April 2, 2007

Carry my desk

Thesis=Submitted. Which feels much less exciting than it is. I have this evening for a breath of fresh air before tomorrow when 75 undergraduate papers to-be-marked enter my life, and then after that I have to find a job. But in the meantime, this evening at least.

I am so grateful to my friends Jennie, Britt and Bronwyn, as well as my husb Stuart, each of whom read through the whole thing during the last two weeks and alerted me to copy errors so numerous I am ashamed of myself. They are acknowledged in my acknowledgments, of course. And the book itself is dedicated to Stuart, naturally, reading, “This story is for Stuart, who carried my desk home on his bicycle.” True story.

Once upon a time Stuart and I lived in a one-roomed box. This was not the first place we’d lived together, of course. Previously we’d spent six months sleeping on an inflatable mattress in a ramshackle house with holes in the roof. The box felt like luxury in comparison, and we were very happy there. Sunshine came through that window absolutely beautifully. And one day I set my sights upon a desk. A desk which we had no room for, but I needed a space to sit and write all the same. Such space doesn’t come easy when you live in a box. And so Stuart agreed, and we bought a little desk at Muji. A little desk that weighed a tonne, and we didn’t have a car. We lived about a half hour walk from the city centre, and my clever husband devised a method wherin the desk was balanced on the seat and handlebars of his bike, which worked perfectly unless we weren’t going straight. But it was certainly better than I could have done, and I admired his might all the home, walking my pink bicycle beside his blue one. And the desk just fit, under the ladder up to our sleeping loft. And it was there where I learned how to sit down and write, which is 75% of everything. And it was then when I realized that here was a boy who would do anything to support me, and that I was tremendously lucky.