TIME FOR A CHANGE - Fiction

‘Well I think I’m ready for a change,’ said Jack.
‘Why’s that?’ asked Pete.
‘Well, look at it?’ Jack was resting by the garden fence and gestured to the panorama that was his neighbourhood.
‘What’s wrong with it?’
‘What’s right with it?’ A sigh. ‘Lousy neighbours – yourself excepted, of course.’
‘Thanks for that.’
‘And the noise. Kids always terrorizing the place. Cars flashing past …’
Pete didn’t recognize the place like that, but said: ‘Really?’
‘Oh yes – and I’m fed up with it.’
‘So you want to change it?’
‘I do. It’s having such an effect as well.’
‘In what way?’
‘Well, my job for a start. This place gets me down, so the job isn’t going right.’
‘I see …’
‘And my relationship with the wife is suffering.’
‘It is?’
‘Oh yes. We hardly get on any more.’
‘And changing your home will sort all this out, will it?’
‘It will.’
Pete became philosophical. ‘Well, it seems to me that it isn’t your home you want to change.’
‘No?’
‘No. What you want to change is yourself.’
Jack walked off, deciding it was time to change his friend as well.