POSTIE'S DISPATCH 19 September 2026

The window box on Harbour Row

Postie reports on a long-standing arrangement with a window box that owes him nothing, and knows it.

A plump herring gull in a navy postal cap and small dark goggles perches on the edge of a window box overflowing with geraniums, adjusting a trailing plant with his beak, satchel at his side.

There is a window box on Harbour Row I have been cultivating for some time now, in a professional capacity, though nobody asked me to and nobody pays me for it. Geraniums, mostly. A bit of something trailing that I have not identified and do not intend to.

I land on the sill most mornings, on the correct corner, the one that does not wobble, and I have a look at things. The geraniums do not do anything in particular. That is rather the point of the arrangement. I do not do anything in particular either, for a moment, before the round.

Today one of the trailing bits had grown out over the edge in a manner I felt was a touch presumptuous, so I moved it back with my beak, gently, the way a gull does when he is not being paid to garden but is doing it anyway out of sheer standards. It went back where I put it and stayed there, which I took as agreement.

Someone inside twitched a curtain at me. I did not react. A working gull does not react to curtains.

I would not say the window box needs me. I would say it has come to expect me, which in my experience is the most any relationship achieves, plant or otherwise, and I left satisfied, satchel and dignity both intact, and got on with the post.