Last week I visited the suburb of the northern English town where I spent most of my 1960s childhood.

It has a curved shopping street still replete with cast iron Victorian canopies and a peaceful air. Though, understandably, most shops had changed hands in the intervening years, visually the place looked much the same.

That brings a comfortable feeling - the thought that you might almost see your ten-year-old self cycling along, calling into shops where they knew you by name.

Comfortable it may be, but, of course, it's a myth. The world moves on and nothing stays the same. Whilst this was always a well heeled suburb in a prosperous seaside resort, in my childhood there was a social mix about the place. Nowadays, the area is the haunt of Premiership footballers, television personalities and their WAGs. When I looked around, I saw well tanned bodies jumping into 4x4s en route to gym or golf course.

With time comes change.

So, when a 20-year-old MP eats a chip butty on the Terrace of the House of Commons, when the 'wrong seats' are occupied, and when applause is "wrongly" used as a sign of approbation, we should understand, and respond to, the reaction from some quarters.

For some - within and without the UK Parliament - change is to be feared. These are the folk who live in a country which is like Midsomer Murders - without the murders, in John Major's land of spinster women cycling to church, and warm beer in country pubs. It is an appealing confection and one which still survives in parts of the English shires - but for most of those who voted for the 2015 UK Parliament it is as remote a picture as could be imagined. And when a legislature ceases to reflect its voters, democracy is in trouble.

The 56 SNP MPs represent people who often do eat chip butties, who clap to show approval and who, as often as not, will take a seat which is not formally reserved. They represent those for whom the image of "British values" presented during the Referendum Campaign is like a poor joke at their expense. It's hard to appreciate the glory of Yeomen of the Guard, marching Grenadiers, or 'the good old Blitz' spirit when you attend a food bank, when your child is unemployed, or when your family is in the uncertain hold of zero hours contracts.

As I found on my return to childhood haunts, the construction of a happy place where everything is unchanged can bring comfort in a world of movement and uncertainty - but it is an illusion, and very often, the idyll which is sought never truly existed in the first place.

It is right that 400 years of Parliamentary democracy should be respected - and that politicians should be given their due as the people's representatives. However, the House of Commons is not a museum or a heritage centre. It is, or should be, a working legislature which makes the right decisions for the majority of those to whose votes it owes its existence. It is an institution which belongs to the people rather than the politicians - so the exclusivity of its 'rules and traditions' sits ill with its democratic duty.

By and large, the 56 SNP members have come to parliament by way of an 'ordinary life' - many energized by the community politics of the Referendum Campaign. In this they are at odds with so many parliamentarians whose background is formal politics at the breakfast table, to Oxbridge, to researcher, to MP. So, while they may be 'inexperienced' in the arcane ways of the House of Commons, they are far better equipped to understand the needs of the voters in most parts of these islands.

Of course, change for change's sake is as inappropriate as stasis for the sake of tradition, but it is clear that people in Scotland have voted for a different way of doing politics - and it is the task of the 56 to promote that change in the 'mother of Parliaments".

It's going to be an interesting five years.