There was a new shopping parade in the Berkshire village we moved to from Wales. There was still a village centre about a mile away with an old church, a Victorian school, some cottages and access to a stream which fed into the river Loddon. And then there was the decommissioned aerodrome and the businesses it now housed. The original centre was being usurped, becoming irrelevant by the time we arrived. New housing estates were springing up on all sides. A teacher training college was built, populated and extended. In the ten or eleven years we lived there, the village grew and changed beyond recognition. Village no longer seemed to be the right word to define it.
Flitters
I was taken aback by Mum’s lack of surprise. The family had gone and we never saw or heard of them again. Of course, I heard the grown-ups talk. Murmurs of debts and gambling.
