my gran

[tanyavee]

Do you feel it's not worth carry on any more, what is the point everything has changed as you have grown older and you find the world around you is no longer the world you grew up with, is there anyone feels the same as I do . Where I live they have pulled down almost every building that I new as a child I remember the fundraising to build a lot of these buildings I feel as if I am a stranger in my own town it might seem unimportant to most people but I'm in my late 80s and cant understand why no one cares about my generation or our history I like to say thanks to my grandchild who has helped me put this in the public forum

[cheyenne]

I think your granmother is just living in the wrong area.Where i live we have the old victorian buildings and houses  that are well valued and worth a fortune.If shes in her eighties she must have seen over the years many changes.My granmother was glad to see the back of the old filthy houses they were brought up in.Does she miss the old Work houses?Buy her an MP3 Player and download some music for her,She will be amazed at the digital quality.Buy her a Plazma T.V.theres much to enjoy.Have a party night for her once a week with a suprise stripper!!Its her family thats shes pi$$ed of with for letting her vegetate.Get down gran and Boogie.

[Scarlett]

I sympathise, but I agree that you happen to be living in an unfortunate town! I swear this is why people come back to Weymouth (where I live) year after year every Summer, as it is EXACTLY as it was in the 1870s!! Even the bus shelters on the esplanade are all Victorian still. And I like that. The building I live in is a Grade II listed building- an old Bank, that has Victorian pillars and decoration on the outside. My whole street looks exactly as it did when it was built- all the buildings are listed.

Maybe you could go and visit some towns that you went to as a child, either on holiday, or that you have memories of. There are still plenty of old buildings about!

[smudge]

Scarlett - we've been to many countries, but some of the best holidays we ever had, especially when the girls were younger, were in & around Osmington & Weymouth!  Still has all the old charm about it.

[buchanan]

Dear Tanyavee's Gran,  I can imagine it must be really isolating to see things changing around you when you so want to hang on to childhood memories and keep a sense of belonging.  Like Scarlett says maybe you need to have days out to places which haven't changed so much as a nice trip down memory lane, or perhaps visit the local museum or try to find books and phtographs of the old buildings.  Maybe theres a local historical society or community project that seeks to capture your generation's history.  I've got a couple of examples local to me - my cousin was involved in a communiuty archive project last year getting as much film and taped memories of Brighton together as possible and my Husband and Father in Law also did something similar near us so it can't be that unusual and hopefully does show that people do care about your history.

Now you've got tanyavee to post this, get her on the intenet searching for something similar in your area and maybe finding other things of interest.

It really is worth carrying on - I think you need to find something positive and active to channel your understandable nostalgia into.  Best wishes X.

[Clare A]

It isn't the buildings or the surroundings. All those will pass, and always have. It's the people who live on in our hearts. They will really matter.

[woofgang]

I am only 51 and the area where I grew up is unrecognisable. It now has more shops, is cleaner and brighter and the buses are easier for my (80+) Mum to get on, free transport too. I sympathise with you tanyavee's Nan but people do care about the past and their heritage. researching family trees and family scrapbooking is growing more and more popular. I wonder if this is really about buildings or something else??

[jno]

Write down or record your memories. Everything you can remember about your life. Your kids may not be interested now, but everyone seems to get more and more interested about their family history as they grow older, and start to realise the world's changing around them too. I wish I'd paid more attention when my mother talked about her past - I can remember a lot of it, and it's fascinating; but I wish I'd recorded it properly; so much I don't know, not just about her but about her world.

[tanyavee]

Thanks to all that have taken time to reply to my grandmother question, my grandmother finds it hard to understand why no one cares about the history of the great buildings of her time in her day, it would cost a lot of money to build a library and other buildings in those days the money would come from the local people and once they had raised the funds they would feel proud of what they had achieved but now they pull the same buildings down without a thought of what those people had gone to  the trouble of raising the money to build them seems disrespectful  that some of these old buildings that are of a quality that modern buildings cannot achieve and the reason they are pulled down is for profit not heritage . (my gran thanks you for your answers)

[rod]

Tanavee, where I live is in the country so not a lot of changes but I think I know what your Nan means in our local town we had a very decorative house I think it was about three or four hundred years old and last year it court fire so it was sad to see it go now the developers have built five houses on the same place and they are an eyesore, why not rebuilt what was there before, yes its down to money.Good on your Nan .