When was the last time you took a beat and just sat back? When did you last steal a few moments from the crush and thrum of city life to watch things pass?  I’m told urban living is busy but taking a load off is my forte. I’m also quite proud of myself. I have weathered difficult times, I put my back into my work and I’m there when people need me. I’m told that I can be very supportive. Yes, I’ll admit that I can be stuck in my ways – a little wooden at times – but compared to those around me, I have a rather sunny outlook. Oh, I should perhaps clarify at this point that I am a park bench.

I’m not sure how long I’ve been in my current position but the trees around me have budded, blushed and shed their leaves countless times since I first set carved foot in this city park. The chirp of the birds and the hum of the high-street traffic is a soundtrack to which lives have unfolded on and around my slatted lap. I’ve heard the reassuring morning natter of neighbours who rest with me during morning saunters, and provided sanctuary for joggers, toddlers and oldsters. Most are lovely but, in my line of work, you come rather close to a few arseholes now and again.

I’ve seen crying babies, sore knees, spilled coffees, mudpies, quiet cries – two marriage proposals (one consummation) and a catalogue of incidents that you wouldn’t believe if I told you. Not everything that happens in cities is pretty. In some small way, though, I like to think I’ve helped. My haunches, painted iron sides and sturdy seat board are a little mucky but I can still offer succour to plumbers and poets alike. I’m a democrat at heart and wouldn’t discriminate against those I spend time with. I could, however, live without those pesky pigeons using me for target practice, I’m a bench; spare me the stool.

Now I’m not what you would call well-travelled but I have a hunch that my kind has been around almost as long as yours has. Human history, I’m told, is all about movement but since merchants first traded, people massed and cities convened, your kind has relied (at times heavily) on mine for relief.

As a public bench, I’m more civic-minded and less doctrinaire than the church pews I’ve heard about, and less courtly than my cousins in parliaments or palaces. I’m rougher around the edges than the newer, more ergonomic breeds I’ve glimpsed in magazines (people leave the darnedest things on benches). But it’s a proud history: my stone-and-marble forebears were in ancient Athens at the birth of democracy.

Much more recently, the arrival of my spindly-legged relatives marked a democratic shift in urbanism as public benches popped up around the world, lining the boulevards of Haussmann’s Paris, Central Park in New York and dotting the banks of the Danube in Budapest.

We might not always say it but public seating is a mark of civility and shared humanity. A benchmark, if you will, of co-operation.

Which brings me to my biggest fear. A neighbour of mine from down the way has told me about a worrying new trend. In my native London, there’s a design known as the Camden Bench. The thought shivers my timbers. Launched in 2012, the unsightly concrete carbuncles are the apotheosis of what you humans have dubbed “hostile architecture”, bits of the built environment designed to discourage lingering too long. It deters littering, drug dealing and rough sleeping, and can serve as a roadblock. But a bench that rebuffs sitters? Have you ever heard such a thing? It might be my Victorian values shining through but this just doesn’t sit right with me.

Luckily, you lot aren’t taking this sitting down either and a wealth of competitions are helping to create and install welcoming new designs. We park benches – donated, commissioned, old, new, flaking and freshly painted – remain an unsung player of public life. What would the films Forrest Gump or La La Land be without us? And shouldn’t there be a supporting role award out there for a Dame Judi Bench? We’re there holding up the plot of spy novels and in paintings by Manet and the photography of Brassaï. Success is about bums on seats. We benches are a rare thing: a place to be still amid the bustle and by ourselves but with others. I sometimes catch myself daydreaming about what life might be like beyond the rat race, rubbish and out of earshot of the car horns. Unlike the benches across the way, my life isn’t always a picnic. What if I found somewhere to perch on a quiet country lane or leafy village green? But who am I kidding? The countryside just isn’t for folks like you and me; I’m old but I’m not useless yet. Technology might have changed but I still matter. And if you want me, I’ll be here to lean on.