On the BBC Radio 4 programme "You and Yours" the other day they were talking about garden sheds. These were not your average run of the mill garden sheds but fancy sheds, even one that that can rotate so you can change your view. With such a shed, if you live in a house with a sea view you can sometimes have your shed looking towards the garden and the house and at other times looking out to see. The wonders of modern technology!
But why would you need such a thing? Well, the people on the programme apparently use their shed as a place to write, relax, listen to music. Such a place is not a shed but a kind of gazebo or wooden conservatory. And, I wonder, in such a life, what do you use your house for? Are these people's life-partners such ogres that they feel the need to escape from them? Surely, if you can afford a fancy rotating shed, you probably have a house large enough for you to find a place of "refuge" if you absolutely have to escape from your spouse. Our house is not huge but we still can find space to spend part of the day in separate rooms if we so choose. It's not hard.
Now, I can understand that if a person has a particularly noisy or messy hobby, involving machinery such a lathes, drills, potters' wheels or what-have-you, then you might need a shed as a place of work. Surely, though, writing or reading or listening to music, even composing music, is better done in a more comfortable place than a shed!
We have a shed in the garden. In fact we have two: a large-ish one and a smaller one that is little more than a lean-to. Even if they're were empty I would not choose to sit in there for any length of time to relax in any way whatsoever. The only time I ever felt remotely inclined to spend any time in a shed was when I was child and we used to make my father's shed into a kind of den. Mind you, to do that we had to clamber over boxes of seeds, various DIY tools and so on. And even then it was never a very satisfactory den: too cold in winter and too hot and stuffy in summer!
Our sheds are of a similar kind to my father's. They are not empty. Despite the fact that an elderly neighbour thought we were erecting a playhouse for the children on the day we put the first on up, they really are not inviting places to stay for any length of time. Our sheds are full of bikes, sledges, old plant pots and other such gardening stuff! In other words, the kind of paraphernalia that you don't want cluttering the house. Where do shed-writers, shed-listeners to music, shed-relaxers put all this stuff? In the garage? So where do they put the car? In the living room?
Once again I am struck by how different some people's lives are.
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As a kid growing up in NZ from 1949 to 1953 (my father was sent overseas for 5 years by his employer) I had many opportunities to go exploring with my friends. Next door or so to one friend's home was a large house that had been empty for some years. The back door was open, so we'd play inside. There was an operating electric bell system in each of the main rooms, presumably for summoning a maid, great fun for frightening ourselves as we each wandered alone through its rooms.
ReplyDeleteThe back garden was large; very large for a small boy & the grass was waist high. Towards the end of this overgrown lawn was a green & cream painted summer house that could be rotated on an axis & steel circular track in order to face the sun, or keep its veranda in the shade. Three small boys could rotate it, but I guess the family members would have their staff do the hard miles. The large house was Victorian!
That house & its estate are all long gone now, swept away by the north driving portal of the SH1 motorway, but I think that my buddy Paddy Ryan's house still stands. It's 128, Abel Smith Street & we'd play on the upstairs veranda. The majority of houses were constructed of wood, with corrugated roofs, because of earthquakes. Unusual design, bur most of old Wellington is still quaint. Look along Willis Street, which crosses SH1 at end of Abel Smith Street.
https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?ll=-41.2951821,174.7707016&z=15&q=8e/128+Abel+Smith+St,+Aro+Valley,+Wellington+6011,+New+Zealand&output=classic&dg=ntvo
Amazing!
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