It will save all the admin of the plethora of Facebook pages dedicated to how medium-sized market towns looked in the past.
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| "A cracking pint of Whitbread Trophy" |
The page will have special features:
"Before the Londoners got here"
"When there was still a woollen mill"
"Before we had to build estates to house everyone"
"When we still spoke in a strange dialect and burnt the man from Radio Rentals as a witch."
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| "Every apprentice had his underparts greased on his first day. Made a man of them." |
Every picture of an old building will receive 1,000 responses of "Wasn't the town lovely then, when we still skinned monkeys for a living."
Stick a picture of the old hospital up, and everyone will reminisce about how the TB patients used to be wheeled out midwinter to enjoy the snow.
Every picture of an estate being built will be met with "that was when the Overspill arrived."
Every mention of the ring road will attract a host of hostile comments about travellers.
So please "Like" our page, "Our Town was Better in the Past."
Because apparently they all were.
Your post inspired me to look at the small market town nearest to our village. To my astonishment it's now a large market town! Only you can forget the market. Once it had a cinema, now it has none, once it had public playing-fields, now it has none, once it had a bus service, now, well it still has a sort of one, but not to anywhere useful. Not if you want to return the same day, that is. Despite having trebled in size, once it had two GP practices, now it has....two GP practices, with closed lists. Once it had a choice of bakers, butchers, greengrocers, fishmongers, ironmongers, flower shops, cobblers, now it has Tesco. Once it had half a dozen pubs, now it has two. And several drinking clubs. Once it had a public library, now it has none; once it had three bookshops, now it has one.
ReplyDeleteBut it has plenty of charity shops, estate agents, and antique shops!
Steinbeck said that an old man protesting about changes was merely an isthmus in time. I don't care: It was better in the past.
Any update on the London Overspill?
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