Do you think you will be happy, buttering the toast of your semi-detached suburban Mr. Most (Manfred Mann)

The Royal Oak roundabout,
ten years before I arrived

Wie gehts?

A while ago, I mentioned Tracey Thorn's wonderful book about her roots in suburbia, Another Planet. Specifically I alluded to her need to get in touch with her easy childhood and testy teenage self who lived in 1970s Brookmans Park (an hour train journey north of north London).

During the book, she goes on a pilgrimage of sorts, a 'day trip into the past', back to that small suburban commuter town and finds a lot of things unchanged. Except for her self. Like all of us, that's a person from another planet.

Where would I go if I was to follow her example? Because she's right:

So many of us live in some version of suburbia, the majority of us I suspect, yet we heap scorn upon the place, and what does that do, I wonder, to our sense of self. 

As they like to say in dramatic TV programmes, 'it's complicated'.

In the UK it's easier because it's not tainted with rosier childhood/ testy teenage memories. 

My history there isn't at touching distance - it skips two generations back to my grandfather who emigrated to New Zealand from Rochdale with his brother and parents in the 1900s. My father and I were born in NZ.

In NZ though, a pilgrimage back to my suburban roots/routes would take in a very small part of Auckland where I lived from zero to mid twenties (I lasted longer in my home town than Tracey did as I didn't travel away from home for University).

Here's a list of things I'd be able to walk to if you dropped me off at the Royal Oak roundabout, Auckland:

• Seymour Park (football from age 4 onwards)
• Royal Oak Primary
• Manukau Intermediate 
• Oak Street (my first house from 0-2)
• Korma Road (our house at number 18 was demolished some time ago, I lived there from 2-15)
• One Tree Hill (where I was born and roamed as a kid and teenager)
• The Royal Oak shops (like Brookmans Park, some are still there, like Ollie's Ice Cream)
• Greenwood's Corner
• Fernleigh Avenue (tennis club)

A short bus ride in a variety of directions would mean visits to:

• Auckland University
• 4 Ramelton Road, Mt Roskill (my house from 16-25)
• Mount Albert Grammar School
• Queen Street, Onehunga
• K Rd and Queen Street, central Auckland (where Greg and I walked and visited record shops)
• Shackleton Road, Mt Eden (where Greg lived)
• Disraeli Street (where I had football practice)

The universe was very small and comforting in suburbia days. Eventually, like Tracey's version, it would also became stifling. I've explored a bit more of the world since then.

That exploration is now over, and I'm ready for a smaller part of the planet again.

Love and peace - Wozza