Bench #1 Home

When I woke up this morning, I realized it was a fantastic day outside; the same way many people find out about a nice day in the 21st century - from my clock radio. It promised a lovely day of highs of 22 degrees and sunshine and as we live in the UK, these "days" come as a bit of a treat.

When I finally convinced myself that getting out of bed was inevitable, I waddled down the stairs to the kitchen to make my breakfast and my wife's coffee and pour my smoothie.

My usual ritual would be to then waddle over to the computer to see what exactly had changed in the world since 10 last night by scanning my friends facebook statuses.

However today was different! Today I actually put some decent trousers on before coming down stairs, because today was the day (after living here for 2 years) that I'm going to take advantage of the bench outside our flat.

I walked outside, took a deep breath of fresh air and gazed out over the slightly un-kept "garden" in-front of our flat and at my neighbours rather unattractive garage door. Being of course within 10 miles of London, hills are hard to come by, even in Strawbery Hill (Named after Strawberry hill house which is named after a Gothic villa of Horace), where our little flat is based.

Even though I got a beam of sunlight sneaking over the block of flats next door, past the large tree and filtered slighly through the "garden", one quarter of our bench actually was baking (I'm using this term in an entirely relative manner) in the sunlight. This was the section of the bench that I selected for my breakfast and I flopped down to start crunching away at my cereal.

As neighbourhoods go, I can't imagine a better one that Strawberry Hill. You do get the slightly panicked look of some people who miss their stops at the middle of the night when they read the name of the station they go off at. The name does rather make it sound like the night is going to end in a cage, in the little candy house down the street, being fattened up by the resident witch. But that is part of its charm.

For the most part, the only people who come into Strawberry Hill are the people who live here. The little triangle shaped area is wedged between the themes river with a nice park and Twickenham Green on the other side, complete with a little cricket club which makes for a pleasant atmosphere on the days when the weather is nice enough to sit outside in the park. Its also got a nice (if slightly posh) restaurant, called Arthur's on the Green, where you can get a cup of coffee, or a valentines dinner.

It worth a walk around if you don't live here. If for nothing else as to be amazed at the stunning houses and for those who like golf the Strawberry Hill golf course, and as I recall there is a nice bench there to. Will tell you all about it in my next post, right now I need to get off my lazy bum and go and join the rat race! Ciao