A room of my own

16 June 2014

How can you mourn the potential loss of a room? I didn’t realise I was doing just that until my room – my ‘room of my own’ – received a reprieve. It’s not even really a room of my own. It is the main thoroughfare between the kitchen and garden – but over the last couple of years it has evolved into my (and the dogs of course) space.

I’ve squeezed in the old dining room table and covered it with stars. I have a comfy chair- a birthday present two years ago. I have an arm chair and foot stool for reading, a sofa, three book cases and walls filled with family photos, pin-board nonsense, gifts from friends, artwork by my sister and paintings by unlauded artists. 

A coffee table holds my printer, magazines (mostly about food), the too many notebooks, a zipped pouch with Mexican Train (still waiting for people drunk enough or idle enough to play it with me). I have files and boxes full of ideas for stories and projects, my mother’s letters to her mother sent from New Caledonia when she was a young girl serving in the military hospital there during World war Two. I have the letters sent by me to my mother from England, Greece, Saudi Arabia and Cyprus – full of events, people, opinions and thoughts I’ve long since forgotten. I never kept a diary so these are precious reminders of my life when I was too busy raising my children to think about who I was. I have pots and pots of pens, sticky notes, as yet unblemished exercise books all ready for the future. I have too many paper clips, staples, index cards, highlighters, and everything else I can justify buying from the stationer’s, but just as some women can’t have too many shoes or hand bags, I can’t have too many blank notebooks or coloured pens. I have a sweet two-tiered cheapo Ikea bench (with wheels courtesy of the husband) which holds my thesaurus and precious battered two volumes of Webster’s Comprehensive Dictionary (Encyclopaedic Edition – replete with the blanking of certain words by Saudi censors). The double glass doors to the dining room double as my notice board to chart the progress of chapters and scenes.

I look out onto the window boxes of pink and red geraniums, if I look right I see the pool and the oasis of my garden which has flowers all year round and is enclosed with a high dense hedge and trees, to my left is the kitchen, convenient for cooking while I work, handy for the endless cups of coffee and the jars of peanut butter which I eat by the spoonful.

A month ago, my husband decided unilaterally that he wanted to do stuff to the upstairs verandahs which included building me a ‘writing room’. At first I was excited, but then a doubting Thomas worm did what worms do – it wormed its way into my heart. A room upstairs would be nice but inconvenient. When husband came home, I would still feel obliged to shut up shop and come down stairs and say howdy. If I wanted to cook, either I’d be running up and down the stairs or have to decamp for the duration. The proposed room would look out on the growing body of new houses springing like mushrooms and by day the room would be in the full glare of the brutal Cypriot sun. The dogs, who follow and stay with me everywhere, would need letting out and no longer be free to wander at will.

So what if my husband doesn't understand the sanctity of being left alone? So what if he doesn't understand that when he comes in to just sit, drink his coffee, put on opera or talk it breaks the spell and I have to stop writing, turn and face him and sit, sometimes in silence, until he decides to move? So what? I’d miss my place downstairs in the heart of the house.

Yesterday, my husband decided that maybe the renovations he planned were not such a good idea. Had he sensed my reluctance or lack of enthusiasm? I don’t know, but I do know my heart sang a little off-key tune. My room is safe. I’m staying put.