95. Writers' Rooms

I don't have a writers'room, just a corner

This is one entry where I am going to   indulge and thoroughly enjoy myself because it is all about me and photos galore. My writers’ group called “The Write Idea”
http://www.helenwhittaker.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=46913#46913 proposed we should tell each other about our rooms where we write in, following an article on Writers’ Rooms from the Guardian
http://books.guardian.co.uk/writersrooms I don’t have a special room, just a corner and you can’t possibly write where I do unless you live on your own because it is part of the rest of the living quarters.

On one corner there is a kitchen with a large square table which becomes my classroom when I have students. The sink unit ends with a tall fridge and immediately next to it is a large glass door that looks out West unto the Pre-Alps hills and the patio of another house where my sister lives. Next to that is a recess that leads to the bathroom and bedroom.
The only bookcase is in this recess where I keep the books I use with the students, the others are downstairs in the basement where I have my painting studio, another small kitchen, a bathroom with shower, two single beds for guests.

On the other side of the sink unit is a three seat blue leather comfy couch- it has to be leather because I have dogs and cats taking a nap and sometimes have accidents which if not washed away the not-so-nice odour gets impregnated into the fabric. Opposite the couch is a flat screen television and a real log fire-place next to it, at the moment not lit. Back to the other side of the couch, is the jutting of one of the two ends of a rectangular horse-shoe shaped desk. The jutting end is about a metre long then turning at the corner the desk surface (which are really two handmade desks joined together) crosses lengthwise the room for about three metres to the door, then turns and juts out into the room. In front of this end extension is a window that looks East into nothing particular except more hills and my shed outside. My cat likes to stay in my in-tray most of the time. The other extension, next to the settee looks out into another window towards the South and the village below.



The desk area arrangement is subject to change, depending on what equipment is added or taken away. A year or so ago it was much different, more compact but since I started blogging and my painting catalogue, I am using lots of photos so I’ve had to add quite a few extras. My lap top was not adequate to process the thousands of photographs I have taken of Church ceremonies, village fayres and so on, I now have a new computer with huge amount of space in it.

I look into the wall in the corner and need to turn backwards or sideways to look out, just like Michael Frayne. I sit on a black swivel chair, not the old heavy type, but like the one David Lodge sits on. It has to be very ergonomic because my backside spends an awful lot of time on it- so that is certainly one of the best investments I ever made. Incidentally, talking about chairs, Nicole Barker had a quite diffident looking dog sitting on her rigid antique chair. The beauty of all this stuff, is that it is refreshing to read about the personal side of writers many of whom I’ve never known existed... lo and behold- even Esther Freud was there- whom I remember some time ago asked if she was Sigmund’s wife???

Billy, my only surviving dog of three,
runs to hide at the sight of a camera-
that's why the photo is so bad
I had to hurry to get him on it.