It’s about 8 miles from and international airport and 4 miles from a motorway. Over the past 30 years, it has gone from being entirely indigenous to being multiethnic. It’s not that one ethnicity replaced another. It’s a complete mix.
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African, Chinese, Asian-Sikh, Asian-Muslim, and so on. I think this is how humans are going to live now for the most part. They live nowhere and are with no one. They are ghosts. They watch Internet TV from their home countries & commute back home for holidays.
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Except even “home” isn’t home. It’s a complete dislocation. The small shops have mostly closed and we two branches of the large supermarkets instead. The only small shops are boutique type hipster barbers & cake shops, and they all look the same as they try to be different.
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I know someone who rents a holiday home out. A family turned up from Chile. They had a device that let them access Chilean TV. They were in Britain, but they never left Chile. Most people live like this.
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We travel the world, but God forbid that we miss our favourite TV show. It has been like this for longer than we think. Joseph Conrad noted how people on world tours in the 19th century would listen to the same song in Siam or Australia.
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There is a large and bland consumer outlet called “Bicester Village” Further down the rail line from me. People come from Japan just to shop there. The signs in the London terminus are in Arabic for the Middle Eastern shoppers. It is an ugly discount mall. It’s all made in China
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Yet people travel the world for this highlight. The architecture and brands no different to Muscat or Dubai or wherever. Welcome to Ballard world.
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