YANIS ERTMANIS

Janis Bowley's room

I chose this room because it is unique, and this quality begins even before you enter it. The unique room is in a special place - in fact the room is also a building, but we won't go there, we'll go inside with an alice-in-wonderland key.

The view, for our purposes, includes the entrance door and at least five windows (there are more). If you leave the door open sunlight streams in through it and the window beside it, which are on the right-hand of your view. The door and windows on this wall are south-facing. There were glass gallon jugs of apples turning into cyder on the windowsill – beautiful amber light in the sun. The window is two-sectioned and wood framed. Unusually, one section is designed to slide in front of the other so it could be open by half its width and its full height. A person could then easily climb through. Each window section is divided into five glass panes of a nice 'landscape' format.

The slightly larger left-hand window only lets bright north sky light in, but it's only a few paces opposite the door so usually your view is full of light in the day. This window is also designed to slide open and also has ten glass panes of similar format. All the sliding windows in the room are rotten and do not open now – some panes are missing and covered in stapled-on clear polythene.

At night there have been oil lamps and candles on the sills and a warming coal fire in the grate. From the outside peering in the cheerful light, people singing and playing instruments, makes your heat soar. The fireplace is on the left-hand wall in the view.

Central to your view is three small windows in the far end wall – two tall narrow ones side-by-side and one small one (that the owl used to come in by) above in the roof apex. The narrow windows have four glass panes each of a pleasing, roughly square format. The charming upper window, tucked deep into the wall, has three small panes each about the size of a CD case. Sky, hedge and trees are seen through these east-facing windows.

If you look carefully you'll see all of the windows are skewed slightly in walls sagging over time. The room appears like a hand-made upside-down boat – timber roof ridge beam and ribs, but with foot-thick stone walls!

Recently about fifty people squeezed into the room to listen to a young woman singing. She sat in a chair central in your view of the room and facing you. She sang her own words in a deep rich voice that stirred souls.

Oddly, furniture keeps appearing in the room. There were about a dozen tidy, very old wood school chairs, two long school benches and a few wood folding chairs. Then a small comfy sofa arrived – a faded cotton rose colour. Then a fat armchair appeared – too hideous to describe! And finally two puffy two-seaters, very comfortable but hideous design and sick-making pink fabric. The sofas are now covered in a variety of disguising throws. As all the furniture gets moved around, only a bit of it will be in your view.

The wood floor boards, only inches above the earth, are covered now in mid-blue industrial carpeting stained in places from where the owl shit fell from the roof rafters. There are other objects in the room – two large tables, a china cabinet and a bookcase full of books but they are behind you in your view. You can see two old oil lamps on the sill of the central narrow windows, and there's now a glass vase full of daffodils on your left-hand windowsill. On the wall above the fireplace is a small framed drawing I did of this room's south-facing wall from the outside. When I stood on a ladder to remove cobwebs from the ceiling rafters, I could reach the uppermost mid-rib with a broom. Currently the room is strung zig-zag above us with bunting (we made) in rich colours.

Alone in the room I hear hedgerow birds nearby, and stillness. And in the quiet I hear a babbling brook of time – laughter, someone instructing, dogs playing, general conversation, children, Odo The Arblaster tramping around his land – centuries of voices held in this room that sits still.

Optional info:

-colours: white-wash white, stained wood, mid-blues and jewel colours.