A Room of My Own (to chase my tale in)

I’ve decided to start chasing my tale and write a blog. So, where to start? And I mean this literally. A very important writer once told us that we women need a room of our own.[1] I feel indebted and grateful to have one that I ship-shaped all on my own, quirks and all. So I’ll start here...

I live in the bustling pedestrianised street of my barrio. If it weren’t for the Juliet balcony and pet shop below, the French windows would lead me straight onto the overflowing terraces of the neighbourhood’s bars and cafes (happy hour is every hour). Fortunately my desk is at the back of the house.

My apartment building has the olde-worlde-on-hallucinogenic-look of Barcelona’s Modernisme style, but inside it’s refurbished with an open-plan, white-wash minimalist vibe. The ceiling’s creamy beams stretch back to an archway, then to a window the width of the house, and beyond that, there’s views to the inner courtyard, or manzana as they call it here. Tucked into this alcove, wedged between the archway and the window, is my little writing space.

Maybe, so far, it sounds idyllic. An Air BnB blurb might even describe the view from this wide window as 'authentic', but if you’ve ever lived in an entresuelo you’ll know that real sky is sadly a stranger. Instead, you look onto the air-conditioning vents and laundry on rotation; you learn to tell the weather by how pillow cases freckle with rain and how bed sheets throw tantrums at the wind. The neighbours’ washing machines (and children) hum and sing, dogs bark, and the wizened nameless man opposite, who sports a white tank top through all seasons, throws his cerversa cans into the courtyard below.

Inside, by this window, is my indoor garden. My plan was to arrange plants close to the desk to provide purified air and a general sense of freedom and well-being. In reality, they’re a motley, high-maintenance bunch. The Swiss Cheese plant is drunk on angles, the Yuka spits up new leaves like it’s the class pet, the Snake Plant stays military-fashion-upright but refuses to grow, and the ivy wilts in fear just from looking at it. The poor Aloe-vera babies sit valiantly in various states of decline, occasionally making a comeback against all odds, and a few avocado ‘seeds’ sit abandoned in jars of water, a hangover from the latest lockdown.

A pallet leans against the wall beside my green team, fashioned as a bookshelf. It holds reference titles, books on the go, but mainly my out-of-control notepad collection; some wrapped soaps, not making it to the adjacent bathroom, have settled as bookends; fake flowers of shocking violet and pastel pink are stuck into the gaps between the pallet’s planks. I never thought I’d become a fake flower buyer (if that’s even a type of buyer) but the quality truly impresses me. Besides, there’s no other way I’d get dahlias and hydrangeas down here.

Above my desk, my pin-board, with its postcards from home and a small watercolour by dad (birthday tradition) adds colour. On it I have two empty Marmite jars stuffed with biros, highlighters, a lighter, stray moisturiser tubes, and for no reason at all, a clothes-peg. There’s a Jo Malone candle (strictly to be used in creative emergencies only), a stack of pocket moleskins, and certainly more than five post-its scattered around.

So it’s here that I sit, in this microclimate of calming chaos, with my trusty laptop; typing, writing, scribbling, or sometimes just sipping Chai, thinking of nothing in particular, staring at the perfectly perforated edges of artificial leaves.

Enough procrastination; let the blogging begin.