Imagine if you will, a smartly attired city gent (although only the remotest traces and ‘remnants’ of the once mandatory bowler hat and rolled umbrella now remain) who lives and works in that great metropolis of London town. He has just alighted from the 8:10am Surbiton to Waterloo commuter train, thereafter proceeding to his office a short distance across in “the city”. There he performs the daily duties for which he is employed, returning through the evening “rush hour”, to arrive home again around seven o’clock. From Mondays to Fridays, the pattern is repeated. On Saturdays in the summer months, he mows the lawn, and performs other tasks, generally relaxing in and around the smart, detached/semi-detached suburban family villa/flat. Sunday affords yet further opportunities to relax and take things easy. Beyond that, he might even attend a church service or favourite club; clean the family car and/or read the Sunday papers. Lunch over, he may together with his wife and perchance other family members, choose to enjoy a quiet afternoon in the garden, ending the weekend very possibly in the company of visiting friends. In all such multifarious adventures and activities, he does of course depend almost entirely upon a vast network of services, local, regional and even
Apart from differing contingencies, brought on by a major incident or accident, by some form of industrial unrest, or ill health, or by the changing seasons and allowing for the annual fortnight of ‘pilgrimage’ “to the sun” and other national breaks, holidays etc., what I have written above, might well (with appropriate variations) fairly adequately describe the general lifestyle in working, relaxing, sleeping etc. of just one lifestyle of the wide variety of lifestyles to be found in the UK alone. The vast majority would, I guess, doubtless claim independent existence, whilst each remaining every bit as heavily, indeed utterly, dependent on others in the home, from within the community and far beyond. In the human brain, cells in their trillions have also evolved a staggeringly high degree of specificity. Each, at some level, exists uniquely yet inter-dependently, although even the most complex human society is cravenly simple, by comparison to the indescribable complexity, on the cellular, level of far simpler creations than man. (C)SB.