Jonny McCambridge: Remembering the two grannies and a time when the doors were unlocked

My da’s side of the family were roughly hewn in rural north Antrim. It was here that I grew up in a red brick house at the top of a long lane pocked with deep puddles and lined with wild briars which scraped your legs if you got too close. No other children lived within miles of our patch of land and the youthful currency for my brothers and I was mud and nettles.

At the bottom of our lane lived Country Granny (my Country Granda died when I was young and I have only a bleached memory of him sitting in his armchair, wearing a flat cap and emitting a rasping laugh). Country Granny’s farmhouse, as best I can remember, was populated with scowling cats, a dog and fowl which roamed and scratched freely in the yard.

My ma’s side of the family were shaped and sculpted on the streets of the Cregagh estate in east Belfast. In that warren of narrow roads, close to where George Best learnt to kick a football, I spent most of my holidays as a young child, staying in the council house in which City Granny lived.

Here there were plenty of other children to play with, but they favoured strange games. One involved standing at one side of the road, throwing a football and trying to make it bounce off the kerb on the far side. The kids looked at me with bewildered eyes when I told them that there were no kerbs where I came from. The game often had to be stopped to allow cars to pass.

The two wildly different sets of experience melded together to create one childhood. Occasionally it was not a good mix. When I was a wee boy City Granny took me on a trip to Lady Dixon Park where I appalled everyone by stopping to have a pee on one of the public lawns. It was simply what I had grown up doing in the wild and empty country fields. Nobody had ever complained before.

The two sides of the family lived separate lives, mostly unknown to each other. Their backgrounds were so distinct that it was often difficult to think of them as the same species. We are all just products of our experience, we only know what we know.

Yet, despite the cleavage between the lifestyles, there was something which linked Country Granny’s old farmhouse with City Granny’s council terrace. Both operated an open-door policy.

This doesn’t just mean that the front doors were left unlocked (although that is my recollection), but rather that the culture was that family and friends were always walking in.

At Country Granny’s house a seemingly unending procession of uncles, aunts, cousins and grandchildren came and went freely. There was no knocking or waiting required. My memories of that house are always of crowds of people.

The same was true at City Granny’s house, although here it was even more striking because of the abundance to neighbours and friends who called. There always seemed to be Belfast housewives letting themselves in through the unlocked alley doorway for a chat with a cup of tea and a smoke, or men visiting at night to play cards.

After City Granny died, this culture of people popping in to lend a hand helped my City Granda, who was blind, to continue living at home for several more decades, right until the end of his life.

Now, I am no longer that wee boy who peed on the lawn and I have a house and family of my own. I have gone in my own direction, settling close to a village in County Down. While it was never a considered decision, it has occurred to me several times that my current situation does combine something of the peace of rural living with the convenience and sense of community of living in a settlement.

My little estate is surrounded by fields. We are within walking distance of the village and, when we get there, we usually meet someone we know and stop for a chat. I am comfortable with my neighbours.

But, despite this, I was still surprised when one called at my door recently. It doesn’t happen very often.

The neighbour, standing on my doorstep, warned me that I needed to be vigilant. That morning a gang had been observed in our estate. He told me they had been seen going round several of the houses, trying the front doors, and moving on to the next property if they could not gain access.

The gang were spotted and fled when the police were alerted. A number of officers arrived promptly and confirmed that this method of theft was a recurring problem in the area.

My neighbour looked solemn as he told me that the gang had been seen trying to open my front door.

I quickly thought about the timing. My wife and son would have been in bed when this happened. I’m a troubled sleeper and would have been downstairs turning on my work computer and boiling the kettle when they were trying my door, just yards away.

I thought about what may have occurred had my door had been unlocked. What would I have done if I had been confronted by this gang in my kitchen? No answers came easily.

My neighbour chatted some more. While he stood there I had the guilty realisation that I had not invited him in. Indeed he has never been inside my house. I asked him if he wanted to come in for a cup of tea, remembering too late about the lockdown. He looked momentarily surprised and politely declined.

I scratched my head as the conversation reached an awkward conclusion. My neighbour told me that he had spent the day ordering security cameras, alarms and spotlights to fix to his property. He advised me to do the same and I nodded hesitantly. Then he put his hands in his pockets and began to move back towards his own house.

‘It just goes to show, you never know who’s about,’ he said.

‘That’s right,’ I replied profoundly.

‘And the big lesson is that you have to keep your front door locked at all times.’

‘Aye,’ I replied sadly.