The Portuguese Step

I’m currently reading Tactical Urbanism which describes itself as ‘short term action for long term change’

When I say ‘reading’ what I mean is glancing at the page and then wanting to write a blog on how it provokes memories of stuff I’ve reflected on, been involved in and feel inspired by.

On page 10 there’s a picture of ‘street seats’ in Brooklyn. This jolted me back to 2004 when my husband and I spent a lazy pre children holiday in sleepy eastern Portugal. We were much taken by the way street seating encouraged conversation of locals. Not unlike this seat below. Nothing fancy, quite often accompanied by a broom and a bucket.

When we got home we decided to put a huge lintel stone on bricks in our back street in Armley. It was a gorgeous summer (I think the European football was on) and we took to just sitting on it. We called it our Portuguese step. It certainly enabled conversations with our neighbours and over that summer we dragged more & more of our living room out into the street, including rugs and our Yukka. It was a lush hot time, and a great many BBQ’s followed. Until such time when our neighbours dragged out a TV to watch the finals in the blazing sun! It didn’t really work as it was hot and the glare meant the football was just a distraction…

The following summer we decided to continue the indoor/outdoor theme and have a street party…which became known as Jam Up the Back Passage which led to setting up The Armley Tourist Board(which is a whole other story)

Seats & steps are dead easy to set out, our Portuguese step lasted a fair few years as an anchor at the end of our back street. It played host to conversations, bottoms & pot plants. Eventually it got nicked…& the memories faded to a sleepy sepia nostalgia, but our friendships remain ever strong. Seats can enable strangers the opportunity to become friends…