I don’t get to sit at this desk much lately.
In fact, since I moved into this house – the dream house – and started working full-time again, I haven’t sat still anywhere at all, except for an awful lot of collapsing exhausted in an armchair in the evenings, something that has resulted in strange new behaviours such as a fixation with So You Think You Can Dance and anything else that might flutter past my eyes.
There’s just so much to do. And no clear headspace.
This morning I woke up at five, lay still and good and quiet for an hour, crept out for a cup of tea at six and by seven, when I was impatient to start planting and banging around, it started pouring rain.
So here I am. At the desk.
From here I can see frothy white sea of ti-tree flowers, and misty rain across the river, and the stick that was a rose bush last week until it became collateral damage in the ongoing rabbit insurgency.
I don’t think I’ve actually sat here to write anything creative at all. Ever.
I have, however, started madly scribbling on the train in the mornings, the long-awaited (by me, anyway) novel about La Maupin: an 18th century swordswoman, opera singer and outrageous flirt. A story so ridiculous that it couldn’t possibly be true – and yet it is. I started researching her about four years ago, but didn’t have her voice in my head to start writing until a couple of weeks ago. Now I can’t stop; or, at least, when I allow the time, I can’t stop. I sit on the train every morning, with Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater in my MP3 (for some reason, if I listen to anything else I stop writing) and scribble.
It’s something. It’s fun. It might even be readable. One day.