A room with a view.

My favourite picture, Steven Gerrard lifting the European Cup for Liverpool, hangs unchallenged on the left wall of my bedroom. The ecstasy on Gerrard’s face recounts the story of that magical night in Istanbul. What a roller coaster the game was! Even farcical the way goals were scored and the eventual outcome favoured us. Just watching it left me mentally and physically drained, as if I’d run a marathon and been kissed by a beauty queen at the same time.

Someone once said to me, Liverpool is a lousy club now. They lose all time. Change you club.

I asked him a question in return. “Would you change you mother if she let you down? If she was not up to the mark sometimes”

He didn’t utter a word. His silence spoke of his shock of what I’d just said. I’ve supported and loved Liverpool all my life. Anyway, the club is a living, breathing legend. Not some history, living in its past glory.

In my room, at the opposite side of the wall, a window is located. If you stand in the garden below and look up, you can see Gerrard’s picture.

During summers, the sash window is over worked. Every evening after I return from work, I pull it up. A mild wind is always swooping around in London. To have them inside my room feels fresh, as if my place is part of a nature, not of some ugly concrete building.

In the morning, I pull it down. Lock it up properly and leave. I can’t afford to have my possession stolen, especially the picture.

A reading table stands in front of the window and makes reaching it cumbersome. I have to stretch, I even got cramp in my back doing it. It was painful. Sometimes, our body doesn’t adjust well after a day of mind stretching at work.

But on the plus side, when I become tired after Iv'e sat on a chair, open my laptop, which is on top of the table, and typed, I can stare out of the window and relax. Outside, flowers abound in our verdant garden. Trees line the compound. On them, the singing birds soothe my tired mind. Sometimes, I’ve listened to them for hours.

Last winter, around one a.m. I was typing a story. My mind was racing, thinking of all the interesting things my character could do in the story. My fingers were flying on the keyboard. A song was softly bellowing from my laptop, and I’d opened the window, as my room had turned into a sauna, since I’d left the radiator running during the day.

When the song finished, I was rudely interrupted by noises coming from the garden. Someone was rummaging through something. Either neighbour’s bin or something in our compound. A thief, maybe a person with a gun or a knife might be around. I immediately closed the window and pulled the curtains. I even switched off the light and stared out of the window, hoping I wouldn’t be spotted and shot.

The full moon was shining brightly. I could see the garden below and my landlady’s favourite room, her conservatory. What if it was a thief? What should I do? Should I call the police?

Then, I saw who it was. On the green grass, the brown body shined on the moonlight as it trotted away and climbed the fence. It was a fox. The most ubiquitous animal in London.

I didn’t go back to my writing. Instead, shaking my head, I brushed my teeth and slept.

The window is my favourite place in my room, and my room is my favourite place in the world. I’ll tell more about it next time.