The balcony

Ten years ago I had a flat with a balcony overlooking the sea…or rather a road, the promenade, the stony beach, and then the sea.

I loved that balcony. It was completely bare. The salt air killed every plant I ever put out there, even the lavender which my mum insisted couldn’t be killed. We never had chairs or a table out there. I preferred to stand as I watched the tide and ships come and go. It felt wrong to sit as everything else was in motion. I was younger then, I wasn’t good at being still.

The spring and summer would bring coaches and families and, this being Portsmouth, men walking the promenade with their tops off. From May onwards, the hotel next door would entertain an endless parade of weddings, and the brides and grooms would have their kooky pictures taken on the pier. Our neighbours above and below were both second-homers, arriving at weekends with their kids and grandkids. The basement flat, the only other one occupied year-round, was allegedly a brothel but they had their own entrance so we never minded. Ours was the only flat in the building with a balcony.

My family loved that balcony as much as I did. Whenever a big aircraft carrier was coming in they would turn up unannounced with their binoculars. ‘Have you not got any chairs yet?’ my nan would say.

Every autumn, the Great South Run would pass under the balcony, and I would watch it unravel from serious runners to people in tutus to lunatics in dinosaur costumes. I'd get that lump in my throat that I get when I see people being extraordinary (and the Red Arrows, they get me every time).

Winter was my favourite though, when everybody packed up and went home, save for a few fishermen on the pier. The sea would get hostile and interesting, and the Isle of Wight would disappear for days on end. One winter it snowed right down to the water line. From the balcony, the pebble beach looked like a layer of cottage cheese gradually being eaten by the tide. Every boxing day, three robust old ladies would strip down to their big black swimsuits and go for a swim. Not just a quick run in and out to say they’d done it, but a swim. One drunken New Year’s Eve we sprayed a bottle of cheap cava from the balcony and shouted into the wind, ‘We’re getting married this year!’

By the following New Year’s Eve we were gone. Later, the brothel was raided and shut down. Even the pier is now derelict and boarded up. Everything changes. I have a garden now. I have plants and patio furniture. Sometimes I can even be still.