A la recherche du Tom perdu

This desk was in my childhood bedroom. I cannot remember the precise age at which I was moved in here from the nursery I shared with my brother. Was I four or five? I was certainly in here by the time I was at infants school, for I remember its orange and black striped tie hanging in the small cupboard, to be replaced at seven by the bright-red tie of a prep school where I was bullied and beaten by both masters and boys. I was sent to a child psychiatrist, odd because my dislike of this school seemed to me a sign of sanity; too scared to ask for the lavatory, I accidentally pissed on his waiting room carpet. He advised that I should be moved to another school. And so I was to a school with a purple and black tie.



But this blog is not about ties, or psychiatrists, or cupboards, but about desks. And at this desk I would do my homework, or sort my stamp collection. I found mathematics difficult. My mother tried to help me, but concepts that seemed obvious to her remained quite obscure to me. She had done the first year of a mathematics degree at University College London in the early thirties, only to be removed; in those years of economic crisis my grandfather thought university education for a girl a luxury, though her brother was allowed to continue. My mother had a low opinion of her brother's intellectual prowess, and believed that he spent the university years she was denied in dissipated living; she had in truth resented him since birth for when he was born my grandfather ordered the village church bells to be rung, an ceremony no one thought of bothering with when his eldest child, a girl, my mother, was born.

So here I would sit before some geometrical proposition which simply made no sense to me, and she would sit beside me, her frustration growing as the extent of my incomprehension became clear. It was only when I went to the upper school, and began logarithms and calculus, that mathematics became clearer.

The desk has travelled with me, to Canterbury, to London and to Seaford. It is not strictly a desk. I think it might have been a washstand originally. I now use it for a scanner and some wires.

A 17th century Dutch desk drenched in light and silence

Vermeer: A Lady Writing (Schrijvend meisje) (detail)

c. 1665-1666, oil on canvas, The National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

I am widening the field a bit here; I hope that's acceptable. Here is one of several desks that have fascinated me. Virgina Woolf's in her writing shed in Rodmell will probably follow soon, but I shall leave that gem to Sir Arthur (Streeb-Greebling).

This is Vermeer's Lady in Yellow Writing a Letter from c.1657. The sujet of the writing or letter reading female is prominent in 17th c Dutch and Flemish painting, but I always loved this particular one because the girl is looking up at the viewer with the most mysterious facial expression. The golden light coming from the invisible window strikes not just her face and the expensive clothes she is wearing but also her hands. The desk is covered with a thick, sumptuous throw, there is a heavily decorated wooden casket, a band of pearls with a yellow ribbon, writing paper, a quill and, most importantly, utter silence. I always wanted to know what the letter says. The painting also makes me want to put away the computer and make way for old-fashioned letter writing...

Full view.

Claire W's desk at home

This is my desk at home on a surprisingly tidy day ( Feb 4 2010 ). I am obliged to say, it is usually much more cluttered than this, but I must have had a bit of fit the day before this image was taken, as I was inspired to clear up the piles of papers which tend to mask every square inch of the IKEA plank. Anyway… on this special day, we’re left with my laptop, some lovely picture books on Indian and Oriental art (I’m loving being an art historian at the moment), and only one plastic wallet with miscellaneous papers in it. Elsewhere, we have a selection of photos (mainly still wedding dominated) and some cards, including one from my sister - Picasso’s Girl with Dove, a poster of which we had on our shared bedroom wall as children.

There is also a random selection of ‘tourist art’ (my latest project) - a Zulu beaded mug, a mini bicycle from Zimbabwe, and a terracotta cha pot which I upgraded from its status as a throw-away disposable cup when I was in India two years ago. They are crude, rough vessels, meant for only one use, but I was quite struck by the effort that must go into making them, just for them to be discarded into the gutter in their thousands, so I kept it. There is also a carved wooden head crouching behind the flowers which I was sold as ‘authentic’ indigenous craft by some cheeky museum shop sales assistant when I was in the Andaman Islands . It was made by a Bengali settler, for sure, but I keep it as a sober reminder of my general silliness. There is also a plastic chicken that my dad put in my Christmas stocking this year. Weird.

Eagle-eyed viewers will also spot the B&Q ear defenders (nicely contrasting with the bone china tea-cup, non?): what is a girl to do if some chap decides to build a house next to yours when you’re trying to finish your PhD? Ear-plugs didn’t cut it and the habit has stuck. Silence is golden…

Sarah Maddox's Desk on 18th February 2010

Another location for my desk in my house is here. This room is warm and sunny. There is also a handy armchair in here and TV in case work gets a bit too trying. I don't really like Flaming June (top left) but she was left over from the bric-a-brac stall I was manning at the Church Christmas Fair and had a nice frame.

Leila McKellar's desk on 18th February 2010

Like Sarah's, my desk often assumes the form of a bed. Like all good offices, mine is equipped with computer, phone, tea and choccy biccies. There is nothing nicer than doing a bit of work, then gradually sinking down into the pillows until one reaches a horizontal angle and drifts into sleep. Ah, the joys of the mid-afternoon doze...

The British Library desk

I cheat slightly here. This is not a desk in one of the reading rooms, where I think photography is forbidden, but in the café, run, as are the refreshment facilities in nearly every London cultural institution, by Peyton and Byrne.


They serve espresso in a huge mug. A waiter tried to remove mine before I had even half-drunk it. The wifi signal was feeble and the café full of people who did not look like scholars to me. But as I was composing a blog post on castrating cats, perhaps I should not be too censorious.

When I was made redundant the first time, in 1991, I used to frequent the British Museum Reading Room. My membership of the Library Association entitled me to a reader's pass, then hard to come by. I would read in the morning and then go to the pub. The British Council ended this idyll by offering me a job.

A desk entrained

Once one starts looking, one finds desks everywhere. I spend at least three hours every working day at this one, the sumptuously appointed table in a Southern Railways carriage. This picture was shot early in the morning, about 6.45, as I sat down at my accustomed place and waited for the arrival of my fellow passengers. There's a man who brings his breakfast with him to eat on the train, muesli in a tupperware box, and a plastic container of milk. He always raises the tupperware to his lips to propel the last drops of milk into his mouth, belching thereafter. He leaves the half-finished milk behind when he gets off the train. I don't know whethere I'm more irritated by the mess or the waste.

I work here, blog posts, some idle writing and reading, some Greek study, even sometimes work connected to the day job. The days of jolly sociable commuters belong to a past time, when trains had compartments. We all hate one another

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There's a post in gestation on the definition of a desk.

I wish I had a cool user name, like cockatrice or vir beatum (Psalm 112, set by Monteverdi perhaps?). I long to be known as gratindauphinoisboy or archaeopteryx but every time I'm confronted by a web page that wants me to choose a username, originality deserts me and I end up using my real name. My best attempt in these matters is the persona of Sir Anthony Streeb-Greebling, as Sascha Loske sometimes knows me, but that I stole from Peter Cook