A (Lipstick Red) Room of One's Own

My Study: A Before and After

For the longest time I worked from bed. Sometimes from the kitchen table; sometimes from the sofa; sometimes from our local Starbucks; but our bedroom, which had a door that I could shut for privacy (and quiet), was my unofficial office, and the bed my impromptu desk. Don’t get me wrong, I quite like working from bed: one of the great privileges of being a writer is the luxury of being able to work from pretty much wherever you can take your laptop. Nonetheless, when we moved from our old flat and into our new house a few years ago, the thing I was most excited about was to have a room of my own: an actual study with a desk-that-looks-like-a-desk, somewhere to sit at and write, like a grown up.

I quickly laid claim to the snug room which sits just off the living room, which while a slightly iffy shade of magnolia, already came with inbuilt shelves (hooray!), and was otherwise pretty much perfect. Here is what it looked like: