Recently, I spent a fractious morning rearranging my writing room. Fractious, because it involved removing everything from the room to another room, making decisions about where stuff would be relocated, and then moving it all back again. Normally, I would enjoy this kind of activity but Bambino insisted on helping, too. He isn’t a help. But I did it, and this is the view I have before me this morning… I am lucky to have a writing room. Over the years, I have written whilst sitting on sofas, in the corners of bedrooms, at dining room tables, in my car and on park benches. I tried writing in a library once but it was too annoying, what with people coming and going and making a lot of noise whilst trying to not make noise. As a teacher, I’ve written in my classroom and whilst sitting at the back of really boring and pointless staff meetings. But it isn’t until recent years that I’ve had, as advised by Virginia Woolf, a room of my own in which to write. Virginia Woolf had a tow...
Things I have learned this week (and it’s only Wednesday - just think what treasures the rest of the week could reveal!): 1) Frozen dog poos are easier to scoop up than unfrozen ones 2) My brother has NEVER watched the TV series ‘Gavin and Stacey.’ NEVER! A whole array of literary allusions have been lost to our conversations. This revelation came about because he’d bought a new set of oven gloves and I said, ‘Are they like the ones Mick showed off to Pete in ‘Gavin and Stacey’?’ and he said, ‘I don’t know of what or whom you speak.’ I was gobsmacked. I said, ‘You’re missing a treat.’ He said, ‘I’ll get over it.’ 3) According to my recent reading of the books ‘Women Living Deliciously’ by Florence Givens and ‘Meditations For Mortals’ by Oliver Burkeman, I’ve been doing life all wrong for the past fifty nine years, two months and six days. I intend to set about rectifying these errors immediately, and then some. 4) The photograph on my new driving licence looks wa...