My Local paper announces this on the front page – Full Story Page 7. Actually it’s on page three not seven! But very enthusiastic with lots of quotes and the submitted proposals received 1200 letters of support. The development will include 572 homes commercial office space, as well as football, hockey, and cricket pitches with two pavilions. The housing included 4 blocks of flats with the rest designated as housing and would also include a doctors surgery, care home, pub, play areas and landscaping. The article highlights job creation, improvement of roads and infrastructure and quality homes built by Redrow Homes.
So there you have it – how long will it be before the diggers arrive? I thought I better nip over there right now and see if things were still calm and tranquil.
Yes it looks more like a golf course now than ever before. All the long grass growing on the awkward to cut bits over the undulations and the bunkers has been cut, so it is almost back to being a golf course at the moment. Though strangely a lot of the putting greens and tees have been left uncut, making them look like large table top wild flower gardens.
I walk around remembering snow, floods, fire, sheep, a man with a tatooed face and much much more. Then I find myself thinking of a new housing development I worked on just outside Leicester. This was a few years ago now, a new housing development with new residents just moving in and starting a community, and as part of the research for the project I was working on I compiled a questionnaire and poked it through peoples letter boxes. Basically asking people what were the places of note or interest and why did they choose this location. These were returned to me in due course for analysis.
One response from dozens and dozens stood out by miles..absolutely made me drop my pencil, spill my tea, fall off my chair or my chin hit the floor any of those will do. I read it and threw my head back and went phewwwwwww it was so poignant and lazered everything that was bad in one short paragraph into my head.
‘I like it here because when I come home from work I can go and look round the shops, and after that I like to go to the shops, then on the way back I can do a bit of shopping, look round the shops and if I have forgotten anything I can just nip into the shop. Later in the evening if I need a pint of milk for the morning breakfasts its great as I can just pop round the corner to the shop and get some milk and that. And have a look at the shops while I’m out.
There were no shops, there was no community, there was no place to go, no place to play no place to meet. People just went home slept and went back to work next day. That was the point of the arts project to make a community.
Sounds like the one in Herne Bay will be so much better.
