In Codsall Village, Staffs, my mother is at the centre of a network of elderly women, connected by church, luncheon club, Theatre Group and Towns Women's Guild. They are always out and about, with enough pension money and mobility for continuous conviviality and constant excursions. Cheerful, friendly, resolute, the ladies who all remember the last war, are like a small army themselves, continually replenishing their numbers as another one falls.
When my mother dies she will be one of the last who can remember Codsall when it was a village, before its farm land was sold off, and it became just a suburb of Wolverhampton, with traffic lights, metal fences, heavy signs for every well known location, traffic calming, and all the rest.
Trapped in a concrete sea, I wonder if any newcomers will ever hear the ghostly voices of these old women, whispering in the wind about a greener place where people knew everyone around them?
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