I am currently staying with friends in the city of Exeter and they have given me a room, a room that contains a desk and a chair. This is a huge relief. One thing I have discovered since returning from India three months ago is that a desk is a valuable and uncommon item. I had always taken them for granted before. They never impinged on my consciousness.
My consciousness was rather neglectful in that regard, it seems. I assumed that everybody in the world regarded desks (and chairs) as fundamental aspects of existence. It simply never occurred to me that people might not require desks because they didn’t need to write books. I had forgotten that not everyone writes books all the time. What an oversight!
Since arriving in Britain, I have stayed with friends in a variety of locations but, only in Exeter, have I had a desk and chair. Only here, have I been able to sit and work on my next book. Or rather, only here have I been able to do so with relative ease, sitting perched on an adjustable chair, slightly hunched over, three fingers on each hand tapping away at the keyboard (I was once a two fingered typist but I have since improved), a desk lamp providing illumination and a mug of coffee not far away, and even disordered pages of written notes sharing desk space, because it happens to be a big desk.
Yes! A desk large enough to include not only my computer but books and messy piles of paper with garbled messages on them (messages that made total sense when I wrote them but now seem baffling and cryptic). There is plenty of spare space for me to move my mouse with grand sweeping gestures (instead of trying to restrict it to an area no larger than a beer mat). I have found a paradise of sorts. It is a desk that fulfils its promise, a desk that has no wobbly leg, that is high enough to prevent my legs bashing against the edge (and it is a blunt edge, thank goodness) but not so high that I have to crane up. It is a good desk, noble and honest. It is a friend and facilitator.
I don’t mean to sound ungrateful but friends who have accommodated my presence in their houses (while I seek a permanent place of my own) have been unable to cogitate the importance of a desk because the act of writing seems of no great importance to them. Can’t you balance your laptop on your lap? That is a question that seems perfectly logical to them. But no, I can’t. It slides off, just like cats often do when they fall into a deeper sleep and their muscles relax. My computer might call itself a ‘laptop’ but that seems to be a nickname rather than an accurate description of what it can do.
Well, if you can’t balance it on your lap, just don’t write anything. That is their solution to my dilemma. And I have written less, yes, and I do miss the big desk I had in India with the power socket right next to me and enough space on a generous surface for two or more mugs of coffee at once. Indeed, the desk was large enough so that my wife was able to do her writing on her own computer at the same time without either of us interfering with the other! Can you imagine a desk like that? That was a palatial desk.
Of course, I have done my best to improvise. I have used a cardboard box as a desk and sat on the edge of the bed. I have used the edge of the bed as the desk and sat on the cardboard box. I have tried to use a narrow bookshelf as a desk, standing up to type while striking my head on the shelf above it. I sat on the stairs and used the higher step as a desk. None of this has been practical or comfortable. Desks are hugely underrated.
One of my friends kindly gave me a bedroom into which she thoughtfully placed an inflatable bed and then she inflated it for me with an electric pump. It was a small room and the bed, fully inflated, was very large, so large that it took up all the space in the room, every cubic centimetre. Opening the bedroom door, I was immediately confronted with the bulging bed, which I had to climb onto. I tried writing on this bed but there was a leak. It slowly deflated and before long I was in the middle of a choppy pseudo-sea, feeling nauseous, while my fingers kept missing the keyboard of the undulating computer. No wonder sailors lost on the ocean have written so few books!
It is a different situation when I am looking after cats or dogs or other pets for friends who are away on holiday. Then I am able to employ kitchen tables as desks (although cats seem to want to take up most of the space on these surfaces too) and my computer and notes don’t even have to be cleared aside for dinner. I can eat dinner on my lap somewhere else.
That’s right, laps are for dinners and pets, not for laptops. I know there are writers who can write without desks and chairs. People who can sit cross-legged on a carpet on the floor or even while in the lotus position, serenely balancing the computer on their kneecaps as if it is a bridge anchored to two boulders and spanning the abyss between them. I admire such individuals, I guess, but I am not flexible enough to do likewise. I mean, I have a flexible mind, but my body doesn’t follow the example my mind sets.
Some ingenious inventor ought to invent a portable desk that folds up and can be carried in a pocket. Also, a chair that can be carried in the other pocket. It would reduce the frustration and sadness of desk-bound scribblers like myself. It would be an act of mercy. An alternative solution is for everyone in the world to start writing books, so they appreciate the necessity of a desk. In the meantime, I am making good use of the desk I have been loaned and I will miss it when I am gone from my current temporary residence.
Rhys Hughes has lived in many countries. He graduated as an engineer but currently works as a tutor of mathematics. Since his first book was published in 1995 he has had fifty other books published and his work has been translated into ten languages.
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