Less than a month from now, I'll be moving home. Not far: I'll end up in a lovely, green area just a ten-minute walk from where I live now, on the other side of the parklands that surround Adelaide's inner square mile. But it'll be a big change, as anyone who's moved from the CBD to the suburbs or vice versa will realise.

The joys of city-living are manifold--uninterrupted power, no breathalysers, tons of shops and post offices, and interesting skylines. On the whole, I've enjoyed it. I've particularly benefited from a forward-thinking project run by the SA Community Housing Authority (recently swallowed by another government department). Although beset with bureaucracy, and occasionally besieged by regime change on high, the program has been crucial to my development as an independent artist. Without it, I might have gone under several times in the last decade, financially speaking, and certainly would not be where I am today, writing-wise.

There are plenty of bad things about living in the city too, including vomit on the sidewalks, rampant ugly apartment developments, poor parking, constant car break-ins, and noise. One of the things I'll miss least is this company. When this cheap furniture importer moved in directly across the road from my apartment block, armed with a catchy slogan that everyone in Adelaide now knows ("It's a pig of a location!"), things went downhill fast. Semi-trailers now frequently clog the street; what few parks existed for residents and their visitors are now entirely consumed by customers; complaints about noise and exhaust pollution have been completely ignored by the business-friendly city council. Thanks to this pig of a neighbour, Surflen Street has become Sufferin' Street, and I'm glad to leave the mess for someone else to sort out.

Anyway, I'm not moving because of Bed E Buys or any other city-life discomforts, even though they have taken some of the shine off my memories. I'm moving for much happier reasons. Seems to me it's always better to run to than from.

Unless, you know, it's from a velociraptor or something.