Everything is changing

So I was walking down King street, Hammersmith in West London, one day recently and as I walked past the bank I noticed something didn’t seem right. I looked at the wall at the side of the entrance and noticed that there were new red bricks in a certain part of the wall ,but the rest of the building was covered in old bricks. For a moment or two, I wondered why this wall had these red bricks in it whilst the rest was covered in old bricks.

Aha, it came to me! The hole in the wall cash machine had been taken away and the red bricks were now living where the machine used to reside. My mind started to race and it quickly dawned on me that the cash machine had been there as long as I can remember. I got thinking that lately everything in the local area is changing, nothing is staying the same. Memories and nostalgia started to fill my mind of the cash machine that I used to walk past everyday to get to school in the early eighties.

I remembered when I was seven years old, my mum withdrawing £100 from the hole in the wall and me repeatedly saying "wow! You’re rich!" and my mum saying "believe me, £100 does not make you rich".

I also remembered walking home from school with my sisters and a classmate one day and seeing Rodney from Only Fools And Horses by the machine. He was very friendly to us as I recall and so tall I thought he could touch the sky.

All this reminiscing... and over a Barclays cash machine. My thoughts bubbled to the surface and resulted in the conclusion, how could a cash machine that doesn’t talk or move or do anything but dispense money to people generate such long lasting memories?

I went to reach for my phone so I could record a video and I planned to say something along the lines of, "everything changes and nothing stays the same", referencing the now defunct cash dispenser. But I stopped short as my mind kept going back to the thought and question, how was a cash machine able to produce such memories? The phone stayed in my pocket but the questions still ran through my mind.

If a machine can make memories, what memories are we able to create? What legacy do we want to leave behind? Are some of us prepared to stand stationary and silent like the wall, willing to let life pass us by? Or will we live life everyday giving and creating beautiful memories?

What memories will you create? How will you be remembered?

By the way it wasn’t all doom and gloom for the cash machine. I observed at a later date, that it had been given a new home around the other side.