Space and solitude

Yesterday a couple of friends and I trekked through the fields to see Anish Kapoor's C-Curve. It was beautiful: a strange object that looked like it had been left by aliens. It reflected back hyper-real images of ourselves, the fields and the cows, like a mirror into another world. Adults and children posed and giggled in front of their reflections like in a funfair hall of mirrors. Cameras clicked and flashed. Voices rang out louder in the quiet of the fields. I found myself wishing there were just a few of us there, or that I was alone, to really take in the experience, to drink in the peace and the clouds above me with no one but the cows for company.

Perhaps this is because I have been craving space and solitude recently. I have been longing for a Virginia Woolf's room of one's own. This is a luxury I, like many of you I'm sure, just can't afford right now. A private study is some years away for me. Instead I write at the kitchen table, or on my bed. Where ever I can get peace. This is hard sometimes. I am not the Jane Austen type; my ideas dry up when people and noise flows around me. I need quiet to reach down and hear those words inside me. 

I have the flat to myself this weekend and I am revelling in the peace broken only by my tapping fingers and a ticking clock, and the muted sounds of the neighbours lives. 

How do you carve out your own solitude and space to create?

To see some stunning photos of the C-curve, look here.