merlotgran
Same here Monica (RAF)
I would love to have somewhere I could relate to and feel that I grew up there. I suppose Marlow in Buckinghamshire and Ventnor on the Isle of Wight come the closest.
When DH and I moved to East Anglia in the seventies he asked if I felt at home. I told him to ask me again in four years. 😂
I think the area of south London where all my grandparents lived and where my parents grew up, and I spent my first five years is the nearest I have to a childhood home, and I cnnot honestly say I miss much of that. The south London suburb my family lived in has long disappeared. The past, as they say, is another country.
As a fully sentient child, the longest I lived anywhere is the, once, garrison town, I now live 3 miles from, have friends living there and often shop, catch trains there.
What I miss most, is something that has been installed since I left. In my childhood in this town and other army bases in the late 1940s-late 1960s, before terrorists and bombs and personal attacks, security levels were quite low. There were no threats. In particular the streets containing the army quarters were just ordinary suburban streets you turned up drove round etc. Now the quarters area is surrounded by a high fence, razor wire and other high security protection. Entry is through the guardroom.
I have lived where I live now for nearly 30 years, and I have never been able to revisit my childhood home there because of the security - and that is sad.
When we moved here, my father was still alive and the first time we visited and we drove back by the depot and quarters all swathed in high fences with dogs patrolling, even he was visibly shocked. It was not the army life he had experienced.in this country, although we had experienced it overseas.
