Changes

[poliphilo]

1. Joe and his two friends have made an offer on a house they like and the renting company is currently checking them out. If he leaves now he'll have been with us a year and three quarters. It feels longer. 

2. We're negotiating with a finance company to have them sort out our mortgage and make our life easier. Their two reps came and talked to us yesterday. 

3. Mr Asif (two doors down) invited me in to take a look at the building work he's having done. His house is exactly like ours and it 's odd to be in a space that's so familiar yet- in almost every detail- wrong. He's put a staircase up to the attic (where we just have a trap-door and extending ladder) and is in the process of tacking a utility room and shower room onto the kitchen. Also he's laid a marble floor in the hallway. 

Mr Asif was a millworker- and got invalided out with a heart condition. He's about my age I guess. My kids played with his kids back in the day. Now there's a family shop and his sons run it. A classic Asian small business. They put in long hours and seem to be doing very well.

There's lots of building work in progress on this street. I've lived here twenty years and in that time I've seen it go from shabby genteel to seriously depressed (with a hostel for men just out of prison at the end of the block) to aspirational. This used to be an all-white area and now it's an area where upwardly mobile Asian families are looking to buy.

Comments

[pondhopper.livejournal.com]

I´ve always been fascinated by how neighbourhoods evolve and teh cycles the go through. Back in Michigan, my sister still lives in the old family home where we grew up and what was a solid working class neighbourhood had become a rather run down, mostly rental property place over the years as the old folks passed away and their properties were sold by their children. Last year I noticed that many young families were moving back in and buying and fixing up the older homes. The place is now becoming what it was once again when we were kids there although it is no longer a white, Catholic area and has become racially integrated. It´s the cycle of life, really.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Change makes life interesting. I disapprove of nostalgia. Yeah, things were different in the past but not necessarily better. I want to find out what happens next. If ever I lose that fascination with the new it'll be time to phone the undertaker.

[pondhopper.livejournal.com]

I agree with you word for word, especially the wanting to find out what happens next part.
:)