So bad after all

In the inner-city, you tend to outsource your life. You pay people to drive you places, walk your dog, deliver your meals, put together your flat-packed furniture. But everyone in the suburbs is adept at doing their own plumbing, gyprocking and electrical work. That’s why there are old XD Falcons up on bricks in front yards; because women called Brenda are handy with a shifting spanner.

Backyard chooks

Some inner-city folks make a futile attempt at animal husbandry. It never ends well. The last thing you need is for the body corporate to complain about the goat on the balcony. Generally, the day-to-day care, selective breeding, and raising of livestock is best left to the suburbs. Same goes for productive gardens.

Serenity

The biggest change I’ve had to get used to after moving to the inner city is aircraft noise. Planes fly so low over my house that I can wave to the passengers and have them wave back. In the suburb where I lived there were no aircraft (there were no buses either, but that’s beside the point). Fact is, the suburbs are pretty damn quiet, making it possible to actually ponder the meaning of life without the answer being a 747. The only exceptions to suburban solitude are the sounds of Saturday morning lawnmowers, whipper snippers, leaf blowers, and Khe Sanh playing at every 50th birthday party.

Real dogs

The inner-city is a giant kennel of designer dogs. My own family bought something called a pugalier, a stupid concoction that manages to combine the worst attributes of a pug and a cavalier. Everyone else owns a French bulldog or a cavoodle, just to be different. In the suburbs, dogs are dogs; brown mongrels of things that bark at you furiously from behind the fence. – domain.com.au