what do you think,

steve cabhnam

THE ESTATE
living in inner city flatland dublin in the early 70s to my parents was no place for kids to grow up,
the busy roads running adjacent to the flats was to them death on wheels, the local shop was on the same side of the street as the flats ,that did not stop my parents obsessing about the road,to them the memory of the young boy who was knocked down a couple of years back was fresh in their memory.
The third floor flat with the balcony outside the door, was another danger, they were so afraid that one of us would one day fall, i was the eldest of 3 children with one more on the way, to me even walking outside on that balcony would make my legs feel like jelly i would sidestep with my back to the walls in fear of falling, thanks to my mam with the many warnings.
The third and most frightening thing to them of all was the canal, it ran at the back of the flats, beautiful as it was with its many swans, oak trees spotted along its banks with grass like a snooker table, to my mother who lost a cousin to drowning ,this was the the thought that frightened her most one of her kids wandering over here and drowning. to my mam the reeds would grab you and you wouldnt have a chance.
we had a playground with its merry go round swings and a slide, that was our only area we were allowed.
I was the eldest of 3 children with one more on the way(i myself was seven)the eldest.
my parents decided it was time to apply for a transfer to a house, we were council tenants it was common then for people to live in council dwellings, so we were hopefully moving,
We were accepted for a house in tallaght in a housing estate, a house with gardens front and back, it was about 10kilometres outside the city centre,
with one bus servicing tallaght back then every hour it was a long distance out of our previous surroundings, back in the 70s not many working class people had cars.
we rode the bus a couple of times to tallaght before we moved out of curiosity, i remember sitting up top on the bus the very front seats pretending to drive moving my imaginary steering wheel evertime the bus turned, the cloud of smoke didnt bother me, at that time the only smoking ban was no smoking downstairs on the bus,

steve cabhnam

any comments good or bad would be welcomed, its just the start of a story i want to write

cobsie

I think it's really good, even though it's a little bit raw. The voice is simple and real but also quite vivid. Be careful of your punctuation, it's all over the joint Also, be careful of repetition - you use 'memory' twice in once sentence, for example. Nothing like a thesaurus to jog your mind for vocab! It's a great start, though...hope to see more

steve cabhnam

thanks for you input.:)