I come from a town in Cheshire called Congleton: a small, quiet place where there is very little to see or do. As much as I love life in the sprawling metropolis, there is no denying that I come from Congleton, and that I was born there. Earlier, however, I was mucking around on Google Streetview, as I often do while waiting for the day to start proper. I was guiding my online avatar around my old home town, when I suddenly reflected to myself how much it had changed. There are now brand new roads there which I have never physically gone down; passing through housing estates on land I remember as fields.

It was quite an odd realisation. Once I came to think about it though, it occurred to me that I can only have gone back there three or four times in the last fifteen years. Naturally, there are quite a few reasons for this, but it was strange to reflect that I have fallen so out of touch with the place I grew up, to the extent that parts of it now look completely different to how I recall. Obviously, one of the advantages of websites like Google Maps is that it can remedy homesickness; but, at the same time, they can just remind you how quickly the places you once knew can change.