The solitude of writing. Please send Prince Charming...

Writing.  It isn't just another word for sitting alone in a room making paper unicorns, staring out of the window and wondering what's for dinner you know.  It's a Real Thing.  And, increasingly, it's a real thing that demands quiet, contemplation, chocolate and Being Left Alone sometimes for quite dramatically long periods of time.

Not like centuries or anything, because being shut in a room alone for centuries would make me...well, Sleeping Beauty or Rapunzel.  I am neither of those things.  Although, I suppose my house could be mistaken for Sleeping Beauty's castle, what with all the undergrowth outside and the things growing up the walls (I have a fern growing in my kitchen.  Not in a pot or anything, just In. My. Kitchen. And the places you can find mushrooms?  Not limited to the fridge. All I am saying).  But any Prince Charming attempting to scale the walls and wake me with a kiss...well, I think he would swiftly abseil back down again, shuddering, and kiss his horse in preference.  In fact, therapy would probably be necessary... "I went in there and...and...no, it's too horrible..haven't you got any dolls I could use to show you?"

"Like this, but lying down!  The horror, the horror..."

So, no.  But I can spend long periods of time doing nothing but staring at a keyboard, muttering.  Actually, I'm not really muttering, it's my mouth practicing for the next biscuit, but it's always more impressive if people think you are rehearsing dialogue in your head.

I used to be able to write in a room full of people.  Obviously those people had to be engaged in other activities, not rushing up and poking me to see how far away they could get before I lurched to my feet and came after them, but I could still do it.  However, now that the Other People are large, and come and go to University and other activities, my presence among them is punctuated by Jeremy Kyle, the Real Housewives of wherever it is that they are supposed to be real housewives of, however I have yet to see even one of them wield a mop, and arguing.

So I write in here.  It's quiet, there is chocolate and I can't see the huge stacks of washing up that accrete around large children.  And soon most of them will return to University or college or wherever it is that they go for stretches of time, for all I know half of them are in prison and just come home on some day-release arrangement, and I shall be able to venture forth cautiously into the wider world, clutching my laptop and my HobNobs and maybe get some fresh air.  But for now... LOCK THE DOOR LOCK THE DOOR!  THEY'RE TRYING TO GET IN! HELP HELP HEL