it would be appreciated if he finished his drink and "got the hell out."
There were no ambiguities here. "For us or against us " was the code.
This particular establishment had a long and colorful history. Run since the 1940's by old Joe Cooley and then by the Smith Family, it was always a hangout for the local politicos. The place had made the transition, over the years, from Republican to Democrat, as the demographics of the area changed. During W.W.II, servicemen in uniform, drank there for free. If they were a little short on money, they could also count on some help from the proud proprietors.
One time, as I talked quietly with friends at the bar, no less than four separate fights broke out within a 45 minutes period. One involved an incumbent Legislator, who accidently broke his opponent's leg. The next slaked the ire of a future Streets Commissioner and a local policeman, whose gun and holster flapped obscenely through the wrestling match in the snow. The others were routine punch 'em ups and not worthy of comment. None made the news. In this neighborhood, you took your lumps and were quiet about it.
The then Police Commissioner, Jim Cunningham, commented ruefully on the South Buffalo Taverns. He said that complaints of police brutality were non-existent in the area. If the cops were a little rough, you figured that they got you this time and maybe you would even up at some future date. Perhaps, it is the legacy of the sprawling frontier canal town that preceded modern day Buffalo.
The saloons themselves, were a smoky archipelago ofwarmth and companionship, in an often difficult environment. Wielding the scooper's shovel all day and resenting the fat bellied foreman barking the orders, were things that needed a bit of easing at day's end. Thoughts, of the icy foam and beaded sweat of a tall schuper of beer, were long anticipated and much appreciated. Several hours later, most of the lads made it home, after a fashion. And herself, left home for the evening, was not amused at the dubious condition of the lads arriving at the kitchen door.
Sure, it was a hard night indeed spent debating the issues of the day and the proper solutions to them.
As we grew older, you could see the mark of the "creature" on some of the luckless souls. They were headed down into the abyss, God love them. Hard drinking was a problem that we had all seen close up, in the large families.
We tried to be understanding, but it was as if the mark of Cain blazed upon the unfortunate. The stricken knew, on a visceral level, that they were doomed.
In most of South Buffalo, the side streets are lined with large, old, two-story frame dwellings. The different Catholic parishes had established the lines of demarcation, previously mentioned, that separated one grouping of streets from another. Like most artificial boundaries, the lines are invisible, yet powerful in the effects that they created. No ardent patriot ever identified more strongly than we did, with the Parish that sheltered us. The local church was a modern Fort Apache to which we turned, in times of laughter, or through a veil of tears.
The kids in our neighborhood went to the local Catholic Grammar School, St. John The Evangelist. There, in addition to our regular studies, we were instructed in the perils of life and the damnation of sinners, by a community of nuns from the Order of the Sisters of Mercy.
The nuns were pretty much adjunct mothers and although inclined to be crotchety, cared about us. They looked after our spiritual and physical well being. It wasn't unusual for them to step in quietly and help with food and clothing, when one of us was in need. They did this with the finesse of experienced diplomats, in a blue collar, ethnic community that prided itself on accepting charity from no one.
Going to a Catholic Grammar School was like being raised by a churlish maiden aunt. You spent all day with these women. Their authority and concerns encompassed your entire life. If they got wind of mischief or bad habits after school, they were on you like a detective the next day.
No hardened policeman ever perfected the third degree like these women had. One way or another, they managed to extract the details of the offense from you. The call would then go home to your parents, and things would be decidedly unpleasant there as well.
I remember one incident in particular, that involved throwing snowballs. The Mother Superior lined up about twenty of us in a row and methodically questioned each of
us as to our culpability in the incident. Any one naïve enough to admit guilt, got a backhand across the face. Nobody had to instruct us on the philosophical merit of the protections afforded us by the fifth amendment. We figured that out pretty quickly all by ourselves.
As far as education went, the Nuns did a pretty fair job with limited resources. We weren't allowed to "not do the work." That path led to fire and brimstone. The threat was pretty intimidating to junior urchins like us, with vividly active imaginations.
Many of the members, of this order of Mercy, were of Irish-American extraction. Guilt, as a behavioral modifier was honed to a fine science. To this day, I still have uncomfortable memories of threats and exhortations, promising eternal damnation, for some minor offense or another.
