The step where I sit

A place to pause, and a place to play, the point between the security of home and the sociability of the world outside, Lucy Brazier argues that we should all spend more time hanging out on our doorsteps

You may be surprised to hear that while I haven't lived in places because of the front or back doorstep alone, it has often been a consideration. Just as some want to know if the garden is south facing, whether a supporting wall can be knocked down or if the unusual smell in the kitchen is wet rot, I like to check that there is a good step to sit on. Ideally, it needs to be generously wide, stone or brick, and lovingly warmed by the sun. A joyful spot to perch with an early morning brew or a glass of wine at the end of the day.

Growing up, our house was small but the doorstep became a look-out for me and my brother, a meeting point for our pals, a resting place to compare skinned knees and a safe haven, knowing Mum was just the other side of the door. As a teenager, I loitered there with various boyfriends before the awkward goodnight kiss, often precipitated by Dad turning the outside light on and off several times as a warning.

When I left home and moved to the city my ensuing front steps were too meagre and grimy to encourage lounging and I’d enviously dawdle past stucco fronted townhouses with commanding entrances in the smarter end of town. One year, I housesat near the Thames and became the custodian of an expansive doorstep that my toddler son would spend hours climbing on and off. I drank a lot of tea on that step and met neighbours who are still friends today. Doorsteps can be surprisingly sociable places, if you want them to be.

Take the French trip to an elegant house with faded blue shutters and the doorstep for daydreaming. As the sun dipped each day, my friend Thea and I would escape to the front steps with large glasses of supermarket wine and stare out over the melon fields, plotting ways we could retire. Another year we stayed in a small village in Portugal. Every morning, before the heat knocked me out of my senses, I sat on the steps of the house with my coffee and book and waited for the food vans to arrive – back doors thrown open to offer warm pastries, freshly caught fish, baskets of cheeses and punnets of misshapen tomatoes. The village elders waved in greeting as they wandered past to wait on a sensibly shady bench.

My grandmother had a penchant for a doorstep. It was the position from which she shared news, kept a kind eye on the neighbours, podded her home-grown peas and got a breath of smoggy London air. During the war, doorstep chat was part of a vital and supportive network in the community. And, as we've seen over the past few years, the threshold between our home bubble and the uncertain world beyond. It was a place to clap our NHS heroes, chat to the neighbours and receive food and online deliveries. For me, sitting on the front step during lockdown gave me an opportunity to watch life beyond my own four walls.

Of course, I can sit in the garden, but the danger is I’ll either linger or be haunted by the weeding I haven’t done. Step sitting is a transient activity, it’s not somewhere you can be for long, which is exactly what appeals to me. Taking my coffee to the doorstep or a bowl of broad beans to pod, and feeling the sun on my face affords me the quiet moment I need. I've given myself an additional reason to hang out there, by planting up pots of seasonal blooms starting with daffodils, spring muscari and sherbet-coloured tulips before the rambling sweet peas, cheery calendula and September dahlias.

We can all gain from seeking out and creating less traditional spaces in which to spend time. It doesn’t have to be a doorstep, it could be a nook under the stairs, a comfy chair on the landing, a windowsill wide enough to sit on or even the branch of an apple tree. Cassandra in I Capture the Castle sat on the draining board with her feet in the sink. The Mitford sisters gathered in the linen cupboard. Just somewhere you can stand back from the hustle of life. In truth, maybe I love the doorstep because I like to watch other people’s bustle and escape my own.