The country has many byways and highways in it, and you’d expect differences between where you live, and where someone else does.
I’ve been looking keenly at the ‘state’ of our streets for a while now, and it seems that – actually – we have similar if not the ‘same’ places to live as each other.
If it comes to shopping, our tree-lined rows, or the amenities we have that are in walking distance, it’s remarkably similar.
I’ve lived (or stayed) in more than a few places with names you may recognise. These are towns and cities you may have visited before, to meet up with friends, or shop in a mall, or a precinct, somewhere.
The brands that we have are mostly familiar (which is great if we need a Costa latte pick-me-up), and the layouts are reassuringly simple.
I’ve met folks who’ve told me that they appreciate it because it means they can get around easily, and are not confused by a layout that doesn’t make sense.
We’re not all the same when it comes to “needs and greeds”. So, it’s because our town and city centres are so appropriate for us, that we’re able to find our own little corners and use them for an hour or two, on whatever we want.
This is what we get to enjoy as an afternoon out, for ourselves.
It’s a part of our way of life to keep doing this, but it’s also human, too, in that we’d do it, anyway, even if it weren’t already here, for us.
This is how we live, in other words.
It isn’t clear cut how each of us will decide to use our time this weekend, for example.
It’s someone’s pleasure to stay at home and read, or another’s to cycle in a rural area at breakneck speed.
This is all our choice.
I’ve also noticed we’ve made choices in other ways, too, in the sense of staying local and living local.
There are differences of opinion of how things should look, where things should be, etc.
Take a look, by example, at these photos I took this morning;
I happened to be walking past a line of houses, and saw this load of rubbish around a perfectly ordinary terraced house.
It isn’t clear why it’s there, in the first place, but it’s a fact that it is. It must have been there for a while.
It’s not evidence of carelessness, but a sense of confusion over why things are happening – or not happening – in the way we think they naturally should.
It’s about how I think life should be, and why particular things don’t match up to my perception of life as it should be, here.
I suppose most things do, now, because I have those expectations.
Yet, as most of us interested in the way things are, ask, what about the rest?