Shoot ’em up  games and fun at Cork’s €375k Killeens Fields

WELCOME to the House of Fun.

And, games.

Fun, games and gaming has been the family focus at 29 The Drive in Lios Cara, a four-bed home with attic conversion, garden games room/home bar, Lego galore, sundry collectors’ sets and more engaging activities than you could shake a console stick at.

The Crowley family’s No 29 was the must-go-to home at Christmas, far and wide in and around Killeens just outside Cork city, off the Blarney/Limerick/Mallow Road in a cul de sac.

And, at Halloween “people would be afraid to come to the door. We’ve an attic full of zombie figures,” reveals Majella Crowley, a hands-on mother of four — or five, if you include her husband Gary.

Together since they were aged 14, the young and young at heart couple have two sons, Greg and Gearoid, and two daughters, Jessica and Lisa, aged from 31 down to 17 years.

One, the youngest Gearoid is still at home, the others have moved out, but to say they are all close is probably an understatement.

Oldest, Greg and his fiancée have bought their own first home on Station Road near Blarney: his mum and dad are now buying there too, so there’s no escaping the call to games for the family with a competitive streak. “We are going after him, he probably thinks we’re stalkers,” says Majella, with only a slight glint discerned over a phone line.

“Bingo is the nastiest,” reveals Majella, listing off board games, computer games, Nintendo Switch games and the like they all enjoy.

And, while they all like to win, one in particular isn’t a great loser. “They get very sour!” Majella informs: the guilty party’s identity or gender isn’t being publicly disclosed as three of the four like shooting games (Jessica’s an exception as “she’s afraid to break a nail.”

The game ‘What am I?’ gets very dangerous after a few drinks, it’s revealed, and a firm family favourite is a word game, Scattergories.

But, now it’s time for the fun and games, the consoles, video arcade style games and gaming seats and screens to get packed up and moved to Blarney’s Station Road, to a three-storey ‘next’ home with basement-style lower level which will be a large home cinema once everything gets unpacked at Majella and Gary’s new home, for which Majella has very definite plans.

“I love wallpaper: at one stage I had wallpaper in every room. Gary would go out in a morning and a wall would be yellow and when he’d come home it would be all different and he’d say ‘I see you were working,’” admits the décor-holic. “I love a story in every room,” she adds, getting colours and themes from paintings, and wallpapers from specialist shop and online retailer Ryans in Dublin primarily.

The family’s on a happy roll themselves, and as part of the move No 29 is fresh to market with agent Michel Downey of ERA Downey McCarthy who guides the vibrant, exuberant and fun-filled home at €375,000.

That’s for a two-storey end of terrace four bed house of c 1,900 sq ft with large attic room with boxing/martial arts punchbag (for sore losers?), four bedrooms with one en suite, and a main living room plus large kitchen/diner, with utility as well as a guest WC.

The family have been here since 2006, in a Coleman-built home in the popular development, has mature gardens and during covid they turned a gaming room into a home bar as “we’d don’t go out that much, we’re happy here, we’re home birds,” notes Majella. Appropriately a plaque in the home bar suggests the cabin’s name “The Staying Inn.”

The sense of fun seems to be in the Crowley family personality and psyche as well as the property, packed as it is right now with diversions and generally “the hallway is Home Alone in Lego. But, it’s not all so bad now that Gary has taken to Lego WallArt,” claims Majella kindly.

However, the word “fixation” does get an occasional mention and she says Gary and she are less into the next generation their four offspring love such as the card game ‘What do you Meme’?

Anything they don’t play? “I got a Lie Detector game: no one would play it, honestly.”

Back on the home front, the very well-presented, albeit currently busy, No 29 is ready for road as the clan depart for a new life chapter.

Everything here is going back into the box(es) and more sedentary non-gamers can choose to do what they will with it.

VERDICT: the family has learned to, ahem, lego. … (Warnings: watch out for any lingering and lost Lego pieces padding about your new purchase in bare feet…)