Pam Alison Knits

The time has finally come to welcome a new desk into my life. This is a decision I’ve pondered long and hard, and it was only half a joke when I told my daughter it had taken 25 years to move on from my previous desk. However, this summer I admitted to myself that I had grown weary of my old friend, started to feel constricted by accepting its faults, even its steadfast nature became mildly irksome. It had never been quite right and I lost the enthusiasm for making it work.

Anyway, I’d always had eyes for others. There is one particular desk I still regret not buying, though I couldn’t afford it and it was too big for any space I’d be likely to inhabit. The one that got away. Over the years living in an imperfect desk relationship, I honed my ideas of what I needed, what it couldn’t provide me with. Top of the list was more surface space. My old school desk was wide but not very deep and, with lift-up lids, the inside space tended to get filled and forgotten about. I had also developed a strong preference was for my desk to incorporate some kind of raised shelf. These are very popular nowadays for people to stand their monitor on, but to me it was important to raise the lamp off the desktop and to use for some decorative, though still useful, bits and pieces.

Even with all this in my head, it wasn’t until this summer that I stopped admiring from afar and starting actively looking for a replacement. I don’t know if it was prompted by the tantalising the idea of soon being able to sit at my desk every day and play at writing. Perhaps I simply needed to distract myself from the summer’s annoyances. Either way, I started to look seriously, and as soon as I saw this desk I knew it was the one. I had a shortlist of five which fitted my size and layout criteria to some extent, this was the only one with the right combination of compelling features. It was the end of July when I made my decision, but it took three long months to buy it. That was summer 2025 – the endless searing summer of my soul.

But, hey – fast forward three months, and here it is!

As a piece of furniture, it is pretty compact and fits the space nicely. It’s pleasant to look at when I’m sitting on my settee and doesn’t overpower the room, which was another very important point. The desk is a little narrower than my old one though it is also deeper, and raising items above the main surface has indeed given me more surface area free for work. It all feels lovely and spacious – even with books and a magazine it doesn’t feel cluttered.

I am particularly taken with the little crannies included in the design. The centre of the shelf is fixed, but the sections at each side are lids beneath which storage cubbies lurk. One option I’ve thought of is to leave the lids off entirely and stack notebooks in the open sections – something I might try in the future. I wasn’t too sure how I’d use the space between them, but a decorative box fits well for the time being. There’s a single drawer under the desk just made for my current journal and notebooks.

Another feature which sold me on this particular desk was that it can be used just as it is, but if I need more space the top pulls out by an extra five inches. That gives a very good surface area indeed. If (heaven forfend) I wanted to set up a monitor or even have a desktop computer, there would be room for a keyboard and mouse. Personally, I’m much more likely to use it if I’m studying and want text books open as well as my laptop and notepad. Again, it demonstrates a level of functionality which makes perfect sense but is often missing in mass-market furniture.

All this love for my desk has implications, though, for the rest of the room, and I don’t mean just the acre and a half of cardboard packing I have to dispose of. Even before the desk landed, I had already begun plotting a blitz on my bookshelves. I’m not yet happy with my yarn storage/display, either, so that’s ripe for some work. Perhaps the very act of moving on from my old desk is a signal to me that I’m ready to untie some of the threads that hold me in place, move a few things on to more deserving homes. I’m only likely to take tentative steps through the winter months, but there could be a revolution coming next spring.