I see myself there too, but that's not where I'm sitting. Not only that, but with I haven't written more that three words in longhand since 1999. Now we have chip and pin I don't even have to use the signature that I spent so many years perfecting on the back of school exercise books. Who would have guessed that I should have been practicing easily memorable four digit numbers instead?
So, a room of one's own?
To hell with that. I don't just want a room, I want a loft with an en suite bathroom, a balcony facing the sea somewhere in Italy, a fully stocked kitchen and a team of happy smiling family retainers to keep it all running, all just for me, all by myself.
My favourite fantasy, after writing out the author's equivalent to my Oscar's speech - the acknowledgements' page - is lying in bed imagining exactly what I would need to stock my own pristine, full-fridge paradise, however the truth is it's all a tad unnecessary. I manage fine with a laptop and the kitchen table. I don't really understand the whole fetish for 'writing space' amongst the authored classes, especially since most of them seem to write perfectly happily in the crowded sofas of Kitchen and Pantry on Elgin Crescent, surrounded by chatting, squawking trustafarians and their mewling, puking offspring, all accompanied by very loud music, swooshing coffee machines and aggressive Polish waitresses. I've seen them. I've been them. There are more writers cluttering up London's coffee shops than you can wave a publishing contract at. What are they all writing about I wonder?
I admit, the clamour of other people's coffee cups doesn't disturb me at all. On the contrary, when a nice blonde, boho mommy, waiting in line for the bathroom, looked over my shoulder and asked me if I was writing a book, I rather thought that I might go out every day and advertise the fact that, yes, indeed, I was.
You know with a badge or something.
'And, yes, actually, I do have an agent.'
'And,' modest cough, 'even a publisher.'
'Really who?'
'Waddling Duck', I say casually.
Blonde Bohemian looks impressed.
I know. I am pretty impressed too.
At home in Suburban Terraces, however, nobody really seems similarly affected. As it is, I do have a study at home, but it's the size of a coat closet with wall to ceiling bookshelves full of boxes of assorted computer cables for computers long ago defunct, coils of mobile phone chargers (ditto), shoes, out-of-season handbags, old jigsaws - you know - the usual detritus of a creative life. There are no photographic prints, tasteful or otherwise, but you can see your breath misting in the air like ectoplasm since the room has no heating but, instead, has natural air conditioning (whose affects I have tried to minimise by plugging the glass frame with strips of clingfilm - an interior decoration accent you don't see on Location, Location, Location).
You can also see the strange, skinny man in the house opposite who plays the drums nude, so it's a lot more comfortable to forgo the supposedly sacrosanct workspace and just take my laptop and go out.
As well as being (almost) published - imagine the joy - I also have a job in publishing, toiling away at the hand-tooled spine of literary fiction and quality scholarly works. My days are spent knee deep in other people's commissioned manuscripts, which it is my job to arrange neatly, in alphabetical order, with post-it notes as they wind their way around the office. I also get to answer the phone a lot and say 'Pedantic Press' in my best RP - more difficult than it sounds as there are an awful lot of consonants to annunciate for someone who usually drops them, and then to transfer the caller to the appropriate MUCH MORE IMPORTANT PERSON, of which there are many.
It's very heady stuff.
Heady in the way that when, on Friday, a former colleague from my days on the forefront of glamorous food journalism came into the office to have a meeting about his new book, I said hello to him and instead of the expected response: 'mwa mwa, what a surprise to see you here - how are you darling', he looked right through me (no mean feat given that 2008 seems to have supersized me), while barely bestowing on me the sort of non committal greeting especially reserved for lowly girls on the till at Tesco's, and assistants who know their place and don't step out of it except to ask you, grovellingly, whether you want sugar with your coffee.
He didn't.
Want sugar I mean.
So I sat back down and went on alphabetising.
That's the difference between the old me and the new me. The old me, you see, would have pulled myself up to my full I'm-just-as-good-a-writer, if-not-better, than-you height in straight-from-the-taxi high heels, and given him the raised eyebrow. But the new me comes by bus, wears trainers. I might have a book in the pipeline but it doesn't yet have a mini-series or a Get Out of the Remainder Bookshop Free card yet, and I like my job. It has real people in it as opposed to those I made up, so I don't particularly want to get the sack for being rude to the talent.
Ah, how the mighty are fallen to filing clerks.
Tea anyone?
