The Garden Shed: A Writing Haven
My first time writing a story outside of school, I would have been no older than seven, maybe eight, hiding from the chores with my Grandad in his garden shed. The garden shed. Grandad was a fiddler, someone who pottered about and left his half-finished creations carefully about the house like a breadcrumb trail to his imagination; to his shed. For the most part, it was like any other garden shed, with a chaotically organised shelving system and a big box of things in the corner, but Grandad had crafted an entire world behind those walls.
There was the electric train set looping around the edge on army-green wooden boards. To get inside, you’d have to crawl under those boards, letting the tracks encircle you. I remember feeling right at the centre of this universe, letting each story orbit us.
There was a stool and Grandad would let me conduct the trains from it. There was just a touch of absurdity, a doorbell, which could be rung from the kitchen to call us back inside for tea. There was a small nonsensical town, its residents including several army men, a dragon, the local wizard, a postman and the most important of them all: Miss Mona Lott.
I loved creating stories, even if at the time I was only concerned about playing with the trains and doing all the different voices. I loved how reality didn’t matter, but it was all still real. The 8:03 could run at 15:37 and just be 12 minutes late. Miss Mona Lott could be on the castle’s lookout tower for a good view of the barracks, prepared for the weekly alien invasion. She’d then parachute to the top deck of the open-top bus or climb inside the aeroplane pencil sharpener and pilot it to the town centre, (which was a shoe shop and a police station). There was a model building by the station called The Mousehole, which we had bought from the harbour village by Penzance, Cornwall, so I suppose it only makes sense that I should’ve ended up here for Uni.
I can clearly remember Grandad encouraging me to go and write about everything Miss Mona Lott got up to. I wrote our story on the spare paper kept underneath the china cabinet in the stationary box. In pencil, scribbling Miss Mona Lott’s everyday life down on unlined paper. She wasn’t a likable character and, now that I think about it, she probably wasn’t a particularly reliable narrator. Pessimistic, impatient and judgemental, she exaggerated each train delay like it was the end of her world. But, despite her miserable personality, she was my very first character and I think she’s still my favourite.
Now, I keep her rattling about in her aeroplane pencil sharpener on my bookshelf, where she can watch me potter about my Uni room and fiddle with my own half-finished creations.
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by Eleanor Rogers