So, as you are aware, my life is changing significantly.
My house is up for sale.
Was.
You will possibly remember that getting the house up for sale was part of the "London By Thirty Five" scheme. Well, things accelerated. I got made redundant. Again.
And again, me being me, I got myself something sorted quickly.
In London.
It made sense - the house was up for sale; I had plans to move to London, why not get the London job and then move.
I started work for my new London business last Monday. I agreed the sale of my house yesterday and I get the keys to my new flat in Clapham early December. It's all slotting into place, albeit at a phenomenally hyperspeed pace - though not an impossible one. Just a lot quicker than I expected - that said, to fully meet the timescale of being in London by 35. I feel, had I not been pushed, it may have been early in the new year that I ended up moving. As I say, I've had to put a move on, but in an achieveably tight timescale.
And it hasn't been helped by having shoulder surgery on Friday which meant that I had to be much more organised than otherwise as I now have very limited capability with my left arm in a sling.
But anyhow, I've eulogised my own time here more than enough. Now is to discuss the changes.
I'm not going to talk about the interior of the house - that has been done. I'm talking much more generally over the nine years I've lived here.
Obviously the gardens and outside have changed. No more is there a wooden porch out the front; nor the "sunroom" on the North aspect of the house. The top patio has been replaced with a veg patch; there are a couple of new fruit trees, new fruit bushes but otherwise the back hasn't changed significantly. Around the front the old rotten cherry tree has been replaced with a couple of new ones, the border of the path lined with lavendar bushes, and new fuschias around the drainage covers. I've moved the path closer to the the hedge to remove a border and grassed the remaining patch, and generally made it nice.
I started at my place with a Vauxhall Corsa, that got broken into a written off, leading to five or six years without a car, resorting to a Honda Jazz when I started my last job. That got sold today. Where the cars park there were three really big trees, there is now only one. They replaced the street lamps and, in the last week, resurfaced the only bit of road they've ever resurfaced whilst I've lived here.
I found the little snick-through of the steps which transformed my journey to the station. Otherwise I went past the Hindu Temple. That grows annually. They knocked down the little out-house that was the caretakers house when it was a school.
Of the three pubs on that corner, two have gone. Indeed, that is a story long told - many of the pubs have gone. However, one of the wasteland/grass areas has been redeveloped into a new housing estate. The high-rise flats at Burrows Court which have had planning permission after planning permission haven't been developed. The old spaceship Co-Op that was supposed to become an Asda hasn't.
Nottingham Contempory is in existence now - that wasn't. I remember going to the opening night for that. And further down the road, they have "started" on work on the Broadmarsh centre. Well, if you can call "starting" vacating the units to leave the centre half-empty to force the council into accepting virtually any plans for development. They've started "developing" the Victoria centre too. When I say "developing", it's basically a new lick of paint, a few new light bulbs and a slight redesign of one area into a food court. Nothing anywhere as significant as the "House of Fraser" expansion of the ninties.
The train station has been given a good clean to allow for the expanded tram network - not quite as integrated as you'd like, but good enough. And it has seven platforms now not six. And the developers FINALLY built what is now known as Nottingham One - even though half the retail units are empty.
The arena isn't within the 10 year timescale - I remember going to the arena for the first time on my 21st birthday to see Steps with my mum and sister. Good times. However, the new Victoria leisure centre with pool opposite has been done within my time here. I remember first moving in and still using the old pool (actually quite nice architechturally). And whilst I think the tram arrived whilst I was up in Newcastle at university, lines two and three (involving the new bridge over the station) have only opened in the last few months.
I won't really comment on the roads because the council seems to change the road system as often as possible to confuse drivers, other than to comment that the A46 was single carriageway when I first worked out that way - it's dualled now; and ditto the A453 expansion alongside the tram - I never use that route though.
I've gone from frequenting almost exclusively gay bars to now mostly straight bars. I love the Jam Cafe - somewhere that I found around three or four years ago - and the Malt Cross, somewhere that I got taken on a date around six years ago. That shut for a refurb and re-opened a year ago. I haven't been to Cookie Club in many years, and the last time I went to NG1 was a good 18 months ago when James and I went on our last night out in Nottingham together. Obviously I've already discussed the change and decline of the gay bars - the latest is that the Lord Roberts, one of the few mainstays over the last couple of decades and certainly for my residence, has been bought out although as yet there doesn't seem a desperation from the new owners to change the clientelle.
There have been many little changes of ownerships. That shop on the corner opposite the Vic Centre was a Disney shop, was something else, is currently a Nationwide Building Society. We have a Five Guys on the market square where there was a Pizza Express. The Tesco Express and Sainsburys' Locals have expanded - one Tesco taking some of the space of the now defunct Tales of Robin Hood that I took some people to in the first year I lived in my house. My fish and chip shop has changed hands three times; the Chinese not at all. There is a new development going up opposite all the garages where the old car-wash station used to be.
Anyhow, I'm sure there are many changes I've forgotten or not noticed; and there will be many more to come in my absence. Nowhere stays still
No comments:
Post a Comment