Your personal history erased...

[Billy Casper]

All three of the schools I attended have gone.

Employer: British Rail went under Major; the east coast main line has been passed around like a ticking bomb.

I haven't been back to university digs or buildings or local pubs there. The houses I have lived in are all there AFAIK, but Dickensian features like outside bogs are long gone obviously.

It should be noted that erasure is not always a bad thing (e.g. outside bogs) and I only regret the demolition of one of my three schools (the only one associated with happy memories).

You should probably point out that as well as the outside bogs, we also had inside bogs too. We weren't that uncivilised! I should know, as at the end of every dinnertime I used to wrap my mouth around the bottom of a tap for a drink.

... I'm thinking of Ponty Road school here obviously.

[3 Colours Red]

My secondary school has laid derelict for 17 years.

The council want to demolish it as it's still costing them ?100k a year in upkeep but some odd individuals want to save it, despite its well-earned reputation as an absolute fucking nightmare shithole place to try and gain an education.

If it were up to me, I'd be driving the bulldozers there my-fucking-self. That or setting the C-4.

[Satchmo Distel]

You should probably point out that as well as the outside bogs, we also had inside bogs too. We weren't that uncivilised! I should know, as at the end of every dinnertime I used to wrap my mouth around the bottom of a tap for a drink.

... I'm thinking of Ponty Road school here obviously.

Yes. I think the outside bogs on my street (Market Street) were no longer being used in the mid-70s but I couldn't put a date on when the switch became 100%.

[Fussbudget]

The city where my dad was born and spent the first few years of his life was completely abandoned to sea level rise in 1973, and rebuilt 15 miles further inland.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

In terms of entertainment:

The first two pubs I went in regularly have changed hands numerous times and are now restaurants (one was a Prezzo for a while). Numerous pubs around town are empty or have been demolished. I go past a couple of the spaces where pubs previously stood and it always amazes me that fully working pubs once stood there, they look far too small.

All of the night clubs we used to go to locally are demolished, lying empty or changed to retail. The same can probably be said of most night clubs I ever went to in Newcastle, the Cooperage for one is pretty much derelict.

Gig venues long gone include the Mayfair (now the site of the hideous Gate) and Riverside (not sure what's there now) in Newcastle and the International / 2 in Manchester. As I've said once or twice before, I'm amazed the Barrowland(s) in Glasgow is still holding out. Many new venues have opened in all of these cities since, of course.

The two cinemas we had while growing up have long gone, one to flats, the other to a car park (though there was a long but unsuccessful campaign to preserve it). The multiplex opened in the early 2000s finished off the latter.

Pretty much every record shop I've ever shopped in has gone, with the exception of the remaining branches of HMV and some second hand places.

[Greenlander]

The city where my dad was born and spent the first few years of his life was completely abandoned to sea level rise in 1973, and rebuilt 15 miles further inland.

Where was that?

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Bloody hell, same question as Greenlander - do tell please Fussbudget!

[Balderdasha]

My grandma's house had an outside toilet until at least the mid-80s which I found fascinating. They had an inside toilet too. I'm not sure exactly when the outside toilet went but it's not there now. My uncle now owns the house (a sore point as my dad bought it off the council for his mum).

[Fussbudget]

Greenlander and EEG: Ivory Coast (I'd rather not name the exact place but it should be googleable)

[San Bernardhinault]

It's surprising how much flux there is in mine, given that Oxford largely seems unchanged for 500 years.

My first primary school shut when I was still "studying" there - while the main hall remains, as a block of flats, the rest of the school was destroyed and is now more flats.

The building that replaced it - and was therefore the rest of the primary school - is still there.

The middle school I went to is destroyed and is flats, because the schooling system in Oxford changed to remove middle schools.

Obviously, the Manor Ground is destroyed, and is now flats.

The house I grew up in is still there, in the middle of town, but is now study abroad student housing, and has been partitioned to death, is no longer a house.

Amazingly, I think all the pubs are still there, and even half the music venues. Even the art-house cinema. All the things that have been destroyed in other towns have been preserved in Oxford.

[Bored Of Education]

Most of everything is still there. The house, pub and flat where I spent most of my formative years are all still there as are the properties that myself and Mrs Bored have lived in since. All my schools are still around. There are a couple of exceptions.

Ninian Park - went in 2009. I didn't support Cardiff City as long as many and living in London meant that I didn't go there as much as many but still a shame to see it go. I watched Cardiff at all ends of the ground and was very fond of it.

Earls Court Exhibition Centre - Where me and Mrs Bored met while both working there.

Hammersmith Clarendon - one of many venues that I visited and, indeed, performed at that now no longer exist - see also the Fulham Greyhound, Sir George Robey, Marquee

One that I don't remember but that is intriguing is the Ferrybridge C power station that my Dad was building (with some mates, I am sure) when I was born which is why I ended up being born in Leeds. It was knocked down in 2016. I expect the caravan in the field next door to the site that we lived in has also gone.

[Nefertiti2]

I had the reverse experience. A few years ago I was contacted out of the blue by the people who now live in the house I lived in from the age of two until I went away to university

They had no children, and I think wanted to show someone who knew what it had been like what they had done with it. It was very beautiful how they had changed it and lovely to see how happy they were.

they gave me some apple jelly from the trees I had once climbed. It’s still in my fridge.

