[Here’s a link to other forays around my map.]
This may be the most boring grid square on my map. I’m sorry to tell you that, dear reader, and appreciate you may now skim on to whatever’s next. But I’m also sorry to write that as it’s the first time in this whole project that I’ve thought, ‘meh’ and thought about going home to do something more useful with my day. And I’m also sorry that I felt that way as all my experiences so far have suggested that everywhere is interesting, nature abounds, and that the only limit to a sense of fascination is the scale of my own curiosity.
Well, let’s get this over with, shall we? Much of the square was taken up by stuff that loosely comes under the heading of ‘infrastructure’. Railways, roads, roundabouts, railings. Big metal things. Spiked fences. Corrugated sheds. Padlocks. Pylons. Pick ups with hazard lights. Men in hard hats. Stuff that I don’t really understand or have much interest in, but which I accept is an important use of space and that the Keep Out signs are probably for the best. Highways England sorting the roads out, National Grid keeping the lights on, Network Rail running the trains and UK Power Network Services who I had to Google: ‘Delivering your energy infrastructure solutions. We optimise your existing assets and integrate new technologies to deliver improved performance and commercial benefits.’ So commercial jargon plus energy stuff, I think. It is amazing really just how much behind the scenes stuff goes on to make modern life run smoothly. And not only does it make everything work, it also pays the bills for millions of people. After all, as economist Adam Smith noted, ‘It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages’.
I tried to get a look at the 400kV electricity substation (after Googling what the heck it was), but its mysteries were obscured by trees (and spiked fences). After all, between 1968 and 1973, 725,000 tall trees, 915,400 smaller trees and 17,600 ground cover plants had been used to screen substations.
My limited interest in infrastructure exhausted, I followed the cycle path alongside the dual carriageway, dodging glass shards amidst the roar of traffic and the smell of hot tarmac and diesel fumes that brings back many happy memories of the world’s highways to me. I paused briefly to peer down from a bridge at a large overgrown pond, thick with green weed. Exiting at a slip road I made my way over three roundabouts, a high speed train line and the dual carriageway into town. There were enormous detached houses at the top of the hill, with the homes becoming steadily smaller as I freewheeled down the hill. A pony and trap cantered towards me, trailing a huge line of backed-up traffic in its wake. And I turned off the main road into town and veered off towards some suburban residential estates.
I have really enjoyed the grid squares that are the best approximation of wild countryside. Equally I have enjoyed those brimming with life and human history. I have been intrigued by the mansions I have seen and equally interested in the poorest areas too. What I struggled with today is riding through suburbia. It’s not rich and it’s not poor. It’s all doing fine, if rather mundane. It is quiet, neat, tidy. It suggests comfortable, safe living, the reward for working hard, thinking sensibly and settling down. These are all good things, of course. They must be or else millions of us would not choose to live in suburbia.
“Little Boxes” is a song written and composed by Malvina Reynolds in 1962, which became a hit for her friend Pete Seeger in 1963, when he released his cover version.
The song is a political satire about the development of suburbia, and associated conformist middle-class attitudes. It mocks suburban tract housing as “little boxes” of different colors “all made out of ticky-tacky”, and which “all look just the same”.
Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes made of ticky tacky
Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes all the same
There’s a pink one and a green one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they’re all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same
And the people in the houses
All went to the university
Where they were put in boxes
And they came out all the same
And there’s doctors and lawyers
And business executives
And they’re all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same
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