You can bet your bottom dollar no one else is writing about the years in the prefabs. They all have far too many other things to do right now. Time is running out and the day of The Big Move is closing in. Smudges of crimson paint are visible on each of the fifty front doors. Soon grizzly-chinned demolition squads will knock the whole caboodle into smithereens. When the pistol shot of the new reality is fired it will not just be farewell to our pale pads. It will be farewell to manicured hedges, secret hideaways, sheds, front lawns in near-lush condition, exhuberant flowerbeds, coalhouses which can be turned into bomb shelters within ten mintes of the warning sirens going off, water butts which can double as dynamite containers, symmetrically-lined piles of nutrient-restoring compost, floppy fences with tailor-made holes for nipping under, sturdy gate posts, back gardens filled to the brim with both proletarian cabbages and bourgeois cauliflowers, and a mud-splattered green on which a thousand sporting battles have been fought.
The garish faces chalked up on the kerbstones have taken to wearing perplexed and baffled looks. They can sense that these beleagured time-capsules from the Ration Book Era have had their day. Memories, vague memories, will be all there is left after this slab of collectively shaped memory-time has been hurled into the quarry of lost time.
Before you can say 'Jack Robinson' new blocks of flats - three or four storeys high with balconies spacious enough two potted plants - will rise up like concrete phoenixes from the prefabs' burial ground. Freshly painted No Ball Games Allowed signs will be hoisted into place to snap merrily away at the heels of childhood.

Labels: Online Novel, The Prefab Files