ABSTRACT
When I was a child we lived opposite some waste ground. It was, with the exception of a narrow path that ran through it, overgrown with tall grass and rosebay willowherb. Me and my mates made mansions there. We'd tread the grass into long and intricate corridors, the flowers made way for palatial rooms too numerous to count and complicated sagas were enacted for hours and days on end. The world was very real to us, because the walls seemed so substantial. Only the tallest of us (and that would never be me!) could peer over the grass. This plot was next to a school with a high wall, which at some point fell down. Then for the next few years we also had red bricks to mark out our mansion, we could now make seats and tables and very daringly venture into the woods that belonged to the school. Of course the most important thing about this ‘architecture’ was that it was the backdrop, the platform on which to enact our dramas (often inspired by such Saturday cinema epics as Spartacus, Ben Hur, or more alarmingly The Nun's Story-no cinéma vérité for us, thank you).
