Some musings about the world

Things are changing. OK so you know when my diary starts with something like that it’s going to be one of those pensive, melancholy essays about the state of the world and the meaning of life. But that’s the mood I’m in, so tough.

I mean over the weekend, the places we’ve been, the things we’ve done. Places I visited as a child, they’ve already changed beyond recognition – or gone altogether. It’s kind of sobering. I’m so young but already so much that I knew, that was solid and real, has just neatly vanished. Things I did with my parents I’m now wanting to do with my children, and even what is left will perhaps not be around by the time *they* want to take *their* babies some day. :(

Ilkeston swimming baths isn’t closing after all the council to-ing and fro-ing over costs and rebuilds. I’m glad it will be there a while yet. It was a part of my childhood, and Jenna and Morgan already love it there. It is still one of those places that I can really care about. And on a wider scale.

Houses spring up, roads widen, trees come down. There are huge scars on the face of planet Earth – not least of which the huge new city development with two cinemas etc that, as promised, has transformed the face of Derby City. Too right, and it isn’t a compliment. The damn thing isn’t even open yet! Yay more shops! And OK it’s not an ugly building really (by the standards of ugliness already set by the Playhouse) but it’s huge and gleaming and inorganic and full of places to spend, consume, accumulate.

I know I can’t turn the clocks back. Everything is always going to change, that’s the way time works – forwards not back. But I want forwards to be more grassy, more treed (if that’s a word), more family-centred, more gentle. If I don’t expect the Big Wide World to be up to that task, it’s only because I don’t even know if *I’m* up to it.