My Inner Architect

Summary

 I  dreamt I was on an outing and adventure with my two brothers. After many adventures, we had quite an exciting journey home through several amazing forms of transport. The last  part of the journey, however, was to walk up the lane bringing us home. When I arrived home, I saw that the locality had been transformed by visionary architecture.

Background

Now let me explain the geography of home. In the later 19th century, as Dublin expanded, a railway line was constructed from Broom Bridge to Broadstone. Part of the construction involved blasting through rock. The debris from this rock was thrown into a heap beside the railway, and this heap was kept from slipping into the adjoining Tramline Cottages (built to accommodate workers on the tramline), and building ground on the other side. In the 1930s ten houses were built on this well-settled hill of debris. Our house was one of these.

My final treck

I was weary and tired, but my brothers were still fairly energetic. I let them go ahead, and it was quite a few minutes before I dragged myself to our destination. As you approach the end, you get a glimpse of our back-yard from the lane. Wow! some architect and developer had transformed our back-yard into a wonderful garden. There were two small teams of big children playing a ball-game, using bats and a shuttlecock, in the grass area, and many of our adult relations sitting around in deck-chairs.

My brothers and I had often used shuttlecocks in our back yard. This was because you could give a shuttlecock a fair whack without canting it, for the "feathers" would slow it down in the air.

My welcome

I reached the back garden, backpack hunching me forward, and expected the relations to jump with joy on meeting me, but no, they sat there indifferent  to my arrival, just acquitting me a nod. This is the same as the welcome I got as a toddler from Mrs. McCormack, when I first ventured out our garden gate, having mastered the art of walking, and thinking myself a great fellow, when she exclaimed, "Oh hello Roger, and hello Jerry, and is this poor little Francie," the latter being me. No  welcome for me, just a  reference to me being poorly and little. That had put me in my place once and for all.

The Architecture

I went to my room. It had been transformed by the new architecture! I looked out the window and saw, in a wide panorama, that the whole locality had been gloriously transformed.

My Railway memories

Now, near our home, as I have just explained, was a railway. This had been disused as a passenger line for many years, as visitors from the country were then dumped at Kingsbridge (now Heuston) Station. There was, however, a tall wire fence all along the line to prevent people from trespassing, which resulted in a large stretch of land, which could have been utilised as amenity, being kept as a wilderness.

Not that the wire fence stopped us kids from trespassing. We had a rule: "He who cants must retrieve." This rule gave me a moral dilemma. My sister, who is a nun, has recently explained that, pursuant to the theology of Thomas Aquinas, when faced with a choice of two evils, the lesser evil is the moral choice. This would have eased my conscience, for I and my siblings were under parental commandment never to go on the railway line (or other person's garden).

So, on the street, I was faced with two conflicting rules: the rule to retrieve the ball I canted on the railway line, and the parental command. Disobeying the latter was, of course, the lesser evil, and therefore the moral choice, but I did not realise that at the time, and, so, was riddled with guilt.

The Inner Architect

Let me explain now what the inner architect had done: the whole area of the railway line, its adjoining houses and gardens, and our own ten-house "keyhole" enclave, had been absorbed into a magnificent development with beautiful apartments and amenity areas. My cousin, a visionary architect, was in my presence, and I expressed my delight with the architecture. "Yes," he said wistfully, "This is how it could be,"

The Message

Being a complex dream, it seems to have a complex message, which I understand to have 3 parts:

1. To have adventure, you have to travel a long way from home (to mountain, seaside or country) because the amenities of your locality (e.g., railway and canal lands and school grounds) are  out of bounds.
2. If you engage a super modern form of transport, it will not bring you home, but dump you at a big hub, from where you have to engage other forms of transport, which, bringing you ultimately to your locality, still don't bring you home, and, tired and weary, you still have to  trudge the last bit, weighed down under the weight of your back-pack. All this could be improved by implementing Krunchie's Cab, which would bring you all the way home in one comfortable carriage from wherever you were.
3. Visionary architecture could develop attractive localities with attractive buildings and community amenities. (Instead we have seen massive, characterless, housing estates, and mish-mash of different, often ugly, commercial buildings). Great cities were developed on a singular plan, including Georgian Dublin, but, since independence, ours has been largely a mishmash of mediocrity.

Attractive new apartments which blend well with adjoining sylvan suburb of Glasnevin.

Just across the road, new slum-style apartments. How could planning officers allow such: why is compliance with the local styles not enforced?