It's the middle of the day, a ten minute train ride from the main city, and the world is silent. Hardly anyone's walking the streets and the cafes are empty, bar two or three stragglers quietly, wistfully, finishing their lunches. I passed this ^ house; it had a lavender bush in its front garden and I couldn't remember the last time that I'd seen one. The house itself is one of several old, crumbling homes that have found themselves surrounded by a patch-worked mass of new, identical buildings without style and character. A new world is being built, attempting to strike out the old; it is a combination of modernity and sentimentality. A world that is creating a people who idealise the past but who still crave change, development and innovation. Can we have both, or will we find ourselves frozen, forever wanting more but lacking the capacity, the initiative, to step forward and pave our own futures?