Intrusions
I have no dedicated workspace, as my desk is the dining room table. Since lockdown I’ve moved it directly under a long window and covered one end with books and a printer. The window looks out onto the different layers of the garden. Nearest is an overgrown holly tree, with bird feeders and a lot of squirrel action. Beyond this should be a lawn, but last year’s preparations for the apocalypse have pocked it with random vegetable plots. It now resembles an attempt to disinter a serial killer’s burial site. Sometimes grass snakes writhe through the far hedge so I keep binoculars beside me to check before hanging out washing.
At the beginning of lockdown, I found that the house was quite resentful of my intrusion. It had obviously become used to having time to itself during the week. I had the eerie feeling that I had interrupted an ongoing dialogue between objects and the spaces below and around them, particularly those unobserved spaces below tables and inside rarely opened cupboards. This has faded over time.
I try to bring the outside inside as much as possible. Counter-intuitively, this aids my concentration. To my left is a set of French windows which I keep open during the summer. Sometimes thrushes use the patio to smash their snails. Sometimes a collard dove or fledgling blackbird will fly in by accident.
The house is full of floor-to-ceiling bookcases, with non-fiction organised by subject, and with fiction and poetry semi-organised by author. I have current research books, German dictionaries, and large format art books in the nearest bookcase. Behind me is the kitchen, with a desire path to the coffee pot. If I’m writing notes and drinking coffee I set my screen to this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkgylOJSdhE&t=2438s
Gillian Laker is in their second year of a part-time PhD in The Contemporary Novel: Practice as Research at the University of Kent.