Viva Lewes Issue #151 April 2019

OUR SPACE
general scuzziness and oh, excuse the nail-bar,
that was for a children’s party a while ago. The
shed is definitely not a pretty space, it’s just
somewhere I can come and get on with things.
I can get some practice done up here in the
evenings without distraction.” What about the
cup of tea question? “Being up here means I’m
concentrating so I have to think twice. Shall I
have a cup of tea? No. Because I’d have to go
back through the garden and inside the house.
So it makes me keep going.”
The appeal of putting some fresh air between
oneself and one’s nearest and dearest – not to
mention a few feet of lawn, shrubs, or raised
beds – cannot be overestimated.
“Every woman should have a shed,” says herbalist
and storyteller Kym Murden, channelling
Virginia Woolf, whose room-of-one’s-own is the
most famous example locally. (Look, she called
it a ‘writing lodge’ but we all know. It’s a shed. )
Kym’s little cabin is actually rather posh – she’s
got heating. Dark glass bottles line the shelves,
in the corner there’s a herb press, and there’s
a neat desk and a couple of chairs. It’s a warm,
convivial space, with spring sunlight pouring
in over the Downs above. And like other little
wooden boxes, it turns out to be something of a
confessional as well. “People tell me all sorts of
things about their lives in here,” she explains. “A
shed is an elemental space. It’s made of wood and
you walk through the garden to get to it, so it
makes people relax.”
Philip Larkin once wrote that he saw life as
‘an affair of solitude diversified by company.’
Should’ve had a shed. Eleanor Knight
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