Gingerpixel Photography

There is a housing estate linked to my road by a small opening in a wall. Around here it’s considered the “bad part” of town, as much as this town has one, possibly because it’s a council estate and compared to the leafy streets in other parts, this housing estate is a little rougher round the edges.

I love to go on long walks that bring me through both worlds, in fact I’m just back in the door from one now. It struck me this evening, like it always does that the streets in the supposedly safer areas are always completely deserted. As I walked along one of my favourite routes, past old Victorian houses hidden behind gates and tall bushes, the only person I saw was a woman retrieving her run-away dog. She caught him up and was struggling with the lock on her gate when I passed and she gave me a reluctant nod and a suspicious eye when I smiled at her.

The contrast when I reached the housing estate near my home couldn’t have been greater. Here the houses are crammed close together and the streets are so narrow the cars have to inch their way along through the space between all the parked cars. The place was heaving with activity. Children of all ages playing football, riding their bikes, sitting on the walls playing with dolls. Their parents and older brothers sitting on kitchen chairs out in front of their houses enjoying the sunshine and having a natter or doing a bit of work on their gardens or cars. As always happens when I walk through there I was greeted by everyone whose eye I caught, even the young kids playing football gave me a “Howaya.” One little girl ran along beside me as I walked and asked me “You have a little girl don’t ya miss?”

I love walking through this estate because it’s like I get to step back in time to what it was like in the housing estate where I grew up. One of the games I spotted being played was an old favourite we used to call Kerbs. Two people stand on opposite sides of the road and the object is to throw a ball so that it bounces off the edge of the opposite kerb. If it bounces all the way back to you you get 10 points…only half way and it’s 5. It gave me a jolt of reminiscence and I wanted to join them, just like when I walk through in the winter time and I get the smell of coal fires and mince dinners.

It’s the rough part of town and yet I always feel safe there.