When I was young I had no sense of change. I did not know that ways of life could simply pass, or that entire peoples could be forced from their homes, that villages could cease to be. Time stretches out in our youth, and everything is simply as it is. Our parents and grandparents are always present, and do not seem to age. A home is a fixed, unchanging thing that can always be returned to, and children remain children, their pleasures and need simple and constant. The world is what it is.

a lovely little book about the loss of childhood

In the Orchard, the Swallows by Peter Hobbs