socialmedian: The Freedoms of Suburbia by Paul Barker

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Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Nov 08, 2009

Summary

We love to hate the suburbs but for Paul Barker they are places of humanity where individuality flourishes, says Rachel Cooke

I grew up on the west side of Sheffield, close to Broomhill, a place which, in 1961, John Betjeman celebrated as "the prettiest suburb in England". Is it pretty? Handsome would be a better word, though I only think so now. At the time, I neither loved it nor hated it; those streets, wide and quiet, were simply a backdrop for my interminable teenage psychodramas. Besides, it was the 1980s. The city centre was unimaginably bleak. Hardly anyone lived there and, in my opinion, no one in their right mind would want to if they could help it. The city was where you went to buy cheap shoes and Thorntons toffee. Then you went home again, on the bus, for the miraculous price of 2p.

When I was 18, however, I met a boy called Crispin, who was going to the same university as me. Crispin was different to everyone I knew and not only because of his neon sign of a middle-class name. I remember the evening he told me that his parents – they were academi

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