............When young, I had no concept of poverty.


Most of my pals live in Step Lane, a narrow street of dwellings marked as unfit for human habitation and therefore due for demolition.

Donie is brilliant footballer , he hopes to play pro one day, he is one of my regular street football team mates.

Anyway, he has not been seen on the street for a week or two, so , late one damp and breezy winter afternoon I decide to call at his house for the first time to find out how he is. 
 
Though most of the dwellings at this upper end of the lane have already been abandoned and at least  
partly demolished, some are still intact and occupied by families or individuals waiting their turn to move out.

For us boys, using the shells of the demolished houses is great fun, we play many games that involve jumping from high walls and leaping across the gap from one side of the lane to the other; the area is perfect during sunny afternoons for war games and Cowboys and Indians. 

After dark however, the place does seem a bit desolate, with the solitary lamp light half way along, and so much rubble to step over.

As I approach the house I begin to wonder if I have the right address, it’s hard to believe than anyone could be still living here.
The familiar condemned notice shows on the wall right next to front door, the downstairs window is boarded up, and the upstairs uncurtained window shows no light.

The front door is shut so I look for a knocker but fail to find one, and I call out instead.
I’m  about to walk away when a voice calls from within. It’s my pal, and he says to push the door and come in.

I push against the door and it gives quite easily and makes a loud scraping noise. I look into the hallway but see nothing, the house is in total darkness, the only light source is from outside the house, from the nearby street lamp.

I stand there unsure what to do next. The voice again calls down from upstairs and says to come on up, my eyes will soon get used to the dark, push the door , it’s only a block of wood keeping it shut, then leave it slightly ajar so that I can find my way; and to watch my step, there’s a missing floorboard on the stairs.
After pushing the door halfway shut, I’m still engulfed in the darkness of the hallway, so I press my hand against the wall as I find my way carefully to the stairs, and then ,walking with extra care , to the top landing.


Then, after hearing my shaky voice asking for directions, Donie calls again, and I carefully follow the sound into the back room.

I stand there for a while as a voice says hello and tells me that he has a stone bruise and a cough so can’t play football for a few days.

My eyes struggle to become accustomed to the gloom, and I’m anxious about taking a step in any direction.
Then I notice a soft glow coming from the solitary uncurtained window, so I move to that side of the room.
I turn to see Donie, he is lost as the sole occupant of a very large bed, and he’s lying right in the middle of it with a blanket up to his chin. I can’t make out his pale face very well, but I know it’s him.

It’s cold, dark and depressing here, and there’s an odour of damp. I can’t imagine how he can stay alone in such a place. We chat about football and I tell him it’s ok to be injured and he’ll play twice as well when he returns, but my thoughts are focussed not on football but on getting out of this place. But I can’t just walk out so soon.

I turn to look out of the window to see where the light is coming from. I see the back window of a house in the next street.

It looks like the kitchen window, and it has a half length net curtain on it, so it’s possible to see someone sitting at a table. The table is covered with a red and white checked table cloth, and there’s a plate and cup and saucer in front of the sitter.

Feeling much relieved to be still in some kind of contact with the outside world, I tell Donie he has posh neighbours who have electric light, and he laughs and says he has never looked out of that window, but hold on and he will come and have a look. He hobbles to the window and we stand there and gaze into the kitchen of that house.

It looks like tea time down there, and my gloom forgotten I gaze fascinated as a meal , we think it might be sausages and chips, is placed before the sitting man and he begins to use the knife and fork. I ask whose house we’re looking at, and Donie says it must be the back kitchen of the shop around the corner in Cattle Lane. ‘Don’t forget to get back if someone looks up here’, I say, but he laughs, ‘No chance of that, everyone thinks this house is empty, so they won’t know we’re watching them’.

As we watch, the man finally gets up and walks away from the table, to be soon replaced by someone else.
After a few minutes, another plate of food is placed on the table, and the new diner begins to eat, all of which makes us hungry as we watch. We think this might be black pudding, mash,and more sausages, but it’s just a guess as we can’t see the table very well. As we watch we marvel at the idea of someone actually waiting for someone else to finish before going to the table, he wouldn’t be foolish
enouugh to try that in Step Lane! laughs Donie, ‘cos he’d end up getting nothing.

Except for at the movies, we have never before seen such calm and ordered, knife and fork behaviour when faced with such lovely grub, and wonder if the place is some kind of cafe or restaurant.
My eyes are used to the semi darkness, so when we I finally turn to look into the room, I can just make out some very old faded wallpaper with dark stains, a table and chair,and a pile of clothes on the floor. The place doesn’t seem so bad now, but I’m glad it’s time to go, so I say bye to my pal, knowing that I shall not be coming back to this place. He says watch your step on the stairs, and as I leave the room, the darkness suddenly closes in on me again for a moment. But as I reach the stairs, I find a welcome glimmer of llumination from the street lamp beyond the open door.

Having something to aim for, I quicken my step, reach the front  
door, pull the door closed after me as instructed, shout a cheerio into the darkness, and am relieved to turn for home.
Donie did not return to the street.
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