Chapter 60: I'm Going

I sighed as I turned into Maple Drive, my pace slowing as I passed the first of the semi-detached houses. Back in the seventies, each pair must have been identical, sharing a rectangular lawn, the driveways to the left and right leading to their respective garages and each garage in turn linked to the garage of the next pair of houses. Now that uniformity had mostly vanished. Some had extended front porches and had installed double-glazing, others had bedrooms over the garage, still others had divided that front expanse of lawn with a fence or hedge, presumably to avoid that most ancient of neighbourly conflict over whose turn it was to cut the grass.

Having owned it for more than twenty years, my parents' house was one of the neatest in the row and still shared its lawn, owing to the fact that my father rigorously mowed the whole thing every Saturday, or Sunday if it rained—even in December if the weather was mild—regardless of whose turn it was. Their house remained practically unmo