I didn’t notice it at first. Well, i kind of did but it didn’t register.
When you arrive somewhere new your brain is busy with the obvious things. The language. The food. The strange way supermarkets organise the fruit. The fact that nobody seems remotely stressed about anything that would cause a full national meltdown back in Britain in Tescos.
But after a few months you start seeing the smaller details.
One of them is chairs.
In this village, and actually in most villages around here, chairs are rarely placed randomly. They’re not pointed at televisions. They’re not arranged around coffee tables. And they’re almost never turned inward.
They face the street. Always.
Every afternoon, especially when the sun starts dropping behind the hills, chairs quietly appear outside front doors. Sometimes plastic ones. Sometimes old wooden ones that look like they’ve survived three generations of arguments and summer heat.
And they all point in the same direction.
Outwards.
At first I assumed people were waiting for someone. A delivery. A relative. A neighbour.
But nobody seemed to be waiting.
They were watching.
Watching the world go past in the slowest possible way. Someone walking a dog. A man pushing a wheelbarrow. A teenager wobbling past on a scooter that looks like it shouldn’t legally exist.
No one says much.
Occasionally someone nods. Occasionally someone comments on the weather even though the weather is exactly the same as it was five minutes earlier.
But mostly people just sit there.
Facing the street.
The first time Carmen dragged a chair outside I thought something was happening.
“Why are we sitting here?” I asked.
She looked at me like I’d asked why people breathe.
“To sit,” she said.
And that was apparently the full explanation.
So we sat.
At first I felt slightly ridiculous. A grown man sitting on a chair outside his own house staring vaguely down a street where almost nothing was happening. It felt like I’d accidentally become part of a stage set.
But after a while something odd happened.
I started recognising people.
Not properly at first. Just shapes. The man with the slow walk. The woman with the bright yellow shopping bag. The older couple who always pass at exactly the same time every evening like they’re following a train timetable nobody else knows about.
Then the greetings started.
A nod.
A quiet “hola”.
A brief comment about the temperature.
Nothing dramatic. Nothing forced. Just the small acknowledgement that you’re both part of the same tiny system of streets and routines.
Back in London the idea of sitting outside your house and watching people pass would feel slightly suspicious. Someone would probably assume you were either judging them or waiting to complain about parking.
Here it feels normal.
It’s not socialising in the usual sense. Nobody’s hosting anything. Nobody’s trying to entertain anyone else.
You’re just… present.
Part of the street.
The strange thing is that after a while you begin to notice patterns. Who walks when. Which dogs are friendly. Which neighbours talk a lot and which ones communicate almost entirely through nodding.
It’s like the village has its own quiet rhythm and the chairs are how people tune into it.
The other evening I realised something slightly alarming.
Carmen had gone inside to make coffee. I was still sitting outside.
And I wasn’t waiting for anything.
I was just watching the street.