Saturday 8 October 2011

Shrinking Primary School

I rode my motorbike to Stanmore, in North London, a long time ago. It was the smallest, the first, of the two motorbikes I would own so it must have been around 2002. The motorbike was a blue MZ TS125 by the way :)

I went there because I had spent the first seven years of my life there and I felt, on a whim, like taking a look at the place again. I passed 'Mike and Angela's' newsagent which, of course, was renamed since, in my seventh year, Mike killed Angela to punish her for infidelity.

I saw the entrance to Stanmore Common where the family would pick rose hips for mum to make jam. I stood outside my old house, which had shrunk, along with the open spaces and the playground around it.

The most astonishing bit of shrinking had occurred at my primary school.
The hill in the playing field there, which I remember being so mountainous, which I remember exhausting myself running up, was two foot high.

I looked the school up on youtube today, and only one result came up, a choir recital in the school hall. I was surprised to see the same piano standing there, all these years later, although that's hardly surprising, is it?

1 comment:

  1. Things still seem to be the same size for me. Though I did once get chased in a field by a rhino which many years later turned into a bull.

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