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Although Simon Brooks was born at Portsmouth in 1973 he moved eight years later with his parents to 4 Chepstow Avenue, Plymouth PL6 7EW and later on worked for British Aerospace at Plymouth.
When I was really young I remember tales from grandparents and great-grandparents (and from the TV) of old people saying, 'When I were a lad all this were fields.'
Then when I was eight we moved to Plymouth, to a quiet little estate on the outskirts of Plymouth. The edge of our estate was the city boundary and the South Hams council (responsible for the area outside the city) was refusing to allow the expansion of Plymouth.
So, other than the village of Rodborough, all around us were fields and woods. I could see both from my bedroom window on the other side of the main road to Tavistock. We even used to wander through the fields and play in the woods.
The woods are still there but when I was 11 they started building houses there, and just to make the view from my bedroom worse they put a huge Tesco right on the other side of the road. So we then played in the building sites, and then grew up.
Half the people living in that estate worked for British Aerospace, at the site I ended up working at (until 2001) so when I went round to one of their houses I could honestly say, 'When I were a lad all this were fields.' How to make myself feel old at 25.
Simon Brooks, Manchester, 2002
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