The neighbourhood is my eggshell

Subject: Fwd: The neighbourhood  is my eggshell.

How does one compare the image of that sense of sound and smell of people living in Calcutta to that in the streets of Camden Town. How does the nostalgia of watching a video of car journeys moving between suburbs in Johannesburg, always under a cloudless blue sky, to the memories of breasting a hill in the Yorkshire Dales on a blustery day in February with rain picking up with still a long cycle ride home.

Mankind has settled, for good or bad on virtually very scrap of land on the surface of the earth but in each settlement his footprint is different. The geography and the climate dictate a lot but the idiosyncrasies of people run far deeper.  Their attitudes to so many things, economic deprivation fore-instance accounts for much but the dislocation of people with power and money from those who don’t, accounts for much, in their eyes at least  its only moderated in a society which cares about poverty. Behind the opulence in the gated homes in the northern suburbs in Johannesburg live families who experience the fear every night, fearful of a break in or the high-jack on their way home from the office. The serenity of the video drive in Joburg under streets arched with brilliant jacarandas trees makes it a paradise until you turn the corner into Hillbrow to watch the down and out finding their compensation in the brandy bottle.

Los Angeles’s, Chicago, Rio de Janeiro are all the same, they are cities, over populated by people wishing the dream, lured by stories of streets paved with gold or perhaps just paved. 

 

 

The narrow street in Malham or Arncliffe or Hubberholme in the Yorkshire Dales don’t invite comparisons because the residents are a fixture, settled in a way of life that has remained pretty much unchanged for a hundred years or more. No need to trade on the pavements for a living with the CoOp selling its sensible range of reasonably priced goods, this is Yorkshire after all. The tempo is sensible as is the dress, the thought of travelling  down to London an anathema, those Southerners are crooks and who would want to travel 200 miles when within 20 miles you have all you need.

This sense of being somewhere else where life is so much better is a fallacy. Your life is largely carried in your head and so long as it’s above water, you have it in your power to make of life what you want by understanding what you need.