The Gallery — My favourite place

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Halfway down the stairs
is a stair
where i sit.
there isn’t any
other stair
quite like
it.
i’m not at the bottom,
i’m not at the top;
so this is the stair
where
I always
stop.

 

For the last half a dozen years my favourite place has been right on the bottom edge of Barbados.  Where the Atlantic meets the Caribbean.  Just in front of a surfer’s bar and a derelict house that I had visions of us buying and renovating.   The last few times we have been there though it has made me sad, that things haven’t changed there, nobody has bought the wreck and done it up.  And that the things at home that make me sad are also still unchanged.   It’s not so much my happy place any more.   My happy place and therefore my favourite place is nearer to home.

It is home.

Or actually it’s the garden.    The little bit just outside our kitchen window.  If you look at the back of the garden, 100ft away it does indeed look really green.   But it is only when you venture down there that you realise that green is actually bind weed and a disaster.   We’ll tackle that another day.   For now though it is all about the recently cleaned patio (thanks for doing that Jonnie) and our newly sanded and painted bench and patio table and chairs.

The morning sun shines on it making it the perfect sun trap.     The evening sun sets on it making it the perfect accompaniment to a large Martini.

I’ve never really been one for DIY but seeing the results we got from just a day of “doing stuff” I think I have got the bug and my garden board on Pinterest is full of stuff I want to do with it.   I never really “got” the joy that seeing something transformed could bring but I think I finally get it now

Seeing this

Become this

And more importantly this

The bench and the little row of planted tomatoes, all bought from a table outside somebody’s house where there was an honesty box for payment.

But for now, and for the Gallery, this is my favourite place

And as I fly off to Geneva today, and am possibly face down in a Comte cheese induced coma as you read this, it will be that little bench in front of our new fire pit that I will be thinking of most.   And looking forward to the weekend of hot temperatures we are promised and more scenes like this one

Lady B enjoying left over chilli from the party in front of the fire pit.