Marina Lewwycka

I like to write in bed because it’s the place where I feel most relaxed and I usually try and write from about six in the morning until lunchtime and if I can get six hours in then I can be very productive. But it’s my favourite time for working because my mind’s fresh and often I’ve had thoughts or inspirations during the night when I’ve been dreaming. So it’s a very good place to work.

I don’t need many things when I’m writing in bed I like to be comfortable but the think that’s really essential is this wonderful item here which is my bean bag tray. And this came from Oxfam it was two ninety nine but they’re actually perfect for working with a laptop. When I’m working and I get stuck or I’m looking for inspiration often I’ll get up and have a look out of the garden. Here on my bedside I’ve got my binoculars and our, my garden is two streets away from the botanical garden so often I have very interesting birds come into the garden and actually there’s an owl that lives in the tree at the bottom of the garden so when I’m wanting a bit of inspiration I’ve got a bit bored with writing often I’ll sit up and have a look out down the garden with the binoculars and see what bird life is going on. There’s also a family of squirrels that live in the tree at the bottom of the garden but they’re rather annoying. 

The other things I have on my bedside table that are sort of quite special to me are my silver penguin. Penguin give you one of those when you’ve sold your half a million books. So that was when the tractors sort of reach the half a million mark I was awarded my silver penguin. The thing about the penguin is that it’s a penguin with attitude you can see the way that it’s standing there you know sort of very forthright ready to take on the world. And sometimes when I’m feeling a bit low and the works flagging I look at the penguin and the penguin tells me you can do it. It’s also quite heavy it’s solid silver and it’s got a sharp beak so I sort of think if I ever needed to defend myself he’d come to my rescue. 

The other think I like to have on my, beside my bed which I look at from time to time are my family photos. This lovely picture is my mother when she was in her twenties and her sister when she was fourteen. They parted before the war and never saw each other again. And when I was reunited with my family I actually went back to Ukraine and met the lady in the picture, Oxana, my aunt Oxana and I was able to give her a tape that I’d made with my mother about her life and how she’d travelled from Ukraine into England and you know everything that ever happened to her since she left Ukraine. It was a terribly moving moment and I think it’s so lovely those young girls so beautiful, taken I think it was taken in 1932 and everything that they’d live through since then. I found it very moving and actually quite inspirational as well. 

And another think I really like is this picture above my bed of the old man looking out of the window. There he is sitting at his desk with his pile of books and his bowl of roses looking out over that lovely view sort of dreaming and contemplating really. And I like to think that I’ll be like that one day when I’m eighty or ninety. Still sitting there at a desk with my books thinking and writing and looking out on the lovely landscape.