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Desk jockey
by David Hill
You can tell a lot about a writer from his drawers.
I’ve had my desk for a lot of years now. I got it after Beth developed this silly resentment about there being no space on our dining-room/my work table to put plates.
Fortunately, she’d been visiting the two young female teachers flatting across the road, and observed that one of them had a desk she didn’t need. (Have other XY-chromosome-carriers noticed this phenomenon? A woman can enter a strange house via the front door, pass straight through to exit via the back door, and be able to itemise every piece of furniture in every room.)
But I digress. Beth suggested I might like next-door’s desk instead of the dining-room table. I demurred. A free and frank discussion followed in which I had the last words: “Yes, dear.”
The next day, a couple of friends came over to sample my home brew. I had a brilliant home-brew recipe in those days; it made 100 bottles. Our four-year-old daughter used to help by measuring a teaspoon of sugar into each bottle. Occasionally she mismeasured, and at 3.00am, the street would jerk awake as another over-sugared bottle exploded out in the back shed.
But I digress again. My two friends and I tried the first bottle. Good. We tried the second. Gooder. After the third, I suggested we could go and fetch the desk from next door. Sheveral drinksh later, we set off for the furniture.
The two women watched entranced as three men and a desk stuck sideways in the first doorway, jammed fingers in the second and gouged a chunk out of the third. “It came in here easily enough,” one of them said. “So did we,” I pointed out. My friends sat down on the front steps and giggled.
That’s all history – or it would be if one’s wife didn’t keep retelling the story at dinner parties. My desk now sits in the space between kitchen and back porch and gives me no further trouble.
I wish I could say I’ve been as good to it. In one front corner of its surface are the pits where I stabbed a ballpoint pen as A Certain Publisher rang to say
s/he was accepting a bunch of my stories. In among them are the other pits from when a writer friend rang to say A Certain P had done a flit without paying.
Towards the right rear are a couple of deeper scars. That’s where I used to skewer rejection slips with a school compass. After a while, I realised how childish this looked. I threw away the compass and used a pocketknife, instead.
The back zone of my desk holds a small bookcase, with the usual author’s references: The Concise Oxford Dictionary; Fowler’s Modern English Usage; Yates Garden Guide; 100 Swimsuit Models …
Beside it is a pottery jar labelled PENS. I use it for pens. And pencils and highlighters and paper clips and the occasional teaspoon. The bottom of the pottery jar is a singular environment holding pencil shavings, eraser fragments, biscuit crumbs, half a tissue, and the remains of various moths/beetles. If I were to beam UV light into my pottery jar, I wouldn’t be surprised to see multi-cellular life come crawling up over the rim.
The surface of my desk also has a lived-on look. Years of elbow abrasion, plus knocked-over coffee mugs, teacups, Twink containers (remember Twink?) and copper-sulphate spray (see Yates reference) have turned it from pine to palimpsest.
My desk has six drawers. From Top L to Bottom R, they’re Stationery; Rejected Stuff 1; Rejected Stuff 2; The One That Won’t Open; Work in Progress/Regress; Things That Won’t Fit Anywhere Else.
But my desk has led a sheltered life compared with another author friend’s. When he moved flats, his desk wouldn’t fit into its new room. So he sawed the top in half – leaving a cut shaped like a lightning bolt. It makes a satisfyingly literary-looking plot-graph crease on all his draft manuscripts.
My friend and I agree that if ever we gift our desks to the Hospice Shop, they’ll probably be transferred instantly to Intensive Care.
