To hypnodo­ma­tio mou

I got into the art MA, so at the end of the month I’m moving out of here, putting my stuff in stor­age and spend­ing the summer bumming round my mum’s to save money (with a quick jaunt out to work for a week in Vienna). I thought I’d take some pictures, seeing as how the room is pretty tidy, as I had to show my possible replace­ments round. In many ways it’s an amaz­ing room, but the total lack of vertic­al space and stor­age space can be a real pain in the arse. Excuse the slightly fuzzy photos, my compact camera is old and decrep­it and doesn’t focus like it used to.

Here’s what you see when you come up the stairs (the room’s in the attic). Sadly the picture isn’t peely like the record cover is.

Book nook on the land­ing.

On the left as you come in: sewing machine and horribly inad­equate clothes rail. I just don’t really have anywhere I can fit a prop­er ward­robe, so the clothes rail has to go under the eaves. You can see how slopey the ceil­ing is in this picture.

Big comfort­able chair whose frame I found in the street (I bought a cush­ion pad for it and made the cover). Behind the chair big heap of junk to be taken to the char­ity shop. On right some music stuffs. Big fluffy white flokati rug. I’ve actu­ally got two, but the other one is folded up because it’s slightly too big for the remain­ing floor area. The horse thing came free with an Of Montreal album.

The second window of our tour. East Germany’s finest ampli­fi­er tech­no­logy. It cost me £3 and is unfeas­ibly heavy for the power of amp. It’s prob­ably stuffed with used plutoni­um coated in lead. Plug­ging anything into the input labelled low gain is a point­less endeav­our.

Desk with slow old mac I use mainly for scan­ning film. I’ve got a laptop as well, which I’m typing this on. The chair was from a local second-hand place.

The cush­ion on the chair was going to be a hand­bag (folded over the other way) but then I couldn’t find any of those handles for knit­ted bags in a style I liked, so it turned into a back support cush­ion. That’s an Ordin­ance Survey map of E.Sussex on the wall/​ceiling, for when I need to find my nearest ruined folly.

Book­case full of useful bits. I bet you’re extremely jeal­ous of my big gold book of Latin verbs. The chimp came free with the teabags. Usually the 2nd shelf is full of scrap­books and sketch­books and things, but they’re down­stairs right now. The first big box is full of zines, the second full of camera lenses and stuff for devel­op­ing film.

Next up, my dress­ing table. Which is actu­ally meant to be a desk. The mirror came from Habit­at and is appar­ently designed by Miss Piggy. Those are real lights, but I haven’t got enough sock­ets under the bed to plug them in. The Yellow Submar­ine lunch­box is full of jewellery.

Cheap IKEA bed with a wobbly leg. I would fix it, but I’ll be taking the bed apart in a few weeks anyway, so I can’t be bothered. Bedspread made by my nan, Night­mare Before Xmas cush­ion from the Disney Store. Moom­in­mama and camer­as from char­ity shops.

To the right of the bed, under the eaves, 70s coffee table piled with stuff. DAB radio exclus­ively for listen­ing to 6 Music. (I used to like the bird­song one too, but they stopped doing that). I don’t actu­ally like going to Glaston­bury, too many people, I was given the bag. To the right, the books and records of my life­time minus the books.

Why, yes, Emma that is a rather nice stereo. In my book, all audio equip­ment must have large chrome dials. The record play­er came from an advert in the back of the Grauni­ad (it badly MP3ises vinyl too) and the amp and speak­ers came from junk shops.

Gener­al bed area. Small tv for my view­ing pleas­ure (big one down­stairs belong­ing to my house­mate).

Bunt­ing and mirrorball on the (low) ceil­ing.