I refuse to live in cities any longer
The decision to vacate the metropolitan hive is not, as the modern sociologist would have you believe, a sign of creeping misanthropy or a sudden surrender to the twilight years. It's a matter of sheer, unadulterated self-preservation.
For decades, I've observed the urban landscape with a mixture of mounting horror and grim fascination, watching it transform from a flawed hub of human activity into a sprawling asylum managed exclusively by the inmates.
To reside in a modern city is to voluntarily subject oneself to a permanent state of low-grade hysteria.
One cannot step out of one’s front door without immediately colliding with the vanguard of progress—usually a twenty-something fanatic on an electric scooter, hurtling down the pavement at a speed that defies both municipal by-laws and the laws of gravity, utterly convinced that their right to deliver a lukewarm burrito supersedes your right to unbroken kneecaps.
Should you survive the pavements, you're forced to navigate the psychological minefield of contemporary civic life. The city has become a temple to the absurdly over-regulated and the completely unhinged. We are surrounded by an army of middle-managers, lifestyle consultants, and public relations experts... individuals whose entire professional existence is dedicated to generating vast quantities of hot air while simultaneously complicating the simplest of human transactions. Try ordering a cup of ordinary black coffee in any high street establishment today, and you're met with a barrage of interrogation regarding bean origin, milk alternatives, and ethical sustainability that would look more at home in a counter-espionage briefing.
The architecture itself reflects this mental decay. The grand, eccentric old buildings that once gave our towns a bit of character have been systematically demolished to make way for monolithic structures of glass and steel. These towering monstrosities resemble nothing so much as giant filing cabinets, designed to pack humanity into uniform little boxes, presumably to make it easier for the authorities to catalog our inevitable nervous breakdowns.
And for what do people endure this compressed nightmare? For the privilege of paying astronomical rents to breathe air that has already passed through several thousand pairs of lungs, and to participate in a culture that mistakes frantic motion for purposeful living. The noise alone is an intellectual solvent. Between the endless drilling of utility companies who seem to dig up the same stretch of Tarmac every Tuesday out of sheer boredom, and the cacophony of sirens trailing after the latest urban casualty, coherent thought has become an impossibility.
No, the country has gone completely soft in the head, and the cities are the epicentres of the rot.
Moving away is not an act of cowardice... it's a strategic retreat. I have no desire to spend my remaining days watching the bureaucratic apparatus tighten its grip on a population too distracted by their glowing pocket-screens to notice they are being led by the nose. Let the fanatics, the planners, and the trend-chasers have their concrete playgrounds. They deserve each other. I shall remain at a safe distance, comfortably ensconced where the trees don't require a committee meeting to grow, watching the whole circus collapse under the weight of its own magnificent stupidity.