I spoke with friends recently that still live in the street where once I lived on the Norfolk/Suffolk border. In the six or seven years since I moved away, much has changed.
Apparently the street has become the place to live in this picturesque town in the Waveney Valley.
To be fair, when I still lived there it was a beautiful place to live, one of the oldest streets in the oldest part of a town that has a history tracing back at least 1000 years.
Although much of the street was destroyed by fire in 1688, many of the houses contain elements that predate the fire, and in fact one or two houses managed to survive.
One in particular has been lived in recently by the novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard. It is recorded that this particular house survived by virtue of the quick action on the part of the then owner, who prevented its destruction by fire with the use of copious quantities of water soaked blankets spread on the thatch of the roof.
The house in which I lived was a rare survival in itself, because it had been abandoned and then squatted so that it had been unrestored during those years when most inappropriate restoration of old houses took place.
Part of a neighbour's house in the street contained one room that dated from the 15th century, but survivals like this are rare.
It isn't the first time that on leaving somewhere it has become more fashionable to live. Just after I left Leeds, in West Yorkshire, where I had lived for 10 years, the City became much more fashionable to live than when I had lived there. I don't take it personally.
My friends recommended that I have a look at the Street using Google Earth, which I have done. This makes it possible for me to see the way in which the Street has become so much more colourful as the houses have been restored so much more than when I lived there.
Most of the houses have been painted in bright colours, but nevertheless in sympathy with the historic nature of them.
One of the other things that I noticed was the way in which the street has been filled with traffic markings, that are no doubt intended to slow traffic in this historic street.
In my time the street underwent the dramatic transformation from being a narrow two way street to one in which the traffic was reduced in speed to 20 mph, and made one-way.
There was much lobbying to encourage this change, and much measurement of pavement width. In places, this was less than 1m in width, which is barely sufficient for a mother to push a pushchair containing a toddler.
This no doubt aided the case for slowing the traffic in the street, as it is apparently a European regulation that pavement width could be a minimum of 1m.
Seen from the air, the street today bears many more street markings than I remember, which I can only assume are designed to ensure that drivers fully appreciate they are in a special zoned area.
And all of this seen from my computer. Not even leaving the house.
In the five years that I lived in the street, restoring the 17th-century house in which I lived, we held a number of events designed in part to highlight the problem of traffic flow in the street.
We held at least one street closure each year, during which at our own expense street signs were erected and traffic redirected as to ways in which the town bypass could still be reached.
During such closures, we held numerous events which brought neighbours out to meet neighbours, often to participate in celebratory events, such as a theatre performance, and at Halloween something that has become an annual fixture for the town, and taken up by the local Tourism Committee, as a means of promoting the uniqueness of the town.
A local farmer that each year produces pumpkins for Halloween has become involved in regularly providing sufficient pumpkins so that the entire street can have a pumpkin outside each house, with candles lighted inside, and it is a wonder to see traffic slowed down to appreciate the spectacle of an entire street dressed for this special occasion.
My friends still living in the street have become the key organisers of this event, for which the pumpkins are provided free by the local farmer.
In more recent years, the Street has been closed to traffic for Halloween, making it a much safer place for children to play Trick or Treat. People from miles around have descended upon the town to take part in what has in effect become an annual Festival.
One of my friends in the street has become a Councillor serving for the past six years, and increasingly the local Tourism Committee have taken on board the significance of this locally inspired event as a means of promoting the town.
The town in question is Bungay in Suffolk, and a quick search on Google will enable anyone to see photographs of the street decorated for Halloween. Not however in this year, 2012.
I have been amazed at the way in which things have grown like Topsy since I have left, but I still have wonderful memories of the way in which neighbours got to know most of their neighbours.
There are few places in Britain that can claim the same, that just about everybody knows everybody else.
Would that it were the case everywhere, not in some memory of of "how things used to be", but here and now, and how things are, or can be.
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