Anyone else absolutely bereft that their home town doesn't really exist any more? You might go back, have a look around, but it's not the same.

I grew up mostly in Coalville, near Leicester (though I moved at 14 to Lincolnshire so I have a kind of dual home). Back in the early 90s it was still clinging onto its industrial mining heritage. You couldn't move for Victorian architecture, desolation and abandoned factories.

The town was packed with family history - my extended paternal family all came from there and had lived and worked there for at least 100 years or so. The town had sprung up in the mid 19th century to service the new coal mines in North West Leicestershire.

It was surrounded by much older villages, such as Donnington le Heath with its old Manor house and Hugglescote with its timber framed houses. It was a great dichotomy to explore as a kid.

But if I go back now, which I only do now to visit the cemetery down by the Brook in Hugglescote, there's nothing. The factories have been pulled down. The old greyhound track is gone. The home of Action Man has been replaced by a housing estate.

They've even pulled down the cool hands-on museum built in the early 90s to explore its mining heritage. The place is just a shell of itself. I miss it terribly.

Everyone in Leicestershire saw Coalville as a shit-hole and in many ways they were right. But it was, my shit hole and I loved it.

Now there aren't any Wharmbys living in Coalville anymore.