I visited a Ghost Estate today.

The Ghost Estate is Parkwood Springs in Sheffield. Up to the age of 7, I lived there. Then the estate was violently demolished by Sheffield City Council and the people who lived there were decanted into other social housing estates around the steel city. It was demolished to make room for a Ski Village that is now closed because of repeated arson attacks.

I admit I view the Springs through rose-tinted spectacles: tin baths, shared with others; coal fires, outside loos, pigeon-men and the wreck (an overgrown play area that I from time to time pretended was a downed spitfire).

As I walked around the Springs today, the ghosts of many memories flooded back: laughter, firework displays, walking to school in community over the railway bridge. Memories came back to life in an Ezekiel 37 sort of way: Joanne Drummond and Sam the Pigeon-man, the allotment, and the white haired boy jumping from the outside loo with a tea-towel around his shoulders pretending to be superman.

As I walked in the steel city rain, I encountered others, and tried telling them that I used to live there: 113 Pickering Road. They had no interest, and actually why should they: balding middle-aged men speaking to strangers is not something usually encouraged.

It is a Ghost Estate.

Other Estates though up and down the country have ghost memories: stories of that joined people together that have disappeared: pits, factories, communities have all been vanquished and are lost from sight.

I wonder what wind is necessary to bring them back to life.