Lashings and the White Room

Well I like that. I decide to write something sensible, decent and civilised for a change, then get tongue lashed by trifle girl, and whiplashed by Mrs Jackanapes (I saw that film extract and knew I just HAD to have it.....). Despite the delicious pain inflicted upon me by you both, I shall press on with civilising them, and educating their fevered minds-God knows they need it!

What I was going to write about, before I was so rudely (and deliciously) set upon was where I go to when I am writing; not physically, not in the world, but an inner space, in the interior world.

At the beginning and end of William Dalrymple's book 'From the Holy Mountain', the writer is seated in a monk's cell. A simple square room with a small writing table, and a single bed and from that room, the whole history of Byzantium, Palestine, Turkey Israel and Egypt unfurls.

I return to that room many times, know the texture of the plaster, the smell of it, the sounds of the gulls through the window high up, the texture of the paper and the sound of the steel black pen as it tracks across its surface. I know how the sunlight tracks over the plastered wall, what seasons it touches the bed. I can tell whether it will rain, whether the cherries are ready, whether lovers sigh through the quality of light as it sifts down.

This is the place from whence I write. It was four years ago that the image came to me; sharper than anything, the blank paper with the pen resting next to it poised for a journey, and it is from that room I have journeyed, and it is where I will return to eventually.....

Good night