Those quiet leafy suburbs

Ah those quiet leafy suburbs that will never be England, mainly because they are on the opposite side of the world! We lucky few who pretend to be in a green and pleasant land (for the definition of 'harsh' go stand on the top of Uluru). I don't know why I imagined it would be quiet here. We are a few blocks from Burke Road, one of the major north south roads of Melbong, and a few blocks more from the Eastern Freeway, an east west artery. Even though we are in a little gully, we aren't deep enough for the sounds to travel overhead. But the really noisy thing is, because this is a (relatively) nice place to live, lots of people want to live here, but not in old houses, in new houses. Sadly this requires demolition and then building, so there are always trucks and trucks and trucks and hammering and banging and electric tools screeching as another quiet mini mansion is hastily erected or someone's family home is scraped off the surface of a block.

Mind you, we did the same thing, so I can hardly expect my complaints to be taken too seriously. But the house we had removed was absolutely full of asbestos - a death trap, literally. So I like to think we did a good thing there, since to remove all the asbestos we would have had to remove all the inner walls and ceilings and there wouldn't have been much left. Better to build a new, energy efficient, green sort of a house. How easy was that! Not at all. Most of economic life is against it. To call it a conspiracy wold be too strong because that requires coordination and that's not the building industy's long suit (or possibly en suite). Rather, people are pushed towards using products that are cheapish and within the capability of the builders. And builders and other trades are usually way too busy to spend their time learning about new products or ways of doing things.

For example I nearly had to insist my builder sack his plumbers because they were so resistant to change. I wanted to put in plumbing to collect whole of house grey water. Talk about a commotion. Can't be done. Rules against it. Etc. Perhaps I was just before my time.