More rainbow thoughts

There is just so much to see and reflect on here. Superficially there is not so much to say except that this city has grown and grown – in all sorts of ways, and now looks more than ever like a big city one might find anywhere. There are good and bad areas, fast cars, fast food and fast bucks coming and going. But, there are more subtle changes too, that reflect the politics of recent years. Whilst many whites who could in 1994, were planning on leaving, others were planning on a closer move – to the northern suburbs of the city where self-contained and self-declared as 'secure', clusters of houses were springing like mushrooms all over the hills that form the greater mass of the outer reaches of the city. The idea was to escape the violence and insecurity which, consensus had it, was about to spread from downtown to the closer-to-centre white suburbs (including the one I am now peacefully residing in). 12 years on many, both white and black, have moved out to the clusters on the hills – creating new ghettos where those without cars are imprisoned in isolation and those with cars are destined to spend up to 4 hours a day commuting. The leafy inner suburbs they have left are quiet except for the rumbling of all those cars commuting through them to get to downtown… And, most interestingly, the security company vehicles which used to promise 'armed response' and would be stationed at intervals along the wide kerbs of the leafy inner suburbs have gone north too. They have been superseded, if not exactly replaced, by the pickups converted to tow trucks deployed by the growing number of salvage companies who monitor busy cross city intersections for the results of commuter road rage…