BABE Of The DAY - YVONNE CRAIG...

Is there no end to YVONNE

CRAIG's talents?  Here she shows off

her world-famous impression of the letter

'X'.  She certainly has tons of  X-appeal,

wouldn't you agree, Crivvies?

NARROWING HORIZONS - YES, YOUR WORLD IS GETTING SMALLER...

Before...

I've written before about how, when visiting previous neighbourhoods where I once lived, I'd often feel that, if lost in thought, I could absent-mindedly walk up the path of any of my former homes, insert my key in the lock, and enter to find everything just as it was in my day.  It'd feel like the most natural thing in the world if it were so.

There's one old home where that illusion is becoming difficult to maintain though, due to the many significant changes, deletions and additions to the surrounding environs.  Fields vanished, schools and churches demolished (and rebuilt in a different style), more houses crammed into seemingly ever-narrowing streets, etc.

...after

Click to enlarge

Were I to sit in the living-room, I'm sure I'd be able to mentally recapture the mood of the place as it was when I resided there, but it would be a gossamer, temporary effect, which would dissolve whenever I looked out of a window at a changing terrain, in many ways dramatically different to how it was back in my day in the  '60s and early '70s.

The same thing is happening where I currently live.  There was once a quiet stretch of road between the top and bottom of the hill on which my house is situated, but new houses and flats are being erected, the result of which will be to congest a formerly open and spacious area, and destroy any remnant of a once expansive view from the top of the road.  It's called 'progress', so I'm told.

Before...

So why does 'progress' so often ruin that which seems already ideal?  Horizons are narrowing, dreams are diminishing, and hope is faltering.  The world is closing in around us, robbing us of space and sky, and vistas of distant kingdoms that once held us in their thrall.  The world is getting smaller, my friends, and soon there won't be enough personal space for anyone.

"Oh give me land, lots of land, under starry skies above - don't fence me in" run the lyrics of an old song.  Too late, alas!  It won't be too long 'til the last fence post is planted, and the final nail hammered in.  Prepare to kiss your far horizons goodbye.

...after

Click to enlarge