My husband said at the urban belt, "Living here is stupid, it has all the disadvantages of the city and all the disadvantages of the country." Meaning you don't have a bit of rural tranquillity and you don't have the senses-inspiring hustle and bustle of the city.

Hive is like one of those suburbs, I sometimes think. (And sometimes think something else.)

Everything here is very transparent for the suburban dweller; he can look into his neighbours' purses, he can see when, with whom and how often they visit each other, and that makes him start to judge when they go about spending their money and fall short, how foul-mouthed they are to one and how sycophantic they are to the other. Among the notifications on their boards, these suburban dwellers see who is little and who is much involved in the neighbourhood and who earns too much and who too little and who is lazy and who is a busy bee.
And although one believes that the neighbouring villa provides equally transparent insight into the goings-on of the residents, their actions always remain a little opaque, for they have so many servants coming in and out that one loses track of them. And so it remains that the suburbanites openly display their lives in front of them and the villa's residents do not. Although it looks that they do, doesn't it?

While the suburbanites think they have escaped the octopus arms of the city, living a foot's breadth away from the Shire, in effect, their transparent dealings are their downfall, for there, in the suburbs, they do the very thing they think they refuse to do, namely, to let big brothers look into their purses, at the pinboards and their diaries.

;) Just saying.

I guess I am a stupid suburbanite.