From the desk of..

I've seen a few 'working from home' type posts with unnervingly spotless desks, so I thought I'd share my own ode to the humble workspace. 

I am not, sadly, a freelance illustrator, but I do like to paint. This is from yesterday as I'm actually on holiday for two weeks, which in lockdown means more painting and less typing. The tabletop easel is also a carry box for paints. I have a few different art storage boxes - I keep acrylics in this one. (Daler Rowney Tabletop Easel from Cass Art, in case anyone wants one, I've certainly got no complaints with it).

In front you can see a few of the art brushes, Some drying in the giant sunpat peanut butter jar - they're a great size for it, but I try not to buy peanut butter because I smother it on toast and scoff far too much - and the others in a tea caddy that I think we found in the shed of our last council house when we moved in (we in this instance means my mother, brother and I). Also in the tea caddy are pens and a proddy tool for making rag rugs (which idea I abandoned). Behind the peanut butter jar I've put water in an old conditioner pot from Lush, and behind that again you can see the various containers with pens and so on.

You can see the pots and pens much better in this one:

This is a proper 'working from home' one. The fibreboard suitcase is french, and lined with cream coloured paper. I keep music scores in it, unless I'm going away and need it. It's great because it's small enough to go under a plane seat if necessary. It is not suitable for hold luggage - I learnt that lesson with a brown fibreboard case that fell to bits - but I hate waiting for hold luggage anyway.

A lot of the music comes from a great bookshop in Bell Street near Edgware Rd where the basement was awash with the stuff. I've been learning the piano for over ten years, but my practising is very sporadic (like my painting) so I can't play a fraction of what I have yet. The laptop is a Surface, and belongs to work, but the wireless mouse is mine. The mug I think someone bought me.

Under that is a box of drawing inks (Winsor and Newton) and under that is a tin that used to contain chocolates in the shape of the Statue of Liberty. Gemma at work brought those back from New York in the last year and I bagsied the tin. It's got post-its and envelopes in it now.

Behind that some Muji make up storage that I've got Diamine inks and other bits in, and of course you can see the pens and pencils and felts I have in various jars. The desk is John Lewis, and bamboo. It's the right height for me - probably a bit low for most people, and not adjustable, which might be why it was in the sale when I got it.

The stool is adjustable - its a machinist's stool, or rather a modern copy based on one, with a heavy metal base and a screw and lock mechanism. I bought it for the piano, but it's proved ideal for use as an occasional table and wfh as well. I know OT's recommend a seat with a back, but actually I can't even use the back of my desk chair at work because the seat is so large I wouldn't be able to bend my knees properly if I sat back. In any case the curve of the backrest is wrong (what makers of furniture, and some clothes manufacturers, don't seem to get is that if you're short, you either have a form of dwarfism and need something bespoke, or are, like me, short all over, so unless they can scale down their furniture all over, which it seems they can't, something less complicated is actually better.).

But what I will invest in if this goes on is a screen, so I'm not peering downwards. Or a keyboard, so I can raise this screen a bit.

Anyway this post didn't seem very exciting or book-related, so I've scrolled back through my photo album to find other pictures in which my desk has a bit part at least:

This is obviously a culling post pic, and is already on the blog here. It's from over 18 months back - that is a London Review of Books paper bag from when I had a subscription. It conked out in the end - as did the subscription - so I have a Uniqlo bag now. Normally I take these books to the bookswap in Wimbledon station. At the moment though I'm not using public transport unless I've got very heavy shopping and more than a mile to walk (it's happened twice in four weeks) so I haven't had a cull in a while. Also how could I really be sure they weren't contaminated? I think I'm virus free, but no-one can be sure.

What I am pretty sure of is that I still have all these. Certainly I have the Jan Morris (The Venetian Empire) and the Greene Essays. The picture seems to be for this blogpost, which I never included it on, maybe because those other books aren't the ones mentioned, or because they can't be seen properly (I'm certain that blue book is not the Pym, but the one at the back may be Metroland).

The laptop at the top of the picture is my own, which is getting a bit slow now to be honest. I can't make up my mind if I want a newer version of the same - which means I can actually put it in my lap - or something more like the work one which I can also use as a tablet for sheet music and drawing. Or if I'm being really wasteful replacing it while it does still work.

The laptop in this pic belongs to work and was slower still. In fact - looking at this properly - I'm certain this was taken at work, not at home, but I'm going to leave the picture for the doodles. They replaced our laptops all in the last year, thank goodness, or I would never be able to minute meetings remotely.  Those doodles and many more were mostly done while waiting for the rotten thing to load OneDrive, SharePoint, or our finance system.

Clearly taken for another blog post, and an update on that is 'Letter from New York' was great. 

This I know I took to send to my cousin when I found a postcard I had written years before and never posted. 

I seem to have put all my Hitchhikers together here, but have no idea why.  Or why the CD boxes are sideways instead of end on. This is the oldest picture (in fact each is older than the one before) and is not well composed, frankly.

So that's my desk, and all the pics I have thereof.