[HORN Reborn]

My various childhood homes remain intact, though they all seem so much shabbier than back in the day. The house my grandmother had lived in blew up in 2007 and is now just a fenced off bit of tarmac.

My secondary school is a housing estate, as is Newport's Somerton Park football ground.

Given the number of hours I spent on Newport railway station in the 1970s I'm genuinely perplexed at how little of it I recognise.

On a professional level, my CV is riddled with references to defunct organisations, giving the impression I'm either a merciless hatchet man or utterly inept.

[ad hoc]

I'm pretty sure the house I lived in until the age of 7 is still there. The house I spent the rest of my childhood in definitely still is, because my mum still lives in it. The hospital I was born in is still there, but it no longer has a maternity ward/department. I think the primary school I went to until 7 is still there (janik would know). The one I went to after 7 has moved, but the buildings of the old one are still there. They did turn into a special needs school which served the whole county, but a combination of nimby wankers and tory cuts have put paid to that and it looks to be derelict now.

All my other schools still exist, though they have mostly grown and look practically unrecognisable now. The first place I lived in when i left the UK in 87 has now gone (in Valencia, I went back 3 or 4 years ago and couldn't find head nor tail of it). I imagine some places I have lived in over the years have vanished, but no idea really. The grad school in the US where I did my MA is in serious difficulties and I suspect that Covid will put the final nail in that coffin.

[Hillsborough is still there, though since my childhood it has become a byword for football-related mass murder]

[Sporting]

The first place I lived in when i left the UK in 87 has now gone (in Valencia, I went back 3 or 4 years ago and couldn't find head nor tail of it). ]

In El Carmen, wasn't it? Do you remember the address? I may be able to do some sleuthing.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

The Inland Revenue office I used to manage in Hitchin has been demolished, as has the Norcoss site in the Fylde. So that's two places I worked. Add in the fact that none of Somerset House, Bush House on the Strand or Holborn House are government buildings any longer and that's the first 23 years of my career.

[ad hoc]

In El Carmen, wasn't it? Do you remember the address? I may be able to do some sleuthing.

I'm sure the building got torn down. I can;t remember the address, but I;m 90% sure it was on Beneficiencia, but i walked up and down when i was back and the bulding had gone (it might be where the back of the IVAM is now)

[Sporting]

Ah I used to live near there (view of the botanical gardens). I'll take a look.

[ad hoc]

On Google street view there is a building under renovation with scaffolding and that kind of green netting on it on Beneficiencia opposite Ripalda. There is a small chance that it might be that buliding

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

The Inland Revenue office I used to manage in Hitchin has been demolished, as has the Norcoss site in the Fylde. So that's two places I worked. Add in the fact that none of Somerset House, Bush House on the Strand or Holborn House are government buildings any longer and that's the first 23 years of my career.

I feel a certain nostalgia for that complex of Inland Revenue buildings, and for the sensible pre-bullshit organisation of the Inland Revenue that existed at the time, with a proper network of local tax and collection offices conveniently located for taxpayers, and meaningfully focused head office departments with identifiable subject responsibilities and relevant expertise. I worked as a fast stream graduate trainee in Somerset House in Policy Division and Central Division in the late 1980s. Lovely spacious old rooms to work in, and real feeling of Civil Service traditions of public service and organisational memory. I saw an organisation chart for HMRC the other day - bloody hell, what a fatuous chaos of modern management wank that was.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

That's a lovely story from Nef about the new owners of his old home. I hate to spoil the warm positive glow from it, but I have a story in the same general area that is a bit more cynical but does amuse me. When I lived in a shared flat in Hackney in the 1980s we were visited out of the blue by the guy who had owned the house until a few years earlier, accompanied by a couple of female friends. He asked if he could show his friends the work he'd done on the house and we said OK. So he went round the house pointing out in a rather "full of himself" kind of way all the improvements he'd made, obviously hoping to impress his two slightly bored-looking companions. Then at one point one of the young women was spontaneously impressed and interested, by a cat flap and ladder arrangement constructed so as to allow our cat to exit a first floor window and climb down to a high garden wall from which it could in stages descend to the back garden of the flat below. She asked "did you make that?", to the visible annoyance of Mr Ex-Owner who had to confess that it was not his work (it being the work of my housemate).

[Sporting]

On Google street view there is a building under renovation with scaffolding and that kind of green netting on it on Beneficiencia opposite Ripalda. There is a small chance that it might be that buliding

This won't be your old abode but this put me in mind of when a building just 400 metres away suddenly collapsed in 2007:

https://www.20minutos.es/noticia/302...icio/valencia/


"En el momento de los hechos, se encontraba en su interior una persona que salio antes de producirse el colapso..." (when it happened, a person was inside who got out before the building collapsed).

I knew this woman. She was English and had a young son (using past tense; haven't seen her for ages). She suddenly noticed the building shaking and just about managed to get out in time.

She lost everything (luckily, her son was with friends at the time). Insurance very slow to pay up; I'm not sure what happened in the end. The reason for the collapse was said to be an underground garage built without planning permission.