At Least There’s No Dead Bishops

Linda Poon’s ode to urban balconies for CityLab reminds me that living in a mother-in-law cottage means I do have a small front landing, large enough for a chair, on which I can enjoy a coffee and a book, but the more social aspects of balconies during a global pandemic nonetheless are out of reach, being set back from the street to the point of being behind the main house. Which is not, of course, to say that I wish I could engage in cross-balcony sing-alongs or whatnot, but it would be nice maybe to hang encouraging signs or even just be able to see other people also taking their moments of quiet refuge just outside their living spaces but still apart from the viral milieu. That said, the property on which I live in fact faces the rough, blank wall of a storage unit warehouse; there’d be no neighbors with which to silently, passively commiserate anyway.