My new office

I have a new office. It’s clean and smart and does great coffee. It’s blissfully, heavenly, sensually warm. I can work without looking like some weird nomad bundled in blankets. People walk past and wave cheerily.  Occasionally the odd nice person will wander over and we will chat a little about silly inconsequential things. Then I put my headphones back on which is my clear sign to ‘leave me alone please’ and I write. And write. And write.

Which is a bloody relief as I suddenly realised I had to get a ripple on with the rewrite of Samael. I was procrastinating to the point of mental instability and financial suicide.

See, this is where I usually work. It’s an old kitchen table in my study. I do have a desk; actually I have two but they are both piled high with stuff – generally James’. Yes, I hotdesk with my son, how mad is that? Actually he tends to muscle in on my table too, purloining my PC because he (for some inexplicable reason) picked off half the keys on his own laptop. So I go to work and find I’ve apparently joined several gaming sites and have sewn a crop of artichokes. It’s enough to drive me to drink.

Also the SP has decided that it’s not enough to chew shoes and cushions. His latest fetish is razor blades. Somehow he finds disposable razors and chews them until the blades fall out and then munches on the blades. Can this place be so unendurable that he is trying to commit canine suicide? Weirdly, despite the mangled blades, the dog doesn’t have a mark on him. He’s made of Teflon.

Anyhow. My study depresses me. It’s a dumping ground for dirty kitbags, junk mail and recycling. It has windows smeared with dog drool and I could probably spin hippy weavings with the furry balls of dust that undulate softly around my feet, caught in the icy drafts that blow in from the hall.

All of a sudden the answer fell like the proverbial thunder bolt. The local cafe has recently expanded and has a whole new little mezzanine tucked away up a small flight of stairs. So – ta da! - here I sit, with my notes and my trusty Moleskine, scribbling like a...er....demon.

And, when I’ve vomited out enough words for one day, I sit back, turn off Hildegard of Bingen (I can’t write to anything with discernable lyrics or I stop and listen) and switch to something a bit more upbeat and whizz through the papers.

Yesterday I even found this very blog lurking in one of them. The Times had run a feature on the US uberblogger Dooce and had added a sidebar with six homegrown blogs. Confess I was surprised – but yes, chuffed - to see mine included (along with that of my lovely friend Alice) and online mates too. I even sounded relatively sane in the bit they quoted.

Personally I put it all down to my nice new office.