ANNE OOMS

Lucy Edkins' room

A Room That I Know Well:

You walk in the door – paint chipping off but, covered in royal blue and a white sheet drying. Spiders hanging impressively sticky webs across the doorway.
Ahead, a sash window. Dead flowers pressed against the lower right panes. One of the top panes smashed, covered in a rectangular piece of Perspex. The left bottom corner chipped.
Below, a sky blue wooden chair. On it a yellow beach towel, with blue stripe and writing. Behind the chair a radiator.
On the right, a two drawer legless oak, the top drawer jammed, weighted down by the overhanging open wardrobe, its doors removed revealing a black cloth bag of children’s drawings & jottings, a painted wooden tray, a paper bag stuffed with wrapping paper.
Up above, the two wardrobe doors press down making a shelf run back to the door, stacked to the ceiling with framed pictures, rolls of paper, bubble wrap, packing materials, and, piled up to the right of the door, video cassettes and photo albums.
Under these bookshelves filled with children’s books, cookery books, health and psychology books.
In the middle shelves made of chopped up mahogany planks and picture frame wood supports.
Facing the bank of books, to the left of the door, a little pine cupboard with little bookshelves at the top – dual language, foreign language, travel and picture books.
Above this another shelf, made up of ‘For Sale’ signposts back across to the window wall, holding the large plastic plaid bags used by market stalls, filled with more framed illustrations.
Below, behind a large sheet of draught-proofing Perspex, blank canvasses, smaller sheets of bundled Perspex, bundles of thin board, backing board, cardboard stacked against the wall.
Taking up most of the floor space in front a loft bed, on it a duvet covered with 70’s superman patterns and a piranha wood bench as long as the room. Clothes dry on the safety rail. At the head near the window, a pale green Ikea light screwed to the wall.
Above, to the right, a hole in the brick leading to an iron grilled air shaft, a bunched up old linty sheet stuffed in to block the air flow.
Below the loft bed, a free standing boxed in bed. A checked blue and brown cover trailing to the floor; an orange and green rectangular cushion at its head. Between the loft bed support bars another Ikea light screwed to the wall.
Opposite, on the loft bed ladder rungs a deep pink blanket hangs, and a heavy coverlet striped with natural Indian dyes.
Between the makeshift shelves and the wardrobe, one Ikea mock wood 2-drawer unit atop another, stuffed with files, paperwork, correspondence, cassette tapes and stationery. The steel fingerprint dust hard to remove. Spiders scurrying behind drawers.
In the night the low hum of the radio upstairs interrupts the sleep of the body lying in the lower bed. Children and cat lying across like warm hills. The cat undisturbed. Sleep pulling down eyes.