Copyright © Mark Pedley. All rights reserved.

It was a strange, even sad feeling. I returned to the place where I had spent most of my early childhood in Birmingham, UK. I had not been back for many years. I remember quiet streets with vast expanses of carefully-nurtured grass lawns, bordering directly onto countryside that seemed to stretch to the end of the world.

Now it's a forgotten place. All the houses have gone. All the lawns have gone. All the open fields and woods have been replaced by new housing estates. Strange that the very place I grew up has not been consumed. A sanctuary left untouched since I left at the age of eleven. That was thirty nine years ago. An island. A wilderness, ruled by wild grasses and raspberry bushes, and remains of wrought-iron street lamps that once lined the narrow streets that passed by our home.

My Forgotten Playground.

Copyright © Mark Pedley. All rights reserved.