I wait till early summer to spring-clean so I’m moving my study, a stirring-up that invariably releases powerful methane from its swamp. Every meaningful valueless thing I own has been sorted through and removed from the pretty, bright room next to ours, with the garden below and the custard-cream scent of blooming wisteria, to a dark, unlovely corner of the top floor. It’s a study, not a viewing platform. I tell myself.
A while ago, we put a single bed in the corner of our room to tempt our youngest son from climbing into our bed when he came in at 2 o’clock every morning. And it has worked only too magnificently. Two years on, there are now three of us in this marriage. Teetering piles of Tintinbooksand Guinness World Records, inside-out trousers with inside-out pants stuck inside them, damp towels hurled across our pillows: these are the ornaments of the chamber. Returning from any nights away from home, I have to prise him from my side of the marital bed and endure thunderous looks and narrowed eyes. So the room next to ours has been cleared. Pleasing Ardizzone prints now hang on its walls, a toy train of five carriages – bearing the letters H, E, N, R and Y – stands on its mantelpiece, and a spectacular bed with plump feather pillows sits in its corner. Untouched, so far, by H, E, N, R, Y’s soft cheek.
But it’s an effortful business moving study, or it is if you do it properly. Every single piece of paper is soaked in distraction, so much thin gold on every leaf.
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