To the mouth of hell and back

I popped by my own version of Hell on the weekend.

Saturday afternoon, a colleague of mine had organised what I thought was to be an afternoon tea, but somehow morphed into "dinner". It was designed as a gathering of some of the women-folk from work (and one token set of testicles) to get together. Lovely bunch of ladies during the working week - although giving over a Saturday night was more than I could bear. I decided that an afternoon ale was more than enough for me.

So I made my way out there with my humble food offerings in tow. I realised as I got closer that this was a venture into an alternate universe for me. It has been a long time since I have lived in Suburbia, and quite happily so. This Suburbia is of the variety that was designed and built with every house resembling the next-door neighbours (a little touch of "The Truman Show"). Every house was constructed from a fetching dark brick, coordinated with white columns adorning every staircase.

It was an Italian middle-class nightmare.

Visions of neat gardens, kids playing in the streets and large blocks of land really should make one feel more cosy and a lot less nauseous. The stress only alleviated when I could once again return to the comfortable confines of inner-city parking dilemmas, homeless people and billowing mounds of rubbish - aaahhh, Home Sweet Home.