A Fire of One's Own
Virginia Woolf famously said that, "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction" ( A Room of One's Own , 1929). What Mrs Woolf omitted in her description of the ideal writing room for women… was a fire . When I arrived at my cottage for my month in the country, I thought that coffee would be the main operating principle of the whole shebang. Survivalist's coffee I might make a little too much and get the jitters, stay up all night, pen prose in my pyjamas, and feel ferally connected to reality by virtue of the caffeine in my system. Instead, the great revelation has been the fire. When I first arrived, I timidly assembled little fires with kindling, and the logs to hand. I copped out and used a fire lighter once, but after that I was off. The whole cottage gradually filled with warmth, and the beating heart of it was the woodburning stove. I dried my clothes and my trainers in front of it. I ate in front of it. I read in f...