The Diocesan parish priest was also a figure to be reckoned with. He was the unquestioned arbiter of the moral code, that ruled our daily lives. He was the top banana of a tight-knit Catholic Community. If he put the finger on you, you were in for it, good. You could count upon a pretty fiery sermon, the next Sunday at Mass, detailing the infraction. You also squirmed like hell in your seat, praying that he wouldn't name names. It was a very real and much feared threat.
The nuns and priests loomed very large in our young lives. They did care for us however and spent their own lives in relative poverty, looking after other people's children. They were special people. We withstood the occasional ruler across the knuckles and were better people for it.
Next to the religious community, in South Buffalo, politics was the interest of choice. It was a pervasive influence in our daily lives. The elections and their results
were topics of conversation around many a kitchen table.
Families chose sides, along clan lines, and cheered on their faction with all the intensity of a hotly contested football game. You voted the way your Father did and his Father before him.
Among our crowd, many of us had an aging relative involved in what was popularly called "The Game." Mine was my father's brother, Edward. He was a storied and legendary ward politician, who carried the Republican banner, in the democratic bastion of South Buffalo, for decades. Our Family had been active in Politics since before the First World War, when everybody was a Republican.
"Manuch," as he was called, looked the part. His shoes were always shined and his hat brushed. A crisp white shirt and a freshly pressed gray suit completed the image.
These are powerful icons in a community that earned its living, for the most part, from the sweat of its brow.
He had a working man's respect for any job that you got to use your brain, instead of your back. He and my father, Franny, were the sons of a water front scooper, one of those hardy Micks who muscled grain on Buffalo's waterfront. Manuch took an interest in me as a youngster and tried to help me along in what had become for us, a family trade.
Manuch's Uncle Willie had been a saloon keeper, where most of the political meetings were held, and a New York State Senator. Willie had helped get him started in the business and he was carrying on the tradition with me.
The Irish had learned early that Politics was a ticket out of the slums. They infiltrated the ranks of the civil service and stood their own for public office, to control the mechanics of the system. Tammany was our spiritual progenitor and taking care of one's own was a way of life.
City Hall and the Court systems were an employment cornucopia that would feed thousands of the faithful in South Buffalo. The formation of the Irish Political Mafia was for our own protection. All of our Grandfathers remembered the "Irish need not apply" signs on places of employment. We saw to it that none of that nonsense would ever happen to us again.
The various political campaigns were waged with the ferocity of a religious crusade. No quarter was asked for or given. The enemies made in one generation, were often passed down into the second and third. Grudges were a much treasured family inheritance, often carefully nurtured with grand donnybrooks in the local saloons.
The neighborhood saloons, as mentioned, often became front line positions in the continuing skirmishes. It was here that the Irish Politician learned his trade. Sure, who could be angry with the darlin' lad who had bought the last round? Bless his sainted mother for bringing him among us.
Many is the local Democratic Party Chairman, Judge and elected official that sprang from these humble origins. The discussions between the lads could sometimes become boisterous, and often a point was expressed with a wee bit too much emphasis on the opposition's personal shortcomings. And, if the occasional plate glass window was
shattered by someone sailing through it in a bit of regrettable exuberance, sure it only added to the charm of the place. It was but a family squabble amidst people who had lived and died, along side of each other, for generations.
We knew each other by the parish, street and family name. The "shirt tail cousins", among us, were legion. Our ancestral home was not a distant emerald isle, but a collection of streets and characters called "The Ward." From it, most of our forebears had "migrated" South, across the Buffalo River, in search of a better life. It existed in our minds as a spectral Brigadoon, to which everyone referred with nostalgia, over a lengthy tale and a barley sandwich or two. Usually, it involved characters like "Harbor Lights" O'Brien , "Potatoes" McGowan, " Diapers" Reardon or some such colorful figure. "Nails" and "Manuch" Martin were two such figures in my own clan.
A frontier honesty pervaded the area and people rarely locked their doors at night. You could depend upon the neighbors to watch over the castle if you were away. On the quaint dead end streets, people sat on their front porches and watched the comings and goings of the neighborhood, while enjoying the evening air. And sure, the odd lad weaving down the street, in the wee hours, like a sailor at sea in a gale, was the subject of much review, around the area kitchen tables, for days afterward.
