A bungalow of creamy limestone with a key-pattern of bricks round the front door, it had twin roofs set one in front of the other. The back roof made the rooms high-ceilinged and cool in summer.

Next to my house were two other houses. The one with the hydrangeas where Nan’s voice came out of on Christmas Eve was first of all the Carters’ and Nan hated him because he called her Bluey because of her hair (the dye) and his wife Melba and Billy the baby who I saw in the bath and he had a little pink sausage in his legs — funny — and I blew his nose on the flannel and pretended once to choke him — in the lav — and I got scared when he started to cry. Then they moved to Lockleys and sent a Christmas card — Baby Jesus in the manger, and then the O’Briens came and she was fat and took me to the trots and saw a man expose himself on the Beach Road with all the kiddies passing. Dirty Pig. They gave parties and I got out of bed to watch and through the fence by the tank they were giggling and weeing by the lemon (the men) but the girls went further along. They were drunk, and made dirty jokes and sang a song. It is the beer. And poor Doogles the dog had a stroke on Guy Fawkes’ and died. He looked like a rat, that dog.

The house with the field of shivery grass and the butterfly bush belonged to Mr. Willoughby the milkman. There was a cellar that was cool and smelt like the inside of an ice-box for the milk cans and long-handled ladles. There was a stable for a cart and a brown horse that looked like a toy. Mr. Willoughby gave Reece chocolate and a rubber ball. Then he died, and the toy horse disappeared; the cellar and the stable were empty, the butterfly bush stood unpruned.

And the lady across the road looked like a golliwog. But with red hair. Or like a spider — daddy-long-legs — in her garden and there was a New Australian boarder, but not Italian, but I think Hungarian. They kill you if you are on the lawn at night in the heat-wave — Nan read it out in the paper. And he had wine that he hid in the bush at the gate when he went in. Mr. Shipp from up further did the same, but at the back, I saw with Raelene (his granddaughter) and also a bandy-leg terrier Nan said should be destroyed. White and a colour like honey and tits on its chest (naughty word) and a pinky-coloured bottom. An ugly sort of dog. There were three houses all the same and joined together — poorer houses than ours and in one the old lady was dying and didn’t get many visitors — a shame Nan said, but didn’t go — Italians next to them and they sit in the street in chairs and make it common. And Dot Cherry who is married but has a boy friend — a sailor boy — and we went over one hot night and looked through the fly-wire and she was doing exercises — pointing her toes, but on the bed. Really just exercises and she had red toe-nails, but saw us and chased us across the road.