Destiny: Book of Light Read Online Free PDF

as whispers. Whispers were also made about other members of the family. Loud bangings, crashings, smashings and screams could be heard during the day too, when Paddy was at work down the docks. Most men on the lane worked the docks, but there wasn't much wealth to be had from it. Hard work and little wage meant keeping food on the table was an achievement, especially in the case of the Cronins, with 6 mouths to feed and most of the income going to The Shamrock Tavern.
    All the houses on the lane were small red bricked bungalows. They all had a small back garden and even smaller front garden. And although having your house detached from other houses and having both front and back gardens might be considered a privilege, there were few who would like to live on Ashwood lane. With the back gardens just a wall apart from the end of the docks, noise, dust and everything else that goes with living by the docks was pretty much a constant. And to top it off they were quite close to the coal power plant aswell, so when there was a South East wind, it was hard to breath, not to mention the hassle of everything, with no mercy, being covered in black soot. Saying that, in terms of kids, they had been blessed with the biggest green out of any of the nearby estates. At either end some kids had hammered nails into planks of wood taken from the docks to make goals and form a pitch. The make shift pitch gave many Mothers in Ashford many hours of peace during the summer months. Many in the winter too but with kids off school during the summer it was appreciated a lot more.
    Grass was hard to come by in Ireland at the time, at least for a twelve year old boy anyway. But Sean was lucky enough to have a cousin named Johny, living in California, where the Hippy movement was at a peak. He would send some over about once a month disguised in anything from Chestnut shells to toothpaste tubes. Nobody asked any questions and it made Sean very popular on the lane. He only had to pay for the postage, which he posted back once a month sometimes with a little extra. His cousin, Johnny said the amount he sent over was only the remains that fell out of joints he made over there. It was nothing to him but was a goldmine to Sean. Every month he would sell a little to make a couple of punts for himself and still have plenty to smoke and share. In the middle of the green there was a rock face, the top being level with the green and the bottom of the houses, and then dropping to a load of Gorse bush. It was about twenty feet high and ran in a semi circle until it met the hill. Through many years of little boys chopping nettles a camp had been formed at the top, long before Sean was ever born, but chopping nettles was a pastime of his younger years too because camps need maintaining. Surrounded by trees and ditch, and with an easy escape down the rock face into the tunnels through the Gorsh, the camp was a favourite place for the kids of Ashwood lane.
    The tunnels themselves were an amazing display of childhood engineering. A complete Labyrinth of pathways many just small enough for a child to crouch through. Adults rarely ventured in there. Sean himself often recalled getting lost for hours upon hours in the maze. Very few points could you actually get above to Gorsh and brambles to see what direction you were heading in. Each tunnel looked the same as the next and was joined, randomly, to many others. The only markers were any large rocks or openings, but you could walk for an hour without seeing any. He often wondered how many kids and how many favourite chopping sticks it took to build such a spectacle. Or how many years it took and how many nettle stings kids had to endure, but mostly how many kids had actually got lost in there. How many kids were never seen again. The parents of Ashwood had told all the kids down through the years that the boogey man lived in there as a feeble attempt to stop such ventures. And although it didn't work, to active imaginations