Roxan ~ In My Life with the Beatles

2- Richie as a child

Dingle Games

As we grew up we always had lots of friends living in the surrounding streets. James would cart off to the bomb sites close by with a friend or two usually with a tin truck or his matchbox car he got for Christmas.

I, being a tad younger, stayed closer to home usually, only going to see Mrs. Emilia Portman at the store on the corner of Charles and Dockside lane. She was lovely, older like a grandmother but spritely enough to run rings around the sixteen-year-old lad that helped her every Friday. I would always stop by and visit, helping stack the lower shelves or wiping the counter, never ever expecting a boiled lolly but happily receiving one every now and then.

I also played with the sad faced little boy three doors down. He was James' age but because he hardly left his front doorstep James soon got bored and carted off with his more able bodied friends.

Richie was sickly, his eyes told a story of years of doctors pushing and prodding, his skin was greyish from the lack of sunlight.

Often I would sit playing or singing with him. He liked me singing 'Somewhere over the rainbow' when he was feeling sad.

Some days, he would be confined to his bed, a cough racking his slight body, shaking him to his core.
Some nights, awoken by strange voices, I would venture to my window looking out in the dead of night and see his mother carrying him off for yet another stay in hospital the street cloaked in just the shadows cast by the moon lit night.

Nonetheless Richie and I would always reacquaint ourselves on his return and I would ramble on about funny happening and make faces causing him to smile and laugh which his mother would enjoy listening in from the kitchen. Smiling with relief he was home.