Look out your back window or door — describe what you see, as if you were trying to convey the scene to someone from another country or planet.
Hmmm, I have to write this from memory as I’m at work at the moment… here goes…
Standing in the doorway of our glass sliding door, I look out immediately onto our balcony. Located on the first floor of a four-floor apartment building, I also have a view across a man-made ditch to another apartment building. Our balcony is paved with off-white coloured tiles which are covered in dirt, dust, and dirty water stains due to the run-off from the air conditioning unit. The edge of the balcony features waist-high frosted glass panels, all connected via one continuous length of steel piping which is set as a handrail. This too is also covered in dirt and dust, and really does need a good cleaning to make it shiny and reflective like it once was.
Immediately to my right is our outdoor table. It’s frosted glass tabletop is covered in a layer of dust and specks of wax. In the middle of it sits a dusty citronella candle set in an army-green coloured square tin. Three of our six outdoor chairs are set up at the table. The chairs are made from some kind of outdoor mesh material, but have small water stains and dust all over them.
To the far right, at the end of the table is where the air conditioning unit is located. On top of that sits a black-metal and glass-panelled lantern with a giant round candle in it. There are deposits of melted wax on top of the air conditioner – remnants from our summer heatwave that caused all our outdoor candles to melt, and seep through the cracks of their metal containers. We really shouldn’t have left them outside in the heat… but hindsight is always 20/20.
In the far right corner is where all the mops and brooms and Hulks various gardening supplies are stored – right underneath our loungeroom window.The glass of the window has quite a thick layer of dust and dirt on it – it needs a good cleaning. Actually, all the windows could use a good scrub.
It’s amazing how much of a difference a wipe down with some Windex can make to a window!
Immediate to my left is a full length glass window to our spare bedroom, and just next to that is our BBQ, with its own outdoor cover – also, completely covered in dust. There are small oil stains on the tiles where the BBQ sits from splattering oil during cooking.
From there, there are a few bamboo ‘tiki torches’ strung up between the metal handrail and the frosted glass panels. The torches are filled with citronella oil which we light whenever we decide to eat on the balcony. Unfortunately it’s really only something that we do when it’s warm, but now that it’s autumn here in Australia, the warm weather seems to be long gone as we currently find ourselves in the midst of a week-long period of rain.
adorablyobnoxious 