…I had ear-marked as the beginning of a new era. Perhaps that makes it ‘era-marked’. The house move is now half a month behind us and I suddenly find myself with the chance to look forward from a refreshed perspective.
Where should I start? Perhaps with the house.
I’m on the patio listening to the birds in the trees (mainly pigeons cooing, so it’s not that romantic!) and can’t help but wonder how this place is mine. Given where I came from – a childhood unsettled by, on average, a house move a year until I was 18 (and being homeless three times) – I can’t help but feel something of an imposter sitting outside a nice detached house with grass and hedge on all sides, a short little driveway down to the road, the town’s small High Street just four hundred metres away. But here we are. And I’ve a new study, one wall (2.4m long) lined with bookcases. The creative space I’d craved.
Having said all that, the thing that is the most unsettling (and which needs to be transposed into the most rewarding element) is the availability of time. For months now we’ve been preoccupied with the house sale, then suffered the move itself, and for the last two weeks we’ve been unpacking boxes, sorting things out. Not only is that just about done, but two weeks today our daughter is off to university and after that we’ll be rattling around the place. I will have what I want, time and space; the challenge will be maximising its use. That’s what is most daunting.
I can’t be too hard on myself just yet. After all, what we’re talking about here is a re-education. In many ways it’s as much a change as that our daughter is about to experience. It takes time to learn how to manage time, a new environment. What’s important can alters, priorities shift.
I have some projects already to help me along the way: trying to get 17 Alma Road into the world; starting to draft the first few thousand words of a new piece that I think is both topical and in which I can be legitimately interested. And there’s re-energising Coverstory books and its associated activities too.
I can enumerate a short but adequate list easily enough; transposing that into meaningful and rewarding activity which consumes time in the right way and in appropriate proportions is lesson number one in this new era…
Ian Gouge - Writer 