No personal possessions
There is nothing in my Birmingham apartment that reminds me about Moscow, my birthplace—I have no photos of Moscow hanging on the walls; other than a few gifts from old friends, I have no personal possessions I brought with me from Russia to the UK. The years of moving from one country to another, and the aftermath of Christchurch’s earthquake (when most of our belongings remained stored in the warehouse for several years before we settled in the UK), had taught me that one doesn’t need to have much to live, to enjoy life. And certainly, I don’t need much to write. A pencil and a piece of paper—that was it. I can write on a train, on a bus, on a plane, I can write walking down the street, sitting in a coffee shop, in the library, on my laptop at home: they’re my “writing rooms”, where the journey always begins, pauses or ends.
For a long time, I didn’t have a desk … So, I would often browse online shops in search of one, but nothing ever caught my eye. That was until one of my relatives sent me a snap of a desk she wanted to get rid of. I knew that would be the one. She said, ‘You can do whatever you want with it … maybe you should paint it …’. I did nothing. I liked its shabbiness and the roughness of its old unpolished dark wood, worn-out handles and broken locks, its musty smell and all the little hidden drawers where I keep lots of “important and unimportant junk”. That writing desk had taken a long journey to appear here, from some unknown home in the South, then to Bristol and then to Birmingham. The only question is, is it the beginning or is it the end of its journey?
Olga Kenton is a 3rd Year PhD student in Creative Writing, University of Birmingham. She also teaches Russian Language at the Department of Modern Languages, University of Birmingham
Twitter: @OlgaKenton