Suburban life can be dull. No pubs, chippies or muggings

SWAPPING city centre life for the suburbs could make you depressed, according to boffins at yonder Yale and Aarhus universities. The latter is in Denmarkshire, and the investigation took place in the controversial Scandinavian country, which usually does things well, instead of shoddily as we do.

At first, I couldn’t understand this. The traditional suburb of popular imagination is the midpoint between town and country, both of which are breeding grounds for evil.

Suburbs are leafy, green, tidy, pleasant. The ideal is Valley Fields, as described by PG Wodehouse, a place of order and decency, with house names like Mon Repos, Peacehaven and The Nook.

They’re dreamlands for the modest and steady middle classes. However, the aforementioned academics say they lack the opportunities that city centres provide to socialise and experience community. Possibly, they’re including mugging under socialising, and listening to next door’s disco records as community.

However, I kinda ken what they’re getting at. There’s a fast-beating heart in cities. There are pubs and chippies. The suburbs once had churches, but nobody goes to these any more after being let down by God.

But there are suburbs and suburbs. The one from which I’m writing this, in Aberdeen, is just a 15-minute walk to the city centre. There’s a pub five minutes away and a chippie just beyond that.

The streets are tree-lined and, for the most part, reasonably quiet traffic-wise.

However, suburbs now also include those soulless places further out, with no facilities, shops, nice walks or much in the way of trees.

They’re just a place to park the car, with a wee hoose attached. The houses look flimsy. Housing was more aesthetically pleasing and solid in Edwardian times. It’s called progress.

You wouldn’t understand. I’d be surprised if Denmark had many such soulless places. I wonder, too, if despite the pubs, chippies and crowds, folk in city centres feel a sense of belonging. Much of the population is transient: young persons eager to get on and out.

It’s lonelier in the city, suburbs included, than in the countryside. Even if your friends live in the same city, you hardly see them. You see them more when you’re away because, when you return for a visit, they all come out to play. It’s weird.

However, as I discovered this week, it’s lovely and almost communal to visit art galleries and bookshops in the city.

In Markies, I would turn to a fellow shopper and say, “This is great, isn’t it?”, but they’d scuttle away swiftly, leaving me alone among the pants.

Unusually, I didn’t let it get me down. Perhaps folk just need to buck up their ideas, whether in city centre, suburb or countryside. Just say: “Despite God and my fellow man being awful, I’m going to enjoy life and whistle inordinately.”

It’s never worked for me, but you might have

more luck.

Book of palms

HERE’S an odd thing that happened to me. Reader’s voice: “It’s all odd with you.” Yeah, I know. But that’s God’s fault. Never gives me peace.

I was sitting out the back reading one of those wotsnames. Books. It was a western by Louis L’Amour.

I like the heroes in his novels: lonesome, rugged, knowing right from wrong. Just like me, ken? Maybe not rugged, right enough. Shabby perhaps.

Here’s the peculiar thing that happened: I found myself pressing my palm into the pages of the open book. Right into them. Massaging them. It was jolly tactile, a physical gesture of love for something that had nurtured me over the decades, making me into the intellectual cowboy that I am today.

I was grateful for the artefact, the solid piece of literature. I wanted to cuddle it, as I want to cuddle everything.

Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate Kindle and all that. But there was something visceral and earthy about this connection with an actual book. That’s all I have to say. Maybe you understand something about it yourselves. Disclaimer: I’d had a couple of colossal drams.

Cuddly croc

SOME eejit mentioned cuddles earlier. It’s a subject I’ve touched on authoritatively before, in respect of normally vicious beasts like lions and tigers enjoying a good cuddle with humans they’ve come to love, usually after being rescued or nurtured as bairns.

But the latest episode on yonder YouTube really took my breath away. It showed a crocodile easing up the sofa for a cuddle with its owner. Sounds improbable, I know.

The beasts are evil, surely? Indeed, in the public prints, there’s been a spate of reports about attacks on humanoids recently. Crocodiles just come up and punch you in the face.

But the eyes of this specimen on yonder YouTube radiated joy rather than the usual cold murder. It was happy. It loved a cuddle. You could see it!

I am convinced that cuddling is the answer to the world’s problems, to a new harmony between man and beastie. So, let’s pretend we’re in a church, right?

I want you to turn to the person or beastie next to you and cuddle it. Well, get on with it. And don’t blame me if you lose an arm.