our town

It's that time of the year again - time to tie up loose ends, look backwards and forwards, clean the room, clear the bookshelves.

So i've finally decided to give away this book - Growing Rich by Fay Weldon. i've kept it for far too long, and only because of the opening paragraph, which, when i read the book 10 years ago, made me think of Singapore...


"The world is full of little towns that people want to leave, and scarcely know why. The hills crowd in too closely, they say, or the plains which stretch around are too featureless, or the freeway runs through, or doesn't run through: you can hardly put your finger on the sources of their discontent, or indeed your own. There's a doctor, a school, good neighbours, kindness and even friends - it's just you know you have to get out of there or die: let the name of the place be Dullsville, Tennessee, or Borup, Denmark, or Newcastle, New South Wales, or El Ain in the United Arab Emirites, or Fenedge, East Anglia, a kind of sorrow creeps along the streets and drags you down; you can hardly lift your feet to shake it off. The shops in the High Street are forever closed for lunch, or would be better if they were: the houses in the centre may be old, veritable antiquities, but still lack resonance: a tuning fork that declines to twang, dead in the face of all expectation. And if nothing happens you know you'll soon be dead as well, or your soul will be. Some marriages are like this, too, but that's another story."


i was a pretty miserable person 10 years ago.
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