Musings & the Suburbs
In truth, it’s taken me a while to stop being such an urban snob.
I might have mentioned I moved out to the fringe suburbs of Sydney after 10
years near the city; two years near the beach and five years trotting the globe
and have spent some months since asking myself why the fuck.
Oh, it’s not that it’s particularly horrible living out here.
Quite the opposite in fact. But, every time I venture towards the city, which
is reasonably often – maybe once or twice a fortnight – I get a pang of
homesickness. This is rather pathetic considering I didn’t exactly move to the
back of Bourke (in fact to the contrary - I can practically smell the Bourke Street Bakery from here). I mean, it’s not even forty clicks away.
Still, I’m ashamed to say over the past few months I’ve spent a
wasted amount of attention focusing on what my new locale is lacking and
lamenting all I left behind.
Things I miss about urbania:
Great cafes
Cafes generally
Eclectic dressing
Sleeve tattoos on women
Pastel dyed hair (not including blue rinses)
Streets populated by every colour of the rainbow from housewives
to trannies*
Parents who aren’t averse to walking their children to
school/parking more than 10 metres from the school gate
Drivers who give way
People who go to parks
A pub, bar or restaurant on every corner
Simply walking outside my apartment to flag a cab
An abundance of public transport
24/hour building security
Constant frenetic activity
Yep, pretty petty stuff. Even more disgusting when you consider my
dilemma choosing between two perfectly lovely, peaceful, artillery-free
environments. To compensate for my lament, I have started taking note of the
great things about living in the ‘burbs:
Beautiful big houses
Rolling hills
Lots of lawn
Children playing freely outside in the neighbourhood
A lot of parks
People actually say the words ‘good morning’ to you when you pass
them running in the morning. Out loud. Everyone.
So many beautiful trees everywhere (I never noticed trees before)
It doesn’t take half an hour to drive five kilometres
There is no constant grid-lock five kilometres as the crow flies
from my home
Being able to drive down the street without scraping both my side
mirrors on parked cars either side of the road
Less need for 24 hour building security
Less day to day frenetic activity
Not as many crazy ass pedestrians
Space
*to be fair, there may be trannies in this neck of the woods but they’re probably indoors experimenting with their slow cookers
Read more musings: Household maintenance vs A life
