Picture Window

I write this sitting in the kitchen, perched on a high stool that’s just the right height for looking out the window. The window is one of those Georgian sash ones, with small glass panels that turn the view into nine wood-framed pictures. The sky occupies six of them – today it’s a faded blue, the colour of an old bed sheet washed once too often. In the bottom left panel, there’s a whisper of tree and a flat roof that finishes off a block of flats. Move along to the right and there’s a tall building in bright stone – a paler, twentieth-century version of the local Bath stone perhaps. Behind this unprepossessing construction begins a row of houses, marked by chimney pots. The row of russet and sand-coloured pots curves away, leading the eye across to the edge of the window and the start of the mint-green kitchen wall.