Working Space

Today, I shall be re-organising our bedroom to give me some dedicated working space. What happens every winter has – without fail – happened again this January and I have despaired of ever being able to write properly (??) without a proper study. ‘I can’t cope’ I wailed to the not terribly distraught family, two-thirds of which looked at each other with ‘do we need to do anything about this? Nah..’ faces ‘I need somewhere where I can leave all my stuff and not have to clear it away – I keep forgetting where I’d got to.’

In a saner moment, this morning, I realise that that was a completely stupid thing to say – where I’d got to is almost invariably evident as soon as I pull up the most recent Word file and doesn’t depend on surrounding detritus but, somehow, it’s the principle of the thing. I should have somewhere I can leave my stuff. It’s my job. (Writing, obviously, not leaving stuff lying around…)

Anyway, the Other Half who is less prone to ignore all SAD-related utterances than the offspring announced a couple of hours later that the solution was obvious – I should turn a corner of our bedroom into a writing space. This has never really occurred to me because, when we first moved into the house and hadn’t yet dried out the cellar, we had the main computer in our bedroom and spent a long time working out how to get rid of it and just have the bedroom as a relaxed, calm, sleeping space. Which it now is. But the OH is right, with a little imagination and changing things around, I could use that corner without making too great a visual impact on the room as a whole. Its feng shui may be destroyed in the process but then I’m not sure it had enormous amounts anyway.

So, I’m off to move books and create a ‘study area’ as those adverts in the back of Sunday supplements call them. Except without all the hardwood, expense and men occupying our bedroom for three months, obviously.