we’ve got to get out of this place, if it’s the last thing we ever do

    “The town itself, let us admit, is ugly. It has a smug, placid air and you need time to discover what it is that makes it different from so many business centres in other parts of the world. How to conjure up a picture, for instance, of a town without pigeons, without trees or gardens, where you never hear the beat of wings or the rustle of leaves – a sort of negative place in short? The seasons are discriminated only in the sky. All that tells of spring’s coming is the feel of the air, or the baskets of flowers brought in from the suburbs by hawkers; it’s a spring cried in the market-places. During the summer the sun bakes the houses bone-dry,  sprinkles our walls with greyish dust, and you have no option but to survive those days of fire indoors, behind closed shutters. In autumn, on the other hand, we have deluges of mud. Only winter brings really pleasant weather….                                                                                                                                       ….Our citizens work hard, but solely with the object of getting rich. Their chief interest is in commerce, and their chief aim in life is, as they call it, ‘doing business’. Naturally they don’t eschew such simpler pleasures as love-making, sea-bathing, going to the pictures. But, very sensibly they reserve these pastimes for Saturday afternoons and Sundays, and employ the rest of the week in making money, as much as possible.”

Albert Camus “The Plague” 1947