Emily Hourican on life as a blow-in in an old, well-established community
My doorbell has been broken for more than a year, and I won't be getting it fixed anytime soon. If I do it will be rung - insistently, constantly - by local children. That's what broke it in the first place. Now they just knock, also insistently, but not as constantly. They have trouble reaching the knocker. I open the door to find what looks like a group of miniature, out-of-season carol singers around the doorstep.
"Is he playin' out?" they chorus, dropping sweet wrappers like insects shedding second skins. "He" is my two-year-old son, and they are all at least four years older. Too old to really play with him, far too young to mind him properly. Which means there's nothing in it for me. I get to sit and invigilate while they pass him from hand to hand like a bundle of dirty washing. Sometimes they drop him. Or he struggles and unbalances whoever's carrying him, so they both topple over. That's always a good excuse to say no for a couple of weeks.
They ask other questions, too. Can he walk yet? Does he go to school? Can they take him to see the bonfire? That's from the boys. The girls are much more sensible. They smell of bubblegum and have sticky hands, but they know the way of babies. "It's time for his tea, isn't it?" or "He needs a nap", they will volunteer, with authority, when he begins to grizzle at the boisterous treatment. One, being told that, no, he wasn't "playin' out" because he was very tired and didn't get to bed until 10pm last night, looked at me with great seriousness. "Ye f**kin' dope," she said. She had a point.
So why don't I just say no and shut the door? It's a question of politics. We're the blow-ins, newcomers to an area full of small houses lived in by what used to be called the working classes. No Tudor Mansions or Elysium Manors here. The original residents were gradually being supplanted by professional couples with one child, but after an initial flurry of activity the plantation seems to have stalled, and newcomers are very much in a minority.
Who owns a house is usually obvious. Shiny brass knockers, hanging baskets and gleaming windows equal old-timers. Badly-tended window boxes and wooden blinds equal blow-ins. There's another sign that's a dead giveaway: the white lady, a hefty china ornament of an artistically-draped young woman in the classical style. Displayed prominently in a front window, it means old-timer without a shadow of doubt. Some houses have one in each of their front windows. That was a good day for some travelling salesman. My next-door neighbour, a blow-in like me, wondered with wide eyes whether the white lady was a secret code for the house of a drug dealer.
At Christmas the divide is even more obvious. The few tasteful displays of silver-and-white streamers with Scandinavian-style wooden decorations are swamped by garish green, red and gold, with naughty Santas effecting entrances to top-floor windows and fibreglass reindeers capering across roofs. These usually stay in place well into March.
The local Spar tells a story of frontier living, too. Among the super-size industrial cleaning products and tins of meatballs are slowly creeping natural yogurt, ciabatta and green tea.
The kids' families have been here forever. It's clannish round these parts. They're polite to me, but I feel the distance. We bond over disapproval of the students across the way who have noisy barbecues and sing "So bye-bye, Miss American Pie" late into the night, but it's not enough.
I have dreams of organising a block party. I once went to one in Connecticut, organised by friends who had lived in their wooden house for well over 10 years. People stood around, introducing themselves over hot dogs and iced tea. "Hi, I'm Marsha and this is Duke. We live at number 57. We moved in about six years ago." There was a disconcerting amount of this, face to face for the first time. Even more disconcerting was the detail people had amassed about each other. "You have the three children who commute to New York every day. And you bought that car a year ago. I see you all went on vacation there a few weeks back. To Florida, right? Was it fun?" My friends say the goodwill lasted until Thanksgiving. Then there was a lapse back into the old ways. I think they were relieved; all the camaraderie was unsustainable.
Americans have an excuse. They have big houses with bigger gardens. I live cheek-by-jowl with the people around me. I can see into their backyards from my bathroom. Worse, they can probably see into my bathroom from their yards.
Knowing that they all know each other makes me feel conspicuous, like being the new girl at school or pitching up at university, ready to make friends all round, only to discover that three-quarters of first-year arts students had been to nursery together and felt they had quite enough friends already, thanks.
But, crucially, there were no children in first arts. And there's no better leverage than children. So I don't tell this lot to stop manhandling my baby or explain that, really, he'll never be old enough to play with them, because they will be getting older at exactly the same rate. Instead I answer their questions: "Yes, he can walk. Look, he's doing it now." "No, he doesn't go to school yet." "No, he certainly can't go to the fireworks with you." I don't give out much when they send my son pitching head first onto the Tarmac. Sometimes I even take them to the park. If I ever do organise a block party, I'll book the little girls to demonstrate Irish dancing. And if we're still here in seven years, I'll get them in to babysit. Maybe I'll even stop that salesman and buy a white lady or two.