Despair and nightmares in Southern Suburbia
From a Victorian market town to a de-facto line on the London rail map. How the mighty have fallen.
I live in a once tiny village, adjacent to a town in the grip of urban sprawl, nestled away in the nowhere lands of East Anglia.
This town, Southern Suburbia (twinned with Atomised Avenue and Concrete Calamity) is wealthy, but the money is not made here. Straddled along one of the capital’s countless silk road pipelines, the townsfolk earn their keep by masquerading as middle-class professionals.
One train leaves for London every half-an-hour. In the years preceding the pandemic, every rush hour carriage was jammed until the hinges of the doors burst apart.
In fact, the Southern Suburbia rush-hour lasts twice as long than the national average due to an overburdened service combined with thoroughly useless infrastructure.
There are three clear-and-present dangers in the Southern Suburbian wilderness: asphyxiation on the Tube, idleness through mundane, clip-board ticking office work, and blindness via blue-light intoxication.
In Southern Suburbia, new model housing is everywhere, gardenless and, surprisingly and suicidally, without driveways. Yet no tidal wave of commerce is arriving to scoop up these highly-qualified newcomers and slap a salary on their bank balance. The best – or should I say, only - opportunities to earn a living in the town are to be a shop manager, hairdresser, or become a self-employed tradesman.
After all, any locality of 40,000 plus will always have broken sinks and dodgy Teslas to fix.
Although I wouldn't sit too comfortably if you're slaving away behind the till, for the Southern Suburbian High Street is becoming more spacious than the surface of the moon.
The High Street is not the place to hunt for Christmas presents or even general amenities. Coffee bars and cafes (and even an egg free cake shop) have taken over. Serious shopping is reserved for the nebulous retail parks located nearby, a blinding golden calf to our Americanised consumer lives.
Where I live is still a nice area, and definitely beats existing in Stabville-Upon-Thames, but I don't think the future is suitable and sustainable.
I'm not sure if there is either a youth exodus or influx, but I will say this, the main demon for any young whippersnapper, is housing accessibility.
Not just getting a mortgage - that's impossible from the get-go, no matter how much you save by ditching Netflix.
The cheapest flat to rent will bite £700 out of your pay check like a lion chomping on a baby gazelle before you can even blink. To sleep in something bigger than a card-board box, you need close to £900-£1,000 per calendar month. Bearing in mind it's not the cheapest area to begin with.
The average cost of a pint is about £4.50 and the car dependency is already unforgivable. You best make sure you have some breakdown cover otherwise you aren’t ever getting home.
From a Victorian market town to a de-facto line on the London rail map. How the mighty have fallen.