Reflections on a Workspace
What can you tell from someone's home office? Condiments, flowers, George Eliot, West Yorkshire-based post-rock bands, and a hidden Yo La Tengo song title.
I’m looking at the clock on my laptop screen. It’s showing 10:00, and it’s distracting me from the blank Word document above. The cursor blinks almost threateningly, as if it’s going to leap from the screen and attack me if I don’t begin my work.
I have to write an executive summary on some data analysis. It’s to do with trains. I like trains. I also like iLiKETRAiNS, the Leeds-based post-rock quintet. That’s something that’s always felt like a neatly packaged part of my life in recent years.
I’m not ready to work, though. Instead, I sit back in the old rocker currently moonlighting as my office chair and take in my workspace.
It’s remarkably tidy, for a change. At least, my desk is. The cafetiere sits next to my mouse. It’s now one-third full of that caffeinated, treacle-coloured nectar, waiting patiently for me to refill my mug from which I fuel each day. Every day.
The desk is built into the wall of my office. It’s solid, wooden, and brown, like a fallen tree trunk, and sprawls halfway along the wall. The room used to be my elder brother’s when he lived here.
When we all lived here. But that was many years ago.
To my right, by the window, sits a desk tidy. Its shelves and pigeon holes contain a box of business cards for a venture long forgotten, a box of colouring pencils, and a colouring book rarely opened. Next to them is a large blue lever-arch file sitting tall and proud, but empty and offering misleading hints of professionalism. It towers over a copy of The Great Gatsby that’s sat unopened for months, the bookmark peering accusingly at me from between pages 50 and 51, almost beseeching me to return to Long Island in the Jazz Age.
My black wire stationery basket carries pens and pencils, antihistamines and painkillers, an orange highlighter that’s long since dried out. There’s a sympathy card still in its wrapper at the back waiting to be filled with words that could never do justice to someone’s incalculable grief after their loved one passes to a better place.
Sometimes, I think, it’s good to plan ahead and know where things are when the time comes.
Above the desk is a shelf painted with white gloss. I see the little indoor rose garden that I failed to keep alive. Whether through neglect or inexperience, I can’t recall. Behind that is a framed quote about friendship from George Eliot.
Friendship
Is the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person,
Having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words.
I spend a moment pondering the notion, holding each word between my hands, inspecting them in isolation and as a collective thought. I reflect on how, in my 40s, I crave that comfort and safety. And about how I have that comfort and safety with my chosen few after year upon year of feeling adrift and bereft.
I reflect upon how fortunate I am to have curated such friendships with wonderful, incredible humans.
I smile.
My gaze slides left, resting on a photo almost 30 years old. I’m bang in the centre, dressed in grey and black, squinting against the early August evening sunshine. I stand out from my peers, who are all decked out in green and white. That’s the goalkeeper’s lot. The individual within the collective. The free thinker, the black sheep. Or, more accurately, the grey and black sheep.
It’s a team photo from my footballing days. I’m 15, slender, and oh so innocent.
As I continue to survey the shelf, my eyes fall upon a jar of Marmite, an empty jar of Pure Canadian Maple Syrup, an empty bottle of red (Lotto Unico 2019), and a green bottle of gin with enough ‘Mother’s Ruin’ for perhaps eight or nine crisp evening G&Ts. The perfect summer accompaniment for watching Grey’s Anatomy, The West Wing, or a Paraguayan arthouse classic. You know the one. No one talks for 25 minutes. Instead, we watch a ruggedly handsome man silently shower, shave, and dress before strolling out to his ’67 Mustang and driving through breathtaking South American scenery to his lover’s ranch.
Then, there are hole punches covering every conceivable hole punching need. Two holes, four holes, one single giant hole. You need it, I got it. It’s all there.
A bottle of congealed PVA glue evokes memories of Primary school craft projects, sits next to a gunky hot glue gun. They were the sole preserve of adults in the classrooms of Mrs Triggs, Mrs Thomas, Mrs Pidgeon, and the all-female cast of other teachers from my formative years. Now that I’m in my mid-40s, I can be trusted with them when required.
Meanwhile, two staplers of differing sizes and a roll of Scotch tape complete the range of available adhesives and tackers.
There’s still a landline phone. It’s long outlived its usefulness. It rings once a month, and eight times out of ten transmits a scammer’s voice. The other two times, someone’s looking for one of my parents.
They’re no longer here, I inform the stranger on the other end.
In front of the handset lies 75 pence made up of five different denominations. The pile of coins has sat there for a year. Maybe longer. It’ll never get spent.
Finally, my eyes rest upon the crowning glory of my office space. My pride, my joy, my Oxalis Triangularis. Bought for £2 from a charity shop and planted in an old teacup, it’s survived and renewed itself against the odds.
New shoots have appeared in spite of its hostile climate and ignorant caretaker, and boy, have they bloomed. I’m proud of it, and I’m proud of myself for not killing it off within days of bringing it home. And all thanks to a little water here, some gentle words of encouragement there.
There are a couple of dead flowers, which I remove, clearing the way for the fit and healthy to thrive. Is this Darwinism in action, I ask myself. No, it’s simply the circle of life, displaying its beauty at every stage in front of my eyes.
We live, we thrive, we struggle, we die. Death is, after all, a part of life; it’s curtain call. And these few wilted flowers have taken their final bow, retiring to the wings for the final time.
I silently offer a note of thanks for the spiritual joy and sustenance they’ve provided me as I take them from the cup and place them on the desk, ready for the journey to the composter. That’ll be their final resting place.
Petals to petals
Dust to dust
Let’s make soil!
Go on then,
If we must.
I spend a moment wondering what conclusions people would draw about me if they saw this space without knowing who I was and what made me tick. If I died and they arrived to clear the house, to eradicate this little corner of my world from existence for the next inhabitant to curate for themselves.
Perhaps they’d see me as a man of varying, peculiar, and often contradictory tastes, no doubt, given the evidence of fruity, dry, sweet, and bitter drinks and condiments, either half or fully consumed.
Or maybe as someone whose bipolarity extended to caring for flora and fauna. An individual prepared for every conceivable task that required affixing or sealing one thing to another. A person whose thirst for organisation was exceeded only by their adoption of chaos. Someone who really ought to have found a charity tin to pop that 75 pence into.
Peering down, I’m once again looking at the clock on my laptop screen. It’s showing 10:22, and it’s distracting me from the blank Word document above. I’m sure the cursor’s blinking faster now, with greater menace than before.
This exec summary won’t write itself, I think. Rocking forward on the chair, my fingers begin to dance across the keyboard, tapping out an irregular rhythm of verbs and nouns. No adjectives, though, not in an exec summary.
‘This piece of analysis covers all services across the East Coastway between Brighton and Hastings,’ I begin, quickly sinking into a utopia of headways, junction margins, and sectional running times.
I love how I am so often surprised by where you're taking your reader. This piece is truth telling and poetry and a distraction all in one. Love what you're doing!