Currently This Is The Life By Amy Macdonald see related

I have been busy the last couple of days, tidying my bedroom. It needed it! I wanted to put all my writing together on a shelf, and I could not for the life of me find my "Dorrie" book. I cleared the floor, most of the clothes off the spare bed, and under where the coffee table used to be. That had been removed to make room for a bookcase that I am going to get from my Grandma when she moves into her new flat. While I was at it, I pulled out the scruffy old video cabinet that served as a bedside cabinet - but one that I couldn't actually get at the contents, because of the door being pressed up against my bed - and realised that I didn't need it any more. So that went down to the tip, and I came to the astonishing conclusion that maybe... just maybe... I had room for a desk!

Now, ever since moving home, I have lamented the lack of a desk in my room. If I do my writing, I do it either up at the dining room table, or sitting up on my bed, laptop on my knees. But neither of these are the best environments for writing. Also, I have had to have my breakfast in the dining room - a sensible place to eat cereal, perhaps, but at university I ate breakfast in my room, and had a "quiet time" at the same time. In the dining room, with people coming and going, I don't have the opportunity to have said quiet time, and the habit has fallen rather irregular.

Today, I went into Staples, and bought the narrowest desk I could find, at 60cm across, with a shelf for my folders of writing, my writing magazines, and a few other books. It is a desktop PC table, so it has a sliding keyboard shelf, on which I have placed my Bible and a tin of sweets. I put it together "all by my own" (except for two occasions where I asked a parent to hold something in place for me) and feel very pleased with myself. It feels a little like being a student again. I have a place specially devoted to my writing. Virginia Woolf wrote of the importance for a woman writer of having a "room of one's own." If you ask me, she wrote a lot of rubbish, but I do agree with her on this matter - just as long as there is a desk. Without it, a room is merely a bedroom, or perhaps a living room. Now that I have the desk, I feel as though I am myself again.

(As you can see, the dressing table is on the "to do" side of my tidying.)