Memory Lane

I found myself back in my hometown on Friday.  Which isn't that unusual, I suppose - I'm back there most weekends visiting my mother.  However, on these weekend visits, I don't venture into the city centre, I just go to my mum's house.  On Friday I was there on a training day and travelled down by train.  The railway station and my training destination are on the opposite side of town from my usual destination.  Anyway, the training event ended very early and, with time on my hands, I decided to take a look at the city centre before returning home.  The experience wasn't exactly uplifting.  The main street which links the station to the city centre was its usual ramshackle self - various small businesses and shops that seem to come and go at an alarming rate, growing ever seedier and more run down the closer to the station you got, culminating in a sex shop.  In the opposite direction, there's more of an attempt to raise the tone, the old infirmary hospital has now been converted into upmarket apartments, whilst the ground floor of the clock tower currently hosts Argos. 

But it was the city centre itself which depressed me the most.  So many of the old established shops and businesses I'd grown up with and had assumed would always be there had gone, replaced with bland chain stores or coffee bars.  Even the SPCK bookshop had vanished, following the nearby Beech's Bookshop, a one time fixture which had succumbed to 'progress' a few years ago and whose site is now occupied by a trendy restaurant, into oblivion.  Even that shop which used to sell assorted crockery - which was on that corner ever since I could remember - has gone, replaced by number of instantly forgettable smaller businesses which will be lucky to see out their initial six month leases.  Not to mention that grotty fish and chip hop by the taxi rank which had been there since the dawn of time - also missing in action, or gentrification, to be more accurate.  I suppose what really bothered me was that it was all yet more evidence that things keep changing whether I like it or not.  It's disturbing.  It reminds me I'm getting old.  Still, just as surprising were the things that hadn't changed: that furniture shop whose only branch is in that city centre and has served generations of residents; the luggage shop opposite, where I bought numerous travelling bags over the years' and that bloody sports shop which survives, I'm sure, simply because it has the games kit concession for most of the local schools.   Oh, how I still hate that shop because of its association with being made to play rugby on freezing cold Monday afternoons!