Tidy, tidy, tidy

Current work: Venice book (well, sort of - Tuesday is a non work day)
Listening to: Def Leppard
Reading: Lindsey Davis, Alexandria (still enjoying)

I admit, this picture is actually from March, but it did look pretty much like yesterday, too. Why March? Well, I’m in Writing Magazine, this month, talking about my working day; the interview was done back in Feb, and in March lovely Lynne Hackles asked for a pic of me at my desk to go with it. So I talked my official photographer (i.e. son) into doing the business.


So this is my desk. (Now I have mobile computing, my desk might turn out to be the garden, the conservatory, the kitchen or even my bed - if I ever get wireless to work - but this is my nice quiet space. Also the spare room, as it has a sofa bed. My guitar and music stand live here, too.)

Walls first: the two beautiful framed photographs are by my very talented photographer friend Steve Denby. (Left is Cromer; right is near here but sadly the tree blew down in a gale.) The map on the wall is Norwich in the middle ages. The clock speaks for itself, as does the calendar (it’s the ‘Little Dog Laughed’ one – their artwork always makes me smile for the right reasons). And the piece of paper you can see behind my monitor is my to-do list.

Desk: on the left, you have my printer, and between that and my monitor is the phone. On the right of the monitor are ex-Radley accessory boxes for stationery (bulldog clips, highlighter pens and stuff) and on top of that is a desk tidy which contains bits of stationery plus business cards (other people’s) and things I don’t want to lose but also don’t want to carry round with me. In front of that is a pile of sticky notepads, a stapler and a paperclip holder. (The scissors are hidden because the two youngest members of the house keep borrowing them and forgetting to return them, and I am very tired of having to buy new scissors!)

Next to the desk tidy is my handbag (that day, it was the Radley signature bag with the racing car – my first one and still my absolute favourite, though the iPad doesn’t fit into it). In front of that are a reel of sellotape, a reel of parcel tape and my desk calendar (which has daily puzzles and is very cool – Christmas pressie from my mate Sarah); and in front of them are some of the research books I was using that day plus a reporter’s pad and pen for notes. (At the time I was trying to break myself of the ‘back of the envelope’ habit because I always end up losing them. But now I have a sticky notes app on the iPad.)

On the monitor are two sticky notes – one was some research info I wanted to feed into the novel I was working on at the time, and the other says ‘Who cares?’ (tip from the Stuart MacBride interview I mentioned on my blog a while back, reminding me not to get sidetracked with minutiae). In front of the monitor is my cup of tea (Earl Grey, weak and milky – and the mug is the original Penguin cover of Virginia Woolf’s ‘A Room of One’s Own’, 40th birthday pressie from my best friend), wallet-sized photographs of my children in a frame, a kitchen timer (used when I’m on the internet because otherwise I am a Very Bad Puppy), the remote control for my CD system, and the case for my glasses (only needed for working at a screen – they’re practically plain glass, but they contain prisms to deflect light and stop me getting headaches). Oh, and on the lamp base is a cast-iron frog we bought in Ironbridge a few years back (because I liked it) and a tuning fork for my guitar. Monitor, mouse and mouse mat speak for themselves.

That’s really, really tidy for me. And yet it looks a mess. Sigh. I guess it reflects my mind and my schedule – lots of things crammed in there. (And it’s since become untidy as I have a wireless router on there now… and can’t get the wretched thing to connect to the iPad, the iPod, daughter’s DS Lite or my phone. BT helplines are, um, very polite, but they’ve told me that no Apple products can connect. Interesting, because that’s not what their website says. Will have to try again today – and this time, if I get someone who’s polite but hopeless, ask if I can talk to someone who understands WPA settings.)

So what’s your desk like? (Nosey minds want to know – if you can post a link to a pic on your blog, excellent; but describing it below would be just as fun!)