Edna St. Vincent Millay: Shedworker

Edna St. Vincent Millay- who wrote 'My candle burns at both ends; it will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends— It gives a lovely light!' - was one of the most famous poets in America when she moved to her new home, Steepletop, aged 33 in March 1925. As well as the main farmhouse building, the property including hundreds of acres of land and various outbuildings.

Among them was a small outbuilding in a blueberry field which she claimed as her writing cabin, and she worked there - often with her German shepherd, Altair, as a companion - until  it burned down in 1928. Rather than give up on the shedworking lifestyle, she simply built another (pictured top) on the hill behind the house.

This was a simple garden office, constructed of unpainted pine boards, and surrounded by white pines planted to commemorate her mother's life, while around the cabin she also planted daffodils. It was modelled on George Bernard Shaw's revolving writing hut in Hertfordshire which she had visited. She wrote inside for three to four hours a day, inspired by the lovely environment around her - during her time at Steepletop she wrote several poetry collections, an opera libretto, and translated Baudelaire’s Fleurs du Mal.

The interior was furnished with a wooden desk and chair, stove, wing chair, and, a nice touch this, a chaise longue. Much of the estate has undergone conservation work by the charity that now runs it, and this includes the cabin which has been kept uncluttered.

Photo by Daniel Case

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More beach huts on the way to the Isle of Sheppey

More beach huts are on their way to the Isle of Sheppey following the appointement of a contractor by Swale Borough Council.

There are currently 55 popular beach huts on the island. The 26 new ones will be located at Minster Leas (pictured above) and Leysdown and will help meet the high demand and reduce waiting times. There are just under 200 people on the waiting list at the moment. Some of the huts will be available to buy, others for both long and short-term rentals.

There will also be a community hut at Minter as part of the new project. This will be available for a range of community groups to utilise, adding to the one already in Leysdown.

Works are due to start at Leysdown in mid-September and Minister in early November.

The council is also assessing whether to install further huts at Minster Leas, but say they would consult residents and key stakeholders before adding any new ones.

“Demand continues to grow to enjoy our beautiful coast," said Councillor Monique Bonney, chair of the economy and property committee at the council. “The beach huts have always been popular, and now we will have different ways of owning or renting them, to make sure they can be enjoyed by as many people as possible. Now we’ve got the green light, we’ll get to work planning and building the huts, so people can start to spend even more enjoyable days on our fantastic beaches.”

Pic courtesy Swale Borough Council

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Bespoke artist’s studio in Cambridge

Another good example of how small spaces are as good for garden offices as enormous ones. This insulated bespoke artist's studio comes from Cosy Garden Rooms, and measures 3.5m x 2.1m. As you can see, inside there is plenty of space for a desk, easel, comfortable chair, an storage for artist supplies. A roof lantern gives the room loads of natural light, and outside a green roof offers an eco-friendly feature.

The exterior has a two-tone colour scheme, Monetary Taupe to the front and left, Anthracite on the back, right, and footer. There's also a 300mm overhang. Inside, there are white grooved walls, and light grey laminate flooring plus a discreet wall-mounted infrared heater.

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Xavier Herbert: shedworker

Xavier Herbert was one of Australia's leading 20th century novelists, the author in 1975 of Poor Fellow My Country, weighing in at 1,463 pages, making it the longest Australian novel (and of course by default the longest Australian novel written in a shed).

He lived for much of his later life in a cottage called Redlynch in Cairns, in the back garden of which was a shed which he built himself, known as "million dollar dog house". Here is how Lynette Warwick, member of the Queensland Legislative Assembly for Barron River, described it in the Australian Hansard in a speech on April 30, 1996:

"Xavier Herbert built a shed in which to write, while not away at writers' camps around Kuranda. It was an unpretentious iron structure, which local residents say was made from two small sheds taken from the Kuranda railway and moved on a rail car to Redlynch. The shed was reputed to contain a tool bench, some spartan luxuries, a camp stretcher, a deck chair and a low table on which he wrote using an ancient Remmington typewriter. There is also an electrical gadget of his own invention supposed to keep him awake... Poor Fellow My Country was typewritten in the shed."

Sadly it was demolished the summer of 1995. The photo above shows Herbert in April, 1938, on the day he found out he had won the Sesqui Centenary Library Prize. It may have been taken inside the shed. 

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HS2 bat shed cost £100m+

Could HS2 have built the most expensive shed ever? According to Si Jon Thompson, HS2's chair, who was talking at the Rail Industry Association conference today about the costs of the whole project, a kilometre-long 'bat shed' had to be erected in woodland alongside the new high-speed line in Sheephouse Wood, Buckinghamshire to save a colony of Bechstein’s bats. While Shedworking is very much on the bats' side, Thompson admitted that the shed - which cost north of £100m - had been built without any evidence that bats were actually in danger. And indeed Natural England has said it did not stipulate such a structure was vital. Plenty of media have covered this story, including the Guardian here, if you'd like more details.

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Emily Cockayne: shedworker

This is a guest post by Dr Emily Cockayne, Associate Professor in Early Modern History 
at the University of East Anglia and author of several books, most recently Penning Poison (2023) which is reviewed by me in the latest issue of the Idler magazine.

I had a writing shed built in the Autumn of 2009, costing a few thousand pounds [pictured above]. A sedum roof helps keep the interior sufficiently insulated to need only an oil-filled radiator on low. Three books have been written in the shed so far – it was financed using part of the advance for my second book, 'Cheek by Jowl', a history of neighbours. This felt appropriate as I had a different perspective on my own neighbours from my shed chair. 

Next, I wrote 'Rummage' in the shed, a history of recycling written on a recycled desk. Living in a terraced house, and then having two small children, writing at the bottom of the garden seemed to be an obvious solution to escape from the bustle of family life and establish efficient work habits. In the last 14 years, I have found the shed to be a place of contemplation and also of refuge.  

It was great to have the shed to work in over lockdown, when I led seminars from it remotely, recorded lectures in it, and also finished my fourth book, 'Penning Poison', a history of anonymous letters, as well as updating my first book, 'Hubbub', for a second edition. Whilst my colleagues were interrupted by postal workers and the sounds of ice-cream vans, I could carry on in the relative peace at the end of the garden. An anonymous letter had circulated our street back in 2015, and I suspect the writer lives in a house immediately behind my shed – something I kept in mind when writing 'Penning Poison'.

I often share the space with one or both of my cats, and there is usually a big stripy spider busily making a web in a corner. Recently, I moved my sewing machine into the shed, and now also use it as a space for embroidering and patchwork-making, as well as marking student essays and writing my next book.

Worcester community garden opens new garden office

Worcester community garden has unveiled a new office and tool store, funded by an award from the National Lottery and a grant from Worcester city council. The build sits on a giant pontoon so that when the annual garden floods occur the structure will float above the floodwaters, protecting the volunteers' tools and equipment.

Pictured above cutting the ribbon at the unveiling ceremony was Keith Slater of Community Boost who was key in helping to secure funding for the project. “Ever since I was first introduced to the garden and its volunteers I have said that this is one of the hidden jewels in the city’s crown," he said. "If anyone wants to see what a huge and positive difference an ever-growing number of volunteers can make to improve the quality of life for all involved, then this community garden is their place to visit.”

“The floating office and tool store is an imaginative response to the growing challenge that flooding presents for us," added Chair of trustees at Worcester community garden, Steve Dent. "It has been a great morale booster to see the structure going up so soon after the damage caused by the January and February floods. We are enormously grateful to