I Lived in a Travel Writer’s Shed

A long time ago, I answered an ad in the London Review of Books asking for a caretaker for an isolated cottage in the Scottish Highlands. The owner was a travel writer who was about to go abroad to research a book.

As it turned out, the cottage was already taken by an artist, but I was offered the owner’s writing shed instead. Looking for an opportunity to work on my own writing, I jumped at the chance.

The place was bigger than a garden shed, though not by much. There was a desk, and a sofa that converted into a small bed. A sink afforded a trickle of water. A wood-burning stove was the only source of heat. Just outside the door, an even smaller shed housed a chemical toilet.

I could see immediately that trying to write coherent sentences was not going to be my only challenge.

As well as the practical problems, there was the isolation, too. The cottage really was in the middle of nowhere. I had no idea where the nearest neighbour was. I certainly couldn’t see another house. Most days, I saw nobody. The artist took himself off with his easel almost every morning up into the Cairngorm mountains. My only companion was a semi-wild cat who, when he wasn’t scratching me, would stalk rabbits in the garden. I’d see him sometimes with his captured prey. He’d eat every last bit of the animal, fluffy bunny tail and all.

I tried to write. I could do this, I told myself – look at all the time I had! Eight hours a day, seven days a week. This was the very definition of being a full-time writer. This was the chance I had been longing for: just me and my laptop and my novel.

One week passed, then another. A month, two months. It rained. A lot. And snowed. I struggled to get the wood-burner going. Thinking it might keep me warm, I grew a terrible beard. Every day, I stared at the blank screen. I got distracted by an insect crawling up a grass stem outside the window. I chopped logs for the stove, and strode out on long walks, kept company only by the cloud of midges above my head. Sometimes they descended and bit me. I was glad of even that much interaction with a living creature.

By the end of the third month, I was talking to the cat and believing he understood me. I talked to the rabbits, warning them about the cat, but they didn’t listen. I started to drive the forty minutes into Aviemore almost every day just to be around people.

I headed home. My book was all but non-existent. Back in London, I did, eventually, finish it. I understood then that what I needed was not complete isolation, or endless days with nothing else to do. Without social interaction, without the balance provided by other commitments, by ordinary life, my writing was dead. I needed to be with people, because human beings were what I was writing about.