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Well, it seems like I just agreed to move to the other side of the country.

My sister has a house she wants to sell in Faversham and we've said we want to buy it. Faversham is one of my favourite places. When I was an undergrad in the early 70s I discovered it on one of my Larkinesque church-crawls out of Canterbury and decided it was where I'd like to retire. I saw myself taking long crepuscular walks along the tow path by the reedy, rushy river, stick in hand, labrador at side, making my peace with the universe. Who'd have thought it, but perhaps that's what I'm really going to end up doing.

But without the labrador. I'm not trading bunny for a dog.

Back in the 70s Faversham was an undiscovered country of perfect Georgian houses (recently spared from the wrecking ball) and Shakespearian associations (Arden of Faversham- groovy little film noir of an Elizabethan tragedy is one of the worthier items in the Shakespeare apocrypha). Now the yuppies have found it and they've built nice apartments (out of our price range) along the tow path by the reedy, rushy river and Umbrian entrepreneurs are selling exotic, garlicky foodstuffs in the street market. Never mind, it's still next door to Heaven.

And now things are going to start getting intense.

Erith

Erith

Erith is where my grandfather grew up. Think Great Expectations and you won't be too far wrong. This is marsh country- with the difference that Pip's home town was on the Medway and Erith is on the Thames. I'd never been there before. 

The town got a make over in the 70s and is due for another makeover now that a Morrisons superstore has drawn customers away from the 70s shopping centre. There aren't many buildings left that my grandfather would have known- a couple of pubs, a couple of churches, the public library. All the 19th century housing stock has been swept away and where the family home one stood is a (defunct) nightclub called Extremes.