Mayfair window boxes

I feel the need for some posting about random everyday trivia. Today’s topic is one that has intrigued me for some time. My walk to work involves a short trip from Green Park, and I pass exclusive hotels, estate agents advertising second homes in France for 3 million euros, and a number of apparently residential addresses. Ever since early Spring, I have quite enjoyed the pretty flowers in the window boxes. They look professionally planted, and serviced by a housekeeper who waters them at 7.30 each morning.

So far, so standard for the international super-rich, or corporate serviced apartments. I always try to tell myself that people who are that rich must be terribly unhappy, but mostly I wonder what sort of parquet they have (the latest thing I think I need in my life), and resolve to play the lottery.

But then there is the lone window box at the end of the row, next to the hunting supplies shop. It has some sort of straggling ivy that looks as if it might have grown entirely by chance, although that has now also died, and an assortment of coffee cups and cigarette stubs people have obviously dumped into it.

Any real estate in that part of London, even a 1-bed flat, is worth millions, and there is a name on the door. Why even have a window box at all? Did the owner previously maintain it and has now fallen on hard times? Is he or she a gambler and had to let the housekeeper go? I like to think it’s some bohemian widow, who bought her little flat 50 years ago, and is too busy thinking artistic thoughts about theatre to give a bourgeois shit about window boxes. She goes to the same coffee shop every day, wearing heirloom jewellery and with her long, dyed black hair in an overly coiffed pile on top of her head. That is a fun thought, so I’ll just pretend that’s the reality.