We were fortunate enough to live across the street from Cazenovia Park. We could sit on the porch and watch hardball games, on diamond # 1, every summer afternoon.
The older folks told tales of the 1930s. They remembered when 30,000 people would gather around "The Cazenovia Bowl", to watch the antics of legendary softball players like
"Shifty Gears" and "Bobblehands" Callahan.
Before that era, the bowl was a flooded portion of Cazenovia Creek. Canoes and row boats were rented, from the Cazenovia Park Casino, to Sunday revelers, in a more peaceful and bucolic era long past.
I suppose, that we often look backward, with fondness, for things that time and fading memory have softened. They seemed like simpler times then and I am glad that I remember them that way.
Novelist Tom Wolfe wrote that "you can't go home again," and maybe he is right. But now and then, it is fun to look back and remember the way it was, long ago and far from now, in a place that existed more in the minds of those who lived there than anywhere else. South Buffalo is Buffalo's " Southern Island." I was born and raised there and although I no longer live there, I am an islander still.
Joseph Xavier Martin
Joseph Martin , Amherst, N.Y.
I spent the first 6 years of my life at 37, Walker drive, in Leigh-on-Sea. It was halfway down a hill; at the bottom was Belfairs woods and at the top was the London road and a toy shop called Wings & Wheels, which, one day, was full of these new toys, called Star Wars figures, that I couldn’t get enough of. When we had a street party for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, the tables sloped down the hill and our paper plates kept sliding off.
I don’t really remember a great deal about Walker Drive. I remember events that happen there - One time, a black bird flew into our summerhouse and couldn’t get back out again. It went berserk, smashing itself against the windows. My mother summoned Mrs Scott from next door – she was a very old lady with curly snow-white hair. I find that I can only picture her as she was towards the end of her life (when she was falling over a lot) with a great egg-shaped bruise on her forehead. She stood at the entrance to the summerhouse, in her housecoat with a square of white muslin, and made strange noises with her mouth and throat. The bird landed on the edge of one of the windows and went quiet. Mrs Scott gathered it up in the white cloth and let it go outside. It was a small piece of magic. I’ll never forget it.
After my second year at infant’s school, we moved a few miles away to 10, Daines way. This is where I grew up. The house was owned by an elderly widow, called Mrs Offord. I was terrified that when we moved there, I would have to change my surname to Offord.
Daines Way was a beautiful street lined with horse chestnut trees that would produce conkers in early September. In the hurricane of ’87 a lot of these trees came crashing down onto houses and parked cars. At the end of the road there was a small park with a gigantic blue/green fur tree in the centre. Across the road from the park, there was newsagents where I would buy my Star Wars comics and these revolting lime green biscuits that were a tie-in with the movie E.T. A few doors down from where we lived, was a vacant plot of land, between two houses, that had been turned into an allotment by Mr Wallis. He owned an old-fashioned department/hardware store in the town centre. The shop was a throwback to the 1930s. It was the last shop of its kind in Southend.
Our new house was very old and much bigger than Walker Drive. It had an air-raid shelter in the back garden, which had been built by Mr Offord during the Second World War. On the surface the shelter was a large stone cube, painted white and attached to a small rockery. There was a wooden door in the cube and stone stairs that descended into a basement that was always about half a foot deep in water. Occasionally, we would find toads living down there. There was another stone step that took you into a second room that was usually a bit dryer than the first. At the far end of this basement there was a small tunnel, its entrance raised about three feet off the floor. At the end of the tunnel was a trap door, which emerged at the far end of the rockery. One day I hit my head on the stone ceiling as I was climbing out through the trap door. I stood in the garden and my head felt suddenly wet. I put my hand on my hair and when I withdrew it was covered in blood. My two brothers were both looking at me with expressions of absolute horror. My youngest brother Tom said: “Jon’s been badly hurt”. I beat the hell out of him for suggesting that I’d been injured.
At the bottom of the garden there was a Holly bush with a family of Robins living underneath it. I used to lie flat on the lawn with digestive biscuit crumbs on the palm of my out-stretched hand. The robins would come out from under the bush and then tentatively hop across the lawn, peck the crumbs out of my hand and then dart away again.
When we moved to Daines Way, for the first time, since the birth of my brother, I had a room of my own. It was the second biggest bedroom in the house and overlooked the street. There was a strange alcove where two radiators joined together in the corner. On cold winter mornings I used to come out of the shower, wrapped in my towel and sit in this alcove with my back pressed against the radiators. This was in during the early 1980s and the cold war. Even though I didn’t understand what a nuclear war was, I was still obsessed by it. I was convinced that by leaning against these two radiators, I was giving myself radiation poisoning.
On my eighth birthday, I was given a red radio/cassette player. I didn’t have any cassettes of my own. Later my brother, Simon got the first two Nik Kershaw albums and that was all we ever listened to until we were about 17. There was a pirate radio station that I used to tune in to, called Laser 858. It had American DJs, or DJs who put on convincing American accents. They played ‘We built this city…’ by Starship, ‘White Lines’ by Grandmaster Flash and early Madonna stuff like ‘Borderline’ and ‘True Blue’. I used to spend hours in my room just listening to the radio. It was my main pastime.
I had a pine chest of drawers, where I kept all my clothes. I used to display my collection of ornamental owls on top of it. Every fortnight I would take all the owls off and lay them carefully on the bed. I would dust and polish the top of the drawer and then carefully clean and replace the owls. Out of the blue, my grandparents had bought me an owl made from crystal. It was the pride of my collection. When the sun shone through my bedroom windows, I would lie on my bed with it and marvel at the broken pieces of rainbow on the wall, made by the refracted sunlight.
When I was eight, I was dusting an owl that had been carved out of chalk. Suddenly I realised that all I was doing was removing the top layer of chalk from the owl and if I kept doing so it would eventually disappear to nothing. At that point I realised my own mortality and that I would one-day die. I wasn’t prepared or equipped to deal with it. I curled up in my duvet, by the radiators until I was called down for dinner. Later, I wrapped the owl up in kitchen towel and put it in a shoebox. I’ve never looked at it again since that day.
When I think back to my childhood home now I remember the best and the worst:
Whenever I had an argument with my mother, she would stand at the door and force me to kiss her goodbye before she would let me go to school. I had to kiss her even though, at that moment, I hated her. It did terrible damage. I’ll never let a woman kiss me as long as I live.
I remember inhaling a small plastic peg from a board game. I thought I was going to suffocate, but I felt guilty about having it in my mouth in the first place, so I didn’t tell my parents. I sat against my bed, with my history homework on the floor in front of me and waited to die.
There was the time a bird felled down the chimney shaft in my bedroom. I unscrewed the air vent, so that it could escape and then retreated to the door. My mother stood behind me pushing me back into the room. I remember thinking: ‘you are a coward.’
One evening, while I was in bed, my father came home uncharacteristically drunk and spent hours retching over the toilet bowl. I was terrified. I was frightened of my father, because I had never seen him drunk and feared what he might do. Years later I found out that he had been plied with alcohol by one of his gay clients and that the late comedian, Kenny Everett, had tried to chat him up.
The one thing that, over everything else, made 10, Daines Way a home, was our first family pet. He was a blue budgie, who I christened Flap after reading a story about a boy who kept a pet Pterodactyl in his bedroom. I will never love anyone or anything as much as I loved that bird. He talked incessantly – I never appreciated how special he was in that respect. He was able to distinguish my voice and the sound of my footsteps from other members of my family. When he heard me moving about upstairs, he would go berserk. When I came home from school he was always pleased to see me. Whatever I’d done, He was always there for me - he always wanted to be my friend. I could never express in actions or words how much he meant to me. When I think of 10, Daines Way, I think of Flap.
We left Daines Way when I was 15. We exchanged houses with a man who was getting divorced and needed to move to a smaller property. My parents gave him some money and we moved in March.
I never saw the inside of the new house we moved to until we moved there. I went away, for a week, on a Geography field trip and I came back to a different home. When I walked through the door, my parents had to show me where everything was. They still live there. I write this from what was once my old bedroom. It has never felt like a home to me. I wouldn’t live there again under any circumstances. There is something wrong with this house.
Shortly after we moved, Flap had a stroke and stopped talking. One Sunday evening I carried his cage up to my bedroom and sat with him while he died.
Jonathan Kepple , NFA
Childhood:
Meant holidays at the beach.
Begginings.
Dad borrowing the car. The drive that made me always feel sick. The descent to the ocean, the smell of salt our first meal on the steps of our house was always fish and chips wrapped up in news paper. Next morning Dad would take us to see the sun rise like a great golden ball out of the ocean, it coloured the sky like a childs drawing and sent a shimmerin gold road across the ocean.
Beginings:
The burning hot sand as we rushed towards the waves.
The coolness of the water.
I belonged to a gang and on Saturday afternoon our gang which was all the kids in our street would go to the local picture theatre with ninpence each. We bought our lollies before we went in and rolled them down the asile. We were entertained by a person playing the paino before the film started. The films were always about cowboys and indians. For the next week we played the film out,
Sundays we would go down to the beach for bible stories about the man who built his house on the sand and one who built his house on the rock. It was always the same story.
During the week we had choices, we played cricket on the street, noone had cars back then. We swam at the local beach swimming pool. All to soon the hoilday ends and we drive back up the hill , my mother always gave me a pill and I would fall asleep, I never knew when we got back I just woke next morning in my bed in the house which was not at the beach.
Tina Rothbury , Australia
The cat is at the back of the cupboard behind the potatoes. I'm frightened of spiders. I don't want to get out of the bath.
Simone Veenstra , Amsterdam, NL
My childhood home was full of dreams and adventure. I would embark on journeys far from home and return hours later knowing it hadn't changed. It was a rock, and it was home to the parents who protected me and taught me to respect myself above all else. It was where I learnt the world was large, but not as great as my world inside my home.
Shaun Eyles , Australia
Sitting cross-legged on the tarmac quadrangle, the heat from the ground shimmering inches above it. The heady scent of jacaranda blossoms above and mulched purple around me as I slurp on a box of half-thawed orange juice.
Singing Christmas carols about the red earth of my country and the deep, wet greens of it's forests. My voice mingling with the tremulous gusto of 28 other six year-olds. Warm wind gushing through my fingers and toes, thankfully, as I ran through the wide-spanning sprinklers on the oval behind the school, and the feel of damp fabric on a hot, plastic school chair after lunch. Sliding open the glass doors to our kitchen and pressing my cheek on the cool, flat tiles with my brothers when we got home. Plunging into the cold water of the pool and dulling the sounds and smells of the pulsing West Australian summer. Skimming along the smooth pebbles underwater and turning to see the sun defracting vividly through the water, the dark blue sky holding it like a pearl in the palm of a giant.
Jenny Bidwell , London
It began as a home full of laughter and fun, playing in the sunny backyard with two younger brothers. Then Dad fell ill and violent all in one year. My carefree childhood became an angst ridden balancing act of self protection and a generous wish to help.
But now years later and with a well father I have found a new home and my child's laughter carries me to that secret home. Fairytales don't come true but eventually you wake up from the nightmare.
Laura Shade , Chesterfield
Home, the truth, the lies, the dungeon disguised.
The place you can never trully leave, the funny stain on my shirt sleeve.
Home, my beutifull cell, my pain my pleasure, a bunch of thoughts I can never sever.
Mark Peel , Greenock, Scotland
It really is always summer in my childhood and I can feel the grass of my back garden on my feet and see water fights.It's always fun and always sunny.
I've always been lucky.
Kelly ,
Home was a place where, when we moved there, my uncle a teenager then, now dead in a car accident, took my brother, now dead from alcoholism, to the seashore and the Victorian pier in the rain. He pushed us in a sleek, coach built two seater pram, Manchester kids arriving in a new world.
A few years later, when this new world had become home, my brother and me would bunk off church and sunday school and spend our collection money in the pier's old penny slot machines.
The sea was estuarine, brown and soupy, absurdly shallow, Sometimes no more than inches. Four times a day it would travel the two miles out to the channel where, at low tide black dredgers sank out of sight behind sandbars and where, at high tide, ships used to bring timber from Scandinavia, bananas from the West Indies and people from Belfast.
My brother and me and our friends would follow the retreating tide out to the river's channel, spend a few hours fishing, then head back to the shore before the next tide swept round to leave us stranded.
Though the tide still turns and turns, four times a day, trekking its thin silver brown coat across the miles of sand, the ships are gone now. The pier is half gone. My uncle gone. My brother gone. All gone now. Like every last waking and sleeping breath will one day be.
This place I'm trying to tell you about was not the place that where I went there, they had to let me in. This place I am trying to tell you about was the place where I lived.
And I now its a place that I can only visit, not even the place that it was. Even the river spilling round the sandbars is not the same river. No longer dredged, it has reshaped itself and the shifting sandbars it sweeps around.
Some things don't change though. Beercans, bottles, the trunks of dead trees, the carcasses of birds; -the river still washes them down from the towns and hills and the tide stil shoves them back onto the oil soaked shingles. People still walk dogs, fly kites, jog and dream in he vast no man's land between the turning tides. And when I think of home I hear the mindless beauty of a gull's shriek, tiny in a huge silver sky, echo across the years.
Nick Pemberton , Cumbria, England
I lived in Sydney, near the hustle and bustle of the city. But that didn't even enter my knowledge until I left. I was blissfully unaware of danger. I remember always playing out on the street, always running, not walking, and always being happy. When I turned 8, I had to leave it all behind. The close knit neighbourhood was replaced by an unfamiliar and restricted house. The busy backyard became a tiny lawn. I missed the sun. The feel of summer.
Renee Betlehem , ViC, Australia
Tumbledown shack in an unremarkable town, peeling paint, flickering lights and leaky pipes. Not enough money and too much beer and long, hot afternoons under the white canopy of sky and clicking chorus of cicadas going mad in the heat. Small adventures sleeping under the stars or net fishing in the lake in between the times of waiting - for the pressure to explode, for someone to come home, for the best dream or the worst fear to come true. Neither did. Scruffy, grumpy dogs, a forest of vegetables and sunflowers and myriad worlds of fairy creatures hiding in the vines and cool dampness. Secret places to disappear into and learn to be deaf and blind to the realities of an unsafe world. Angry words faded to imagined elven songs in the string beans, hurt and tears turned into dewdrops on the pumpkin leaves, big enough for a fairy's skirt. Ugliness and desperation buried with me under piles of jewelled autumn leaves or behind a palace wall of tangling, fragrant tomato fronds. An imperfect start, but with enough love and enough magic to build a little world to keep a tiny girl safe.
Maura Bedloe , Hobart, Tasmania
Empty and I always remember wind. Though I wasn't brought up anywhere windy. I remember shade seemed a stronger contrast. I felt more natural than I do these days 30 years later. Seems living neutralises you from your true roots. Sterilises, improves I suppose, but it takes you from what you really are.
Which in turn makes it harder to accept death. Though death is a familiar friend and is warm and natural - because it takes us from all these self created comforts we fear it. We can't control it, then again we can't control when we are born. So try to enjoy it, it will kick your ass if you let it. But it doesn't own you.
Ian , UK
The home of my childhood was white with black figures which eventually faded into colour and form after the first few lines.
Rowen Ravera , South Africa
The most noticeable thing was the scent of fresh tilled soil in the garden, and my grandparents presence on a regular basis. Things were of course much simpler, but many of the same feelings were around such as fear, love, pain, joy, and uncertainty. The world was small but growing, and it was always delightful to catch a glimpse of something new as for example a jet airplane in the morning sun, or the many wonderful songs that seemed like magic to come from the radio, and as that world continued to grow, the magic of television.
James M. Karns , Santa Fe National Forest
Home was a place of adventure and tents made of material anchored across beds with pillows - living out fantasies from Enid Blyton novels. Aged 10 and 5, my little brother and I were uprooted. We ran into the garden to bury a piece of paper under a mound of autumn leaves. In a childish scrawl, it read, "We lived here."
Cheryl Knights , London
My childhood home was small, old, cold and shabby. But it's heart was warm.
Karen King ,
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