LOOKING out the window here, it’s not hard to tell the last song of summer is about to be sung. The green across the road is green no more, a bare, brown space pockmarked by stray lumps of grass that, even if thrown together, would barely cover a six yard box.
Two sets of soccer goals - one with a net trailing off the stanchion, the other with none at all - stare at each other across a deserted dustbowl.
Down in the far corner, nestled in the shade created by fences on two sides and a tree hanging overhead, is a den comprised of expertly arranged wooden poles, covered in camouflage netting.
It has played host to scrawly signs of varying sizes imploring girls to stay out – a plea that would prove invitation rather than deterrent, the boys huddled inside in army fatigues and green helmets learning a valuable life lesson about knowing your enemy.
The hill at the other side has become worn and skiddy the more scorched the earth, manna from heaven for those tearing up and down on bikes – children rattling along with stabilisers at the start of summer, freewheeling by its end.
Usually around this time the teenagers next door would be pucking about, launching the sliothar from one end to the other. Sometimes another group from round the corner would stand along the sidelines, watching, waiting, their patience the 50p on the table for when opportunity arises.
Approaching 3pm on this Thursday afternoon, the green is empty. For the first time in months there is nothing but silence. The ground looks tired, yearning for a break. That won’t come just yet.
The schools may mostly be back but, for now anyway, the sun is still in the sky. The familiar tramping of feet on hard ground is only a matter of hours away, a squad of young lads between the ages of, I’d guess, seven and 11 defying the shortening evenings, making the most of teachers’ easy going approach to homework on the first week back.
There have been fouls and fall-outs over the last few months but friendships remain, even if parental persuasion was occasionally required. Every goal is celebrated as though it were a World Cup final winner, the curse of the celebration imitation knowing no bounds as arms are thrust back at the end of the leap, ‘siuuuuuu’ echoing up and down the street.
Fists and chests are bumped when gravity-defying saves are made, quiet descends momentarily when someone is left in a heap from an over-zealous tackle, while shots sent wide of the posts are greeted with the zeal of a dropped fork in the dinner hall.
There’s one lad who always arrives down late, the jeans hoisted up around his midriff tucked into big boots while his mates buzz about in the shirts and shorts of their favourite team.
He looks like he’s coming from a day’s work and, standing about a foot above the rest, maybe he is. Yet every night, without fail, a roar goes up among the other boys when they see him bombing around the corner, ducking the head, trying - failing - to suppress a smile as the long stride quickens instantly, denim no impediment to his enthusiasm.
For all the wearied groans and head shakes about consoles, tablets, phones, there is such a brilliant simplicity to how young people relate to each other - so often through sport. Only when witnessed at close quarters does it truly dawn what you’ve lost through the years.
You think back to your own summers spent on similar patches of grass, and how effortlessly and enjoyably they breezed by. As the youngest - by a fair distance - of four boys, I had little choice but to find friends once school was out.
In Gran Canaria one year, I wound up joined at the hip with a German kid called Ozoaka. He spoke no English, I spoke no German, yet for two weeks we were completely inseparable – raking about in the pool, eating pizza, playing football, tennis, table-tennis. Whatever there was to do, we did it together.
His 10th floor apartment was directly across from ours and, just before the Buck’s Fizz tribute act struck up on the stage below, we’d shout back and forth – both without the slightest clue what the other was saying.
Owing much to the language barrier, there was an awkwardness to our parents’ exchanges that just did not exist with us.
The following year in Trabolgan, Italia ’90, big Jack’s army, I fell in with a few lads from Donegal, all football mad, the green jersey barely off their backs from beginning to end. One of them, Paul, would knock the door every morning and off we’d head.
Whoever was the man of the moment at the World Cup would invariably have his name taken on the five-a-side pitch. At varying points I was Dragan Stojkovic, Diego Maradona, Roger Milla and Argentina’s penalty-saving goalkeeper, Sergio Goycochea.
Paul remained consistent in the face of such imaginary riches. When he wasn’t fellow son of Tir Chonaill Packie Bonner between the sticks, Paul was Brazilian midfielder Alemão – a crafty schemer capable of unpicking any defence. Effortless with the ball, effortless without it.
Both frizzy haired and balding at the same time, with a moustache you imagine hummed of Lucky Strike cigarettes and regret, he was an unlikely idol for a young lad from Milford, but who were we to argue?
As the curtain came down on that adventure, Paul and I vowed to stay in touch. A few weeks on, having excitedly gained permission to dial the exotic number on the scrap of paper before me, the call lasted approximately two minutes – two minutes largely made up of silence and hello, are you theres. Needless to say, we never spoke again.
Children aren’t designed to communicate via forced conversation, instead rejoicing in shared experience and summers spent in each other’s company, blissfully unaware of the memories they are making.
It’s getting on for seven o’clock here and the boys are back out the front where they’ll roar and scream and shout until long after darkness has fallen. And so they should, because soon the sound of summer will fade out altogether.
I’ll miss it when it’s gone.
