I am a product of the suburbs, and I still live in one now. Timid and bourgeois by nature, I am at least well qualified to observe my own natural habitat - grey in tooth and claw.
And today I want to talk about hedges. In older suburban areas across the UK, with post-war semis ranged in serried ranks, they're still ubiquitous. The current custodians of the privets probably weren't even born when they were planted, quite possibly their parents weren't either, and yet the current custodians invariably continue to tend to the things. Edges are still cut straighter than an autobahn, not a leaf out of place. It's clearly a lot of work, especially if - like the magnificent specimen above - the hedger has chosen the impossibly fast growing Leylandii.
So why do people keep the things? It's hard to understand really, because the hedge isn't like a two way mirror in some cop show: folk on the outside can't see in, that's true, but by the same token the hedge owners can't see out either. If an Englishman's home really is his castle then hedges are the curtain walls, able to trebuchet and cannonball.
To be honest it's a shame that these self same privet-preservers don't seem to make the same effort to protect our built heritage, especially buildings from the 'peak privet period' of the '50s and '60s. But then, to misquote Oscar Wilde, we may be in the gutter, but some of us can still see the stars - because we don't have any (expletive deleted) hedges to block the view.
