Change is that giant bulldozer before whose crushing, crumbling power we are rendered helpless. Kings have fallen, empires have fallen; so have edifices. Change is the eldest sibling of Time and when the time comes, change moves in with a no-second-chances approach. Everything must give way. The old order must disappear.

Sometimes, change receives a ‘go slow’ command and in this way we only see the crow’s feet scratching at the corners of each eye one insightful morning when the shaving mirror decides it is going to profile our reflection a little more clearly; ditto with the stray grey hair or two on an otherwise jet black scalp; it takes a while here too to realise that a mathematical formula is being carried out on that very area, right on the crown: Two operations are in subtle progress, black subtracting, grey multiplying; and one day, we throw in the towel, or more appropriately chuck the tweezers aside, give in to the superior operation (which of course is multiplication) and go buy a bottle of dye; for change can in some cases, with skill, be covered up. Although having said that, most people these days can tell a dyed head when they see one and it is only political correctness that deters them from stating the obvious.

When I was a child, one of the most loving scenes in my entire memory was of my father freshly showered and shaved after two days’ driving a steam/coal locomotive, with his head resting in my mother’s lap, eyes closed drowsily while she, tweezers in hand, gently plucked out the odd grey hair or two that was threatening to discolour the blackness that, we all felt, made a terrific contrast with his piercing blue eyes. I cannot tell when she cast the tweezers aside in defeat, but I know this: Before dad was 40, his hair was closer to snowy than jet black. And so it is with change.

On arriving back in my hometown after nearly a decade and a half, I resolved to capture as many pictures of my childhood on film as was possible. “If it’s taken me 14 years to return home, who knows how many years may pass again before I visit once more,” was my reasoning. And so, camera in hand, I set off for my very first dwelling place, the ancestral home which of course I knew had been sold.

A sprawling palace it was, with too many rooms to count and an enormous compound at the front through which I romped merrily as a child. What I saw caused me to freeze and turn into a granite pillar. The entire geography had changed, the vast tract of land had been apportioned into smaller units and sold to individual buyers who have built individual houses on each. Not a vestige of the old place remains. It’s gone.

And with it, I guess, the memory. The same, with the next place of visit: The house that oversaw my restless teenage years when cricket beckoned like a sly mistress from the wings and caused my mother to frown severely and shake her head. There is not a brick left standing of this place, too. In fact nothing exists there. It’s like some Empty Quarter within which only I know roam the ghosts of memory. I inquired gently and was told, “They’re going to build a big tower here, sir, a very nice one”. A tower! I’ll accept that. For this is where I did start dreaming, big dreams, cricket dreams, dreams of becoming a well-known writer with everyone dashing off to buy my books and devour them. I’ll accept a tower. In some symbolic way it will represent a fruition of those dreams and nullify my mum’s constant warnings: “Don’t go building castles in the air, Kevin, keep your feet on the ground.” I guess that’s the most positive, most generous I can be towards that ruthless ogre — Change.

Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.