The game was hares and hounds and it had been going for hours. The pitch was Termon, Plunkett Avenue, The Lawn and the whole of town: back gardens, sheds, anywhere a child could fold themselves into. Anyone who got found had to join the hunt, so the hounds kept growing. By about ten o’clock at night there was one hare left, and nobody could find her.

Eventually someone went in the back door of her house. There she was in the sitting room, eating a sandwich. The rule was that you weren’t allowed hide in the house. The defence offered that night is the same one offered now.

“When you’re hungry, you’re hungry.”

Denise Tiernan and Lesley Beirne have been friends since they were small enough to pick rhubarb in Granny Campbell’s garden, a few doors down from where Lesley’s parents live now. Their grannies were friends before them. Florence grew up alongside the pair of them. She brought a list and a pot of tea, and let them at it.

The strawberry one

It starts at the girls’ national school. Milk arrived every morning in grey basins, outside the classroom door or inside it, depending on which of the three you ask. Everyone wanted strawberry.

Around eleven the whole class waited for Mrs Flynn to knock on the door and call someone down the long hallway to the kitchen for soup. After a week of jam sandwiches, anything hot felt like a treat, and Florence remembers the kitchen itself as warm as a home. Denise had her own system. Her jam sandwiches went in the bin, and anyone without a lunch was brought up to the nuns in the convent, where there were ham sandwiches and an apple. She never told anyone at the time.

Then the teachers: Miss McDermott-Roe in junior infants, Sister Mary with the morning prayers, Miss Byrne with her accordion and the triangles, Sharon Hunt, who is still there, and Sister Mary Theresa, the principal. If you were in early, you watched from the back of the school for her coming across with the big key, and being first into the building was a small victory.

Lesley was on the school wardens team with Sarah Byrne, Andrea McCran and Tracy Morris. They never won the All Ireland, but they got through to a big day out, and she still has the medal. Denise was on a team as well and admits she didn’t take it seriously. On a Friday the telly came in on its stand, blinds down and lights off. Nobody can remember what they watched. Denise thinks she fell asleep.

One morning in Sister Mary’s class, during the prayers, the candle set the altar on fire. Florence was down the corridor in another room and still remembers the shout going up. The three of them could not stop laughing telling it.

I was an angel, and I still am

The day after your communion you were allowed wear the dress into school, and the boys wore their suits, and everyone got a look at everyone else’s headpiece and little bag. The nativity play was in the school hall. Colin was Joseph and Helena Casey was Mary. Florence and Bernie were servants with tea towels on their heads. An angel called Tabs, in foil wings held on with elastic, cried from start to finish, and the video kept every minute of it.

“I was an angel, and I still am.”

Afterwards Santy came. When the play moved to the church, Florence thinks it lost something.

Every September the hot air balloons came, and tickets were handed out to the children. Florence won one. She had never won anything before and hasn’t since. They lined up outside, and then someone decided it was too windy. She says she is still haunted by it. Boyle had the balloons for years, the big Fanta one included, until, Florence thinks, insurance put an end to it.

It’s not the same, though

Their own daughters go to the same school now. Lesley’s Sasha is in sixth class. Denise’s Kendra is going on nine, and her younger girl is in first class. Sasha’s communion fell during COVID. The girls made it on the Saturday and the boys on the Sunday, and only Lesley and Aaron were allowed go. No grandparents. She is heading over to cousins in London for her confirmation to make up for it.

Denise and Lesley don’t think it’s the same childhood, and they put it down to technology. There are no biscuit tins now, and nobody covers their books in leftover wallpaper. The wine uniform is being replaced with light blue. Denise has also heard that the girls’ school and the boys’ school are coming together, with the younger classes staying where they are and third to sixth going to the boys’ school, but she is careful to say she doesn’t know how true that is. The boys get hot dinners, and the girls don’t.

The minute you were done, out you go

Up around Termon and Plunkett Avenue there was a huge gang: Ashley, Zara, Bernie, Tara, Helena, Marita Flynn, Rosie, Jenny O’Rourke and more. Rounders in the playground behind Plunkett Avenue, nearly every day, first with a bat and then with a tennis racket because the ball went further. A short season of rugby, Termon against Plunkett Avenue, until Churchview joined in.

And hares and hounds, which the lads were known to abandon by going home for their tea and leaving the girls searching for hours. You were out the door the minute the homework was done and home when the lights came on. Denise says you could go up Station Road or Termon now and not see a single child.

The guards came on route

The NCF closed at six, and the gang would climb over after. One evening the sirens started. Everyone ran in different directions. Denise, Lesley and Damien Dooley made for the train station, reckoning no one would look there. Then someone put their head out from under a tree. The guard who came to collect them was mostly annoyed about the muck on his shoes. Denise was crying in the back of the car, sure she was in trouble, and Lesley couldn’t stop laughing at her. They were escorted back into town and let out before anyone at home could see.

Behind the NCF were the round bowls, big pits of wheat mix that were hard to climb out of when wet, and three new rooms where someone once saw the green lady. There was frog spawn in the swamp. Florence has since heard they were for grain. To the children they were a playground.

This is our land

Summers were spent at Assylin. They walked the railway line to get there and knew the train times, and they left coins on the tracks to be flattened. Denise was once told a mink swam behind Michelle McKillan. They jumped in at the thirds and the seconds, and the small ones stayed in the baby area. Lesley’s mother went out with them and taught them to swim. They’d fill a bottle with stones and water, throw it in and dive for it.

“They were simple games.”

When children from Churchview started coming out, the Termon crowd told them it was their land. Down at the flood gates the moss made everything slippy, and there was always a rumour of a hole that would pull you under. The summers felt like they never ended.

The pearls were the best

Denise ran the marbles, and everyone knew it. There were holes outside people’s houses, and some were better than others, outside Pauline O’Rourke’s and Stan Walters’ among them. Crystals were worth very little, taws were the big ones, and a pearl was worth something like 20 crystals. You kept them in a bum bag and sometimes walked home with it empty.

Halloween was a black bag and a plastic mask you’d be sweating inside, with fake fingers and teeth, and a bag for the sweets, never a bucket. You knew the good houses. Mrs Flynn on Station Road gave homemade queen cakes. One neighbour threw 5p into the bag. Lynn Regan gave out a big bag of bars.

Down The Lawn they made cakes out of slates and sand and set up a shop. When Michael Roche came up the back way from town and actually handed over a pound for one, they thought he was joking. The pound went straight to Christie Wynne’s. Tom Lloyd, in his hat, would stop for a chat with them on the bench. Bonfire Night was down The Lawn too, with a committee giving out sweets and lemonade, the lads dragging down tyres and old furniture, and a competition with Churchview and Forestview for the biggest fire.

It was like a cattle mart

As teenagers it was the disco in Ballinagare. The only way to know it was on was to wait for the Roscommon Herald. The bus took about an hour and a half, and when they were a bit older there were naggins in pockets, though Lesley maintains her innocence. Arriving was like a cattle mart, with buses in from everywhere. Tearaways, platform boots, navy O’Neill’s with the zips. Kimberley Clay had them learning Spice Girls routines in the cubby hole at school, and they entered busking competitions. Requests went in to the Power Hour on the radio and were taped off it.

The Gala Festival ran for about a week, with Murray’s Amusements, a night at the Well, a night on the Bridge and the finale on the Crescent. One year there was a Blind Date on the Crescent with a red-headed Donegal man who had been on the real programme. At Christie Wynne’s, Phil and Teresa had endless patience with children holding out 10p for Jawbreakers and Black Jacks and asking the price of everything.

Mary was more like a mother than a boss

Then the chipper. Shifts were 12 to 5, 5 to 10 and 10 to close, and the two of them always tried to get the 5 to 10 together. Late nights ran into early mornings, finishing around six with the birds singing. Mary drove them home. Denise got Lesley her job there at 16. Florence started at 14. Mary found something for every young person who came asking, filling ketchup bottles or doing spuds, and she gave a lot of people in the town their first job and their first wage.

“We were like a big family.”

There was Florence in an old man’s mask and a long black coat, ringing Denise back in and chasing her round the shop. There was Patricia McNamara, who kept them company on quiet nights and knew the rota better than they did, knocking on Florence’s door at two minutes past twelve. Lesley has told Mary that if the chipper ever opens again, she’ll be back.

I don’t think we ever had an argument

There were Saturday night videos, from McDonough’s and later Extravision, with fines if you forgot to rewind or return them. One night the two of them climbed out a window to go into town for chips. There was a sunbathing session with baby oil that left Denise burnt, and a trip away where the two babysitters forgot the sun cream. Sunday meant Glenroe, and bed after it.

At Granny Campbell’s there was rhubarb, and dillisk, which Denise calls seaweed and still eats raw when she finds it. They picked sour sallies down The Lawn, got stung by nettles and rubbed dock leaves on the stings. They waited on Roscoe’s apples. Their daughters are friends now, the same way they were.

“I don’t think we ever had an argument.”