Thursday 18 March 2010

Google Street View

Just in case you didn't notice, or in case you have found lots of free time and are wondering what to do with it, Google last week extended their Street View to 95% of the Country so you can surf around looking for the house you once lived in and see how small and drab it now looks.

This is the Council Semi in North Kent where I was brung up until about 17 and it actually looks quite salubrious with the nicely mown open green "Crescent" facility. It was brand-new when we moved in and much more desirable than the adjoining old council estates and prefabs where I used to have to run the gamut of stones, flick-knives and bottles cycling like the wind in my Grammar School Blazer and Cap. I was so delighted when I was eventually allowed to wear trousers.

Our neighbour "Boola" used to come out onto the green on a sunny evening and fire an arrow half a mile into the sky whilst we little children ran around giggling with delight hoping it wouldn't land on us. You couldn't get away with that these days.

Can you find your first house?

22 comments:

Dave said...

Not while I'm reading this. I expect it will be on my blog by Sunday though.

Rosie said...

That´s very funny. I just looked up where I grew up about twenty minutes ago before coming here. I was 2, Manse Road, Dollar and it's still there!

Dave said...

Rosie grew up 20 minutes ago? Who'd have guessed?

Richard said...

I would, but my parents are still there. You can see my dad's (probably illegal) bonfire burnng in the garden. If you go to my old primary school, you can see my mum sitting in her car waiting to pick my nephew up. Tsk. I had to catch the bus when I went there

Sarah said...

Eeew I don't like this.....my old home in Wales is now an some sort of instituion and looks sad. Home now doesn't show up cos its not on a street. Presumably they couldn't be arsed to drive down the farm track!

Sarah said...

Changed my mind...this is becoming just a little bit addictive....I'm spying on Dave as we speak....heavens!

Dave said...

The photo of my current house was taken 2 years ago, before I moved here (I can tell by the curtains).

Rog said...

Dave 1,2 & 3: As you suggest your current house doesn't have curtains now, do you waft provocatively across curtain-less windows in diaphenous nightwear?

Rosie: You are full of spookiness at the moment. Did you live next door to David Van Day with the big hair in Dollar?

Richard: We used to dream of buses in Gravesend.

Sarah: I thought you may have been brought up in an institution. Have you noticed Dave in his Oscar Wilde dressing gown at the front window yet?

Dave said...

If you remember me posting about it, Rog, I built a Roman blind for my window.

Geoff said...

You can half see my car (it's hidden by a small tree). Can't see our house or my mum's.

No sign of life.

I wore a cap on the first day. It was never worn again.

KAZ said...

Enough of this 'I was brung up in a council house' stuff.
Our house was rented, it was damp with cockroaches and my mum just dreamed of a council house.
Kev was brung up in a prefab.

Sarah said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Sarah said...

Sorry that was me!....thought better of it

Z said...

My first home was a hotel.

Dave said...

I lived in a small hole in the ground. If we were lucky we'd find a cardboard box.

Rog said...

Geoff: The absence of cars in daytime is quite spooky - our road still looks like the late fifties when nobody had a car.

Kaz: I can't compete with cockroaches. You would have been out throwing stones at me in my cap. And Kev was a Prefab Sprout?

Sarah: That makes a change!

Z: That's what all our Mothers thought as well!

Dave: I'm desperate for more cardboard boxes.

Ms Scarlet said...

I've just returned from the house I grew up in as my Mum and dad still live there... but I am a Google street view addict because I'm also a Rightmove addict.
Sx

Rog said...

Scarlet: Did you take the obligatory bin liner of washing? I've got the Rightmove App on my Iphone!

Roses said...

My first home burnt down in the 70s in Trinidad, so the chances of that appearing on Google Street are next to nil.

Rog said...

Roses: I hope it wasn't you arson about. Google will get everywhere before long though.

Rosie said...

Nope. I lived next door to Mrs Mackenzie who was married to a sea captain. He brought home a pineapple in the fifties and everyone stared at it for weeks.

Rog said...

Rosie: You were a Dollar Millionaire! We were quite rural - as I mentioned in the post we had the Archers living next door.