getting old

I had a sobering moment yesterday. I was having a pleasant conversation on the phone with my young niece. I was asked her about the exciting things in her life at the moment - school, tap dancing, sports, visits to nanna and pop-pop...

When I was last at nanna and pop pop's me, Harry and [insert some random kids from the street here] went to the back field and made a den!

I thought that was pretty cool so, having a good knowledge of the back fields myself, I asked whereabouts. She gave me some vague description of the den location. I then told her that I, Uncle James, used to make dens in the back field too, so I thought I'd reveal the location of mine to her. Sadly that conversation started like this:

You know all the houses to the right of nanna's and pop-pop's? Well when they weren't there...

Even as I was describing the now non-existent location of my secret den I was thinking back to the many conversations I had with adults in my youth. They almost always involved some reference to "all those houses used to be fields" or "we used to play there before those houses were there".