Scottish Borders
Thou shalt not covet …
I do love a glimpse of the libraries and desks of other writers, so I couldn’t resist a few snaps of the ones at the magnificent Thirlestane Castle, dating back to the sixteenth century, and set in the Lauderdale Estate in the Scottish Borders.
The library shelves are packed with tooled volumes of yesteryear, but each stack has a letter of the alphabet at the top, and each book has its numbered space in the rows below. Elegant Dewey Decimal classification, huh?!
So when number B11 went off to New Zealand its absence was duly noted; and when it was returned generations later it resumed its rightful place!
And how’s this for a desk to work at, in front of a wonderful view of the tranquil setting? It’d require a deal more care and respect than my modern equivalent, that’s for sure.
The spice of life
Well, life chez nous is certainly not dull …
… what with letters from high places (well, I think palaces and kings-in-waiting are designated high, aren’t they?) plopping through the letter box …
… a draft novel from a debut writer (587 pages, 230,100 words! – guaranteed to keep me out of mischief for a few days, huh? ) arriving bang on cue …
… snow closing roads on Tuesday; warm enough to sit outside for meals four days later …
… running workshops in London one weekend; helping family move house in the Scottish Borders the next …
… a steady stream of readers signing up for my new novel … then suddenly and inexplicably (to me) a glitch in the system, making it temporarily inaccessible and generating cries for help from out there in the real world (soon rectified by my much more savvy tecchy team thankfully) …
Yep, no time for boredom. But in spite of competing demands, I have this inner compulsion to keep up the work of writing myself, so in fleeting moments of peace I’m back in my favourite leather chair lost in a world as real to me as all of the above distractions.
And tucked in my bag for those times when I’m waiting for a bus or for someone I’m meeting in town, a book of some description. This week that was Amsterdam by Ian McEwan. A nice slim lightweight volume, then. Maybe some of that Booker prize magic will leak out by a process of osmosis … or not. Of which more anon.
