Any place you revisit after many years out of nostalgia always being unrecognisable

Here is the conversation you might have had before you left home:–

“ What  a joy it will be to look in on our old haunts and see how their redevelopment has gone. ”

“ Indeed, just to see how those dappled dells of our dalliance have been magically transformed into business parks and  Lidl superstores.  “

“ Fain would I rest in peace if I could only see with my own eyes how tastefully the landscaping of Little Chef sites and  ‘Park and Ride’ car parks  has incorporated those bosky glades of our halcyon prime.”

“ O to behold just once before I die the shopping mall and the multi-story car park which have risen Phoenix-like from the ashes of the old town of yore , and to pay my respects just this once to the Argos store , the Carphone Warehouse and the Starbucks which will have sprung up where parish pump and horse trough once stood.”

Had you had such a conversation would you have gone?  The Little Chef , Argos, the business parks – all are already somebody else’s nostalgia . As the Quotist philospher has it: “These are but the olden days of the future – and what is the future but merely history which hasn’t happened yet.”  ( QQQQ*)

(Val Sibling,Matlock) - QQQQ*