time and space

The writing is slow this year. I feel confined, need to spread out, am applying for studio space. Yet small isn't usually a problem for me. Watched Grand Designs on tv - English couple building huge house on their Wiltshire farm in England. I can see the advantage of space and certainly love the eco and aesthetic aspects of the design, but would I want to live in such a huge barn of a place? I once helped my partner renovate a barn, creating a large sunny room as a place to spread out while we lived in a truck, but we rarely used it, preferring to live like chickens in the converted lorry. That lorry plays a major role in my memoir. Now I live in what I think of as a normal house with plenty of space but recently found out the neighbours refer to it as The Doll's House!

In David Malouf's memoir 12 Edmondstone Street, he writes about how our first houses set down the way we relate to the world. My first house was a small bungalow and my bedroom a mere sliver of space between the bathroom and my mother's bedroom. One small high window was my outlook on the world.