Day 50: The Swings, The Stories, and the Summers That Shaped Us

Today, the Famous Five headed off on an adventure to... Ringsend.

Now, before you recoil in disbelief — “Why on earth would anyone spend a glorious sunny Saturday in Ringsend, of all places?” — allow me to give you some context.

Auntie Peggy had a very dear friend  Lizzie Slevin. Lizzie was a relative, though don’t ask me to unravel how exactly — the family tree’s a bit tangled. Lizzie was an absolute character, with that unmistakable dry Dublin wit. She lived on South Dock Place, and Auntie Peggy was a frequent visitor. Lizzie, in turn, regularly hopped on the bus down to Raharney to visit the country cousins, always bringing the Twinkle comic for me. She’d laugh, saying she’d be reading Twinkle on the bus while the man beside her read The Financial Times — and I knew which of them had the better read.

Summers were spent "on holiday" in Ringsend, descending en masse upon Lizzie’s little terraced house — a typical two-up, two-down. Never mind that Lizzie kept lodgers or that the kitchen was barely wider than a hallway. Never mind that the toilet was in a little shed at the bottom of a tiny concrete yard. Meals still arrived as if by magic, fit for royalty, and laughter echoed through every room.

Just to put this in the context of the current housing crisis we did hear that the house was sold several years ago for...1.6 million euro!!!

But best of all? The Swings.

Just around the corner, this concrete playground with its six swings, tall slide, and seesaw was our Disneyland. We’d wolf down breakfast and race over the moment the gates opened, spending all day there, unsupervised but entirely free, before returning to Lizzie’s for dinner and bed. Simpler times. Happier times.

Fast forward to 2025. Auntie Peggy, now just shy of 92, mentioned that she’d love to see Ringsend again. So we rallied. And as serendipity would have it, my nephew Damian had lived nearby many years ago and kindly offered to be our driver and tour guide.

We worried it might be too warm for a nonagenarian to be traipsing around, but we needn’t have fretted. We could barely keep up. She knew exactly where to go, who had lived where, and what shop used to be what.

The Fab Four

First stop: the playground.

There it was. Still called The Swings. I’d always assumed that was just our nickname for it — but there it was, on the gate. 

It’s more colourful now, the ground soft with modern spongy safety material. Health and safety gone mad! But still, unmistakably, our playground.

Peggy having a moment to reflect

Three generations                         

Then, the short stroll around the corner to South Dock Place. It was like stepping through a glitch in the matrix. The street looked exactly the same. New windows and doors, perhaps, but the spirit of it hadn’t changed. I could almost hear our childhood shrieks of laughter, calling each other home for tea. And as I write this, I realise something: I just called it “home.”

We took the essential photos outside the front door. No, of course we didn’t knock and ask the new owners if we could have a peek — though we were sorely tempted.

We made our way back, tired, sun-kissed, and content. Today, we didn’t just revisit a place — we stepped back into the best summers of our lives.