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So my original plan was to do a History on Your Doorstep part III, but I was not so sure that everyone appreciates these diaries, as anybody living West of the Mississipee has only around 150 years (not counting native Americans) of history to draw upon, whereas living in Europe, we have thousands of years.
But as I researched a couple of places I have lived in, I realised that some had history going back 2000 years plus, and some like the US only to the mid 1800´s. What really hit me though was the number of places I could google to seek out their history. I did a quick count and realised that over my 60 years, I have had 27 different adresses, and even if I discounted those cities where I had lived in multiple places, I still had over 20 different towns, spread across seven different countries.
That averages out at 3 years for each town/city!!!!!
I have lived for around 8 years in Paris or its suburbs, including a street in the Marais, where the Prison de la Force had its back entrance, and has a listed boulangerie, where I used to buy my baguettes and croissants
photo attribution Footballeuse33 at wikimedia commons.
I grew up in a town which goes back to the bronze age, was a base for the Romans, had a castle built by the Normans, and was the location of the last armed insurrection in Mainland Britain.
Here is what remains of the castle
Newport Castle
Attribution Owain via wikimedia commons.
I also lived in places with no real history beyond the mid 19th Century. I studied my first degree in East London, and lived in East Ham and Ilford. These places were just tiny villages until the invention of the steam train. Ham in old English means marshland,and is situated on the North Bank of the Thames, and Ilford gets its name because it was a ford on the River Hyle. It was only in the 1840´s that these towns developed,and the architecture is therefore Victorian and Edwardian,with only the odd church being older. They are now subsumed into greater London.
But the main point I wanted to make is that having lived such a mobile life, there are lots of places that I can call home, but none of them really is home.
More of a 20th/21st Century gypsy.
No Moss