Look on the bright side

This picture is a cartoon made by an English illustrator, Paul Woolfenden.
The scene is set at a massive junction. There are a lot of congested highways, flyovers (or overpasses), underpasses, streetlamps and motorways.

The prevailing colour is the grey and the only patch of bright colour is the cottage which is in the middle of the cartoon. This detached-house has a yellow roof, a little hedge and a green garden.
The traffic, going past the cottage, is heavy and dense with lots of different types of vehicles : like cars, trucks and articulated-lorries.

The people behind the wheel are driving to work and that is why the place is stressful and busy. As there are many cars, the place is extremely noisy and there are many exhaust fumes so the place is polluted and unhealthy.

So, the owners of the cottage are surrounded on all sides and we can suppose that this situation is likely to lead to breakdown nerves, insomnia or poisoning.

We can imagine that twenty years ago, there were a small village, an old bridge, country roads, clusters of trees, high hedges, a park or a square and a village green. Maybe the main colours were the brown and the green. Certainly, the landscape was a rural area and the atmosphere was peaceful and bucolic. Surely it was an idyllic place to live.

However, the nearby city has grown and the industrialisation arrived. They started to build factories, big buildings and step by step they destroyed the nature. All village people went away except the owners of the cottage in the background of the cartoon. Maybe they have been lacking foresight or they liked a lot their house.

Now, they live a nightmare and we can suppose that they can no longer bear the situation. But one of them is quiet optimistic and he is trying to take the only advantage to live here : the taxes are low.

This cartoon is humorous. Humour comes from the absurdity of the situation and the discrepancy (or the difference) between