I’d been away for years, so I thought I’d take a leisurely stroll around my old neighbourhood, see what had changed.
Kids were back from school. Playing football on the road, cycling around. All very much like in my time. I thought they would have been locked in their rooms on their xboxes or iphones or whatever it is the papers tell us kids do with their time now.
I was passing a corner house with a large garden when a rather bossy little girl shouted, ‘let’s play shop.’
How old fashioned! I slowed and pretended to check something on my phone. I was careful not to look lost, not an area to appear lost in.
There were about a dozen kids in the garden. The girl had set up a makeshift counter made of a plank of wood stretched across two kitchen chairs. There were a few planks laid out as shelves with various bits of junk on them, a fair approximation of a small store.
‘Right,’ she yelled. ‘This is my shop. I am going to turn my back for a minute, see how much stuff you can swipe without me catching you.’
Not much had changed.