Oh for a space to call my own, a place to create! Do you ever think this way?
There seems to be a spate of sheds popping up to give space and peace for creativity. Which model would you choose?

I’ve been thinking about space. Work space. I was the eldest of four and, as a teenager, I felt deprived. I shared a bedroom with a younger sister. I studied for A levels at the kitchen table with a three year old toddler sister at my heels and two middle siblings watching TV. I ‘looked after’ the younger three whilst studying and I did OK. 

As a student in a house of six, I could listen to loud music or block it out, join in and out of conversations and complete my assignments without the push of mum and dad because this was what I’d always done.

This ability to work anywhere stood me in good stead when I became headteacher of an inner city school. I had a spacious office but kept the door open as I worked through a pile of local authority directives and bag load of national bureaucracy. Every day several  ‘selected students’ sat in my office or at a desk outside my door. These young people had been discarded for not fitting in and needed a respite from unfair or at-wits-end teachers or hostile peers before being returned to their class at the end of a session. I learnt a lot from chats with these students and I hope they felt their concerns were appreciated by me. They kept my answers and returns to the local authority and to the government real. I could never forget that I was paid to make a difference to these students.

I became a literacy consultant for my local authority so I must have been doing something right! I worked in an open plan office with chatter, debate and meetings galore. I sometimes worked outside of a school in my car to get something finished but generally I let the bustle of the office wash over me.

Now I’m freelance and I have a spare room that has been turned into my office. Just mine. It houses my files, my office equipment, my bookcases and the door closes whenever I wish.

I thought I would love it: I hate it! I feel punished for going there. I go and collect what I need and take it to the kitchen table or the conservatory or to a coffee shop.

Lesson learnt.You can take noise and mayhem away but it might not be what you want! My office is like my wardrobe,it is handy for storing things but it is not a place to stay in for long.