My secret, safe, secluded house has gone! In its place is a housing estate. Red bricked houses, with small windows just like glaring eyes looking out on the concrete jungle, which had at one time been a beautiful green field, a child's paradise. It was surrounded with a prickly hawthorn hedge and the only entrance to it was via a tall black iron gate.

It had been the school's playing field, but in the evenings and at weekends it was my favourite place, where I could play with the other girls from my street. Did we run races when we arrived there? No way! We all ran to our own gaps in the hedge, which for the next hour or two would be our house. We'd all collect stones to mark the edge of the house. Then we'd collect leaves and hunt for the broken pieces of china that we'd hidden the previous day. My china was the willow pattern and I didn't want to lose them , so when I'd finished playing each day, I'd hide them in an old biscuit tin.

Inside my house, I'd have a plank of wood for a seat. When my neighbours came to tea in my house, they'd sit on the seat but I'd have to sit on the earth. Hoping that it was dry earth and it wouldn't dirty my underclothes too much, or I'd have to face the usual reprimand, that I could catch a cold sitting on wet earth. I'd collect twigs and build them into a heap. This would be the fire. We were not allowed to have matches, so our fire was always a "pretend " fire. After Christmas we'd try to find some shiny red paper to put with the twigs and this made it look like a real fire. If we didn't take it home with us it would get wet and that was the end of our real fire.

We'd have to keep our house clean and tidy, so we'd all spend some time brushing the earth. We all used ferns as brushes. As the far end of the field was always waterlogged, it was easily enough to find mud to make cakes and pies for the house. We would then decorate our cakes with the leaves that we had collected. When I was ready, I would invite the other girls to tea, and we would pretend to eat the mud cakes. However, if it was someone's birthday we would have a party with proper biscuits or some jam sandwiches. That was a real treat for us.

Another aspect of our game was to collect wild flowers. Then we would make daisy chains to wear around our neck or our wrist. The buttercups were placed under the chin to see if we liked butter. The dandelions were put into an empty jam jar, thus representing a vase of flowers. We didn't like picking dandelions because they stained your fingers and it was believed that you would wet the bed that night!

To me, the sky was always blue, the sun was shining and the evenings were light and long enough for me to play with my friends. It was the same routine, but we never seemed to tire, probably because there was nowhere else to go and we didn't have cars or spare money. We were happy in the knowledge that we could play with friends without being disturbed.

The only danger, was when entering my favourite place. That dangerous obstacle was the tall black iron gate and how to get through it, or over it? I loved climbing trees, but this piece of metal had points and not branches. However, I did not let it prevent me from playing house in the hedge. In fact, learning to manouvre those bars made all of us taller as we grew older, or so our parents told us. They said we'd stretched our legs.

I spent many happy hours in my little house in the hedge. It was a familiar voice calling my name that would bring me back from my wonderful world of fantasy to reality. The sun would be sinking in the evening sky, my mother would be calling me. It would be the end of another wonderful day , but I was never upset, because there was always tomorrow. To me, at six years old, my house would still be there tomorrow.

But who knows what tomorrow brings! All that is left of that house in the hedge, are my memories.

Einir Evans