Another new beginning

Jake wandered around the town which was to be his new home after his father's job had seen the family have to uproot for the umpteenth time in his short life now in it's teenage years. He wondered the same question he always had during the first few days of settling in, would this be the place that they finally put down roots or would they be off again as quickly as they'd arrived? He knew there was never any way of knowing and had long since learned not to complain and to just get on with it. He didn't bother to forge meaningful friendships having learned the hard way the pain of separation. 

He took in the local architecture and wondered if some of the houses hadn't been designed by architects but instead by small children with boxes of Lego who kept adding odd extensions to their houses with whatever bricks they had lying about and it was those which had been used as the templates and then made in red brick.

Not sure of his bearings he travelled in whatever route his feet thought best and stumbled down a road that he suspected was social housing. By the upkeep of the properties he surmised that they were probably built sometime around the 1970s or 80s and hadn't had a penny spent on them since the day they were finished. Not that they'd have had a fortune spent on them in the first place to build. He looked at the window of one property across the road which wore a faded union flag in the bottom window under which were faded Christmas decorations that had probably been up 365 days a year for a good number of years. The thought crossed his mind as to whether there could be a dead body in the property which had laid there for years and no one had bothered to check though surely the smell and the point the junk mail had piled up to the height of the letter box might have given it away. Every property he passed on this row of terraced houses was on its last legs and he pitied the poor souls that had to call them home.

He reached the end of the road and rounded the corner and turned right into what appeared to be a different world entirely for the next street over which was full of grand old houses which screamed of money. It was like the previous road was something they'd scraped off their shoes having come in from a day in the countryside. Two of them even came with blue plaques informing him that people he'd never heard of had once lived there as if that should make the properties even more special than they already looked. Whether anyone lived in any of them however was anyone's guess because there seemed no sign of life from the outside albeit there were no faded union jack's on this street keeping you from looking in but far grander facades and means to keep praying eyes out.

Finally at the end of that street it opened up into a large square in the centre of which sat a grand stone ornament with four concrete flower beds marking the corners around it although they contained nothing more than dirt given it was winter. Each of the homes around the square were larger and grander than the next. Whoever lives in these had done extremely well for themselves and he guessed you were looking at a combined value of a Premier League footballer though unlike the sportsperson these would still be holding their value in years to come. 

The more he walked the more he felt like he'd walked into a time machine on the blink sending him quickly back and forth between different centuries. The only real clue that he wasn't were the cars parked dotted around. Finally some signs of life as a woman in her late 50s sporting a knitted bobble hat and wrapped up in a large camel coloured coat to keep out the winter weather passed him and smiled and he thought this seems a friendly place as he smiled back. A few steps later a round gentleman in a suit two sizes too small nearly flattened him like a giant bowling ball on the loose and he was the last pin needed to be knocked over for a half strike. He was too busy talking up his own self importance on the phone strapped to his ear to apologise and his only acknowledgement had been a shake of the head as if it had somehow been Jake's fault and not the man's for paying more attention to the conversation than where he was going when he'd come waddling round the corner like a cross between a penguin and the hare in Alice in Wonderland. Now Jake wasn't so sure it was such a friendly place after all but the evidence was still fifty fifty so he'd reserve his judgement for now. 

Approaching what he assumed was the start of the town centre he wondered what treasures would lie in store for a teenage boy such as himself. After ten minutes he'd decided not much, although he did know five places he could take his mobile phone to get the screen repaired the next time he accidently smashed it. Every town they ended up seemed to him to be identikit largely made up of estate agents, mobile phone shops, mobile phone repair shops and the latest trend of vaping shops. Otherwise it was charity shops where you could always tell how well off the locals were by the quality of the goods found inside. A series of small supermarkets, a handful of pubs seeing out the last of their days trading before another one closed its doors for good and a series of high street restaurant chains which no one ever ate in and would be replaced by the next chain which would also fail. Oh then there were the obligatory pound shops which no longer sold anything for a pound and finally a Greggs because there's virtually no town they haven't infiltrated now. Jake guessed that he'd already come close to being flattened that morning by it's favourite customer. 

Having completed a loop of the town centre he did another half turn and carried on straight down another road that led down a hill which was flanked either side by betting shops and late night eateries for fried chicken, kebabs and pizzas. Jake tried hard not to think of the fat that must ooze it's way slowly down the sewers that ran beneath the street but failed and had a vision of a massive fat berg that would have given the Titanic something soft to run into at least unlike its counterpart bergs made of ice but this one would definitely cause major flooding when the rains came. Oh well he thought it it's not the rain water that washes me away it'll be the old man's got another job anyway and he shrugged his shoulders for no one but himself, puffed out his cheeks and forced his breath out between his puckered lips before carrying on his way.