Jesus, Amanda thought as she arrived in Gritten. The world around her seemed to have completely changed in the space of twenty minutes. Not long ago, she had been driving along tranquil country lanes, surrounded by sunny idyllic fields, thinking: this isn’t such a bad place. Whereas now there were just empty industrial estates and shabby houses and shops on all sides, and what she was thinking was: this is a fucking shithole.
I’ve thought before too here in ‘tranquil’ New Zealand, you don’t have to drive all that far to hit the countryside anymore and the car yards, factory’s & McDonald’s seem to get closer and closer, if I could a dream would be to live far far FAR away from anyone, but my now decidedly rocky health has meant that in the past it was close to the hospital & I could walk there in 5 or so minutes, now the ambulances are close! I sadly kid not, but life’s too short to hold too many pity parties.
Oh a footnote regarding the encroachment of humanity in my local area, I can remember as a kid we would drive out a little way into the country to go strawberry picking. I’d imagine that’s something that a lot of others could remember too, and not even just here. It was the best thing, going out under the hot sun, take your own bowls or buckets and filling them as high as you could, your fingers sticky & dyed red. You’d be all red and scratched but you wouldn’t care and everyone and everything smelt like strawberries.
Sadly where once these beautiful & idyllic farms were, there’s now mega malls, 3 of them and the only ‘fun’ way some kids get berries is buy from a roadside stand some farms have, but that’s fading away too, otherwise it’s ludicrously overpriced berries from the supermarket which are not the best, many already have mould or are green.
Such a shame that generations of kids will never have that experience, I don’t think even an iPod could equal that.
And yes as I write this it’s just occurred to me that the above regarding red hands is a deliciously apt term.
