Stupid Things I Remember about Growing Up (Part 5 - Moving to the suburbs, The Green and Philip's bodily fluids)

We moved from Chalk Farm to Southgate when I was 6 and it was like a different world.  There was green everywhere, instead of grey.  There was an area of grass right outside our house, about half the size of a football pitch, which we called 'The Green'.  And it was ours.  When I say 'ours' I mean the few kids who lived in a house facing The Green.  That would include kids from the 6 newly built 3 storey houses in a cul-de-sac called Linden Way - me and my brother from number 94, Deborah and Emily from 92 and Jonathan and Philip from 96.  (The latter two had older brothers, but both were teenagers and less interested in our patch of grass than they were in other grass, I perhaps erroneously and judgementally conjecture).  And then, from the semi detached houses on the other side of The Green, there was just Sergio, a spoilt and annoying kid of Italian descent who we sometimes played with and sometimes told to fuck off.  The third side of this triangular oasis had flats, full of old people I suspect as no one came out.  There were lots of old people around that area.  Poor bastards.  We must have annoyed them by climbing over their fences, ringing their doorbells and running away and being generally noisy during the long hours we'd be playing out in the area.  Kids who didn't live right next to The Green rarely used it, not out of fear, more apathy, but when they did, we didn't like it.  Kids get territorial, like dogs.  We didn't piss on The Green to mark our territory though.  We only pissed on it when we were bored and thought no one could see.

The great thing about The Green was that it was big enough to play football on, jumpers for goalposts OBVIOUSLY; and when the ball went into the road, which it always did, because there was nothing fencing us in, we would just continue playing in the road.  Few cars drove past, it was a quiet, leafy suburban set of streets, away from the nearest main road which linked Southgate and Oakwood tube stations.  And in the summer, The Green attracted bees, butterflies and wasps, which we'd catch in fishing nets.  We'd let the butterflies go, and the bees usually; but the wasps we'd keep in jam jars and then find garden spiders to put in with them in order to see who would win a gladiatorial contest.  The spiders usually did.

There weren't any trees bigger than saplings on The Green, but there were two small, conspicuous round bushes, which you could sit in, push each other onto or piss against.  Usually it was just Philip from next door who did that.  His hobby was pissing or snotting everywhere in the local area.