About a year before moving to Sydney, I was on the verge of buying a house in the UK. I was serious about it: I had learnt about mortgages, calculated my budget, and even smiled at an estate agent. I viewed 40 properties before I finally came to my senses, and realised that becoming a homeowner is probably the only boring way to put yourself in a lifetime of debt.
Here’s one thing I will never forget about the experience: out of those 40 houses, 39 had cripplingly, devastatingly, pathetically small windows. Why most people in the UK seem happy to ignore and perpetuate this obscene design flaw is a mystery to me.
English people (except me).
(Fear of Light, ©2007-2011 ~Cutteroz)
Anyway, I’m happy to say that my new room here in Sydney has two sets of huge 2x3m French windows – one East facing, one West facing – each one leading to a balcony. Aside from being awesome, this leaves me with just one solid wall, and therefore an excuse to fulfill a childhood dream1: I can have my desk jutting out into the middle of the room and facing a window.
Turns out this causes two first-world problems:
- I live in perpetual terror of accidentally shoving my monitors off the edge of the my desk.
- Every time I stretch my legs out, they get tangled in the chaos of cables that dangle down the back.
Fortunately, I have a rusty old wine-rack, a drill, some screws, a few pipe clamps and the ability to live with my own awful sense of aesthetics:
Doomed wine rack.
Ruined desk.
Done!
Still chaotic, but not in the way.
No one will ever know…
Trust me, this is better than it was.
Can’t complain.
1 It’s not really a childhood dream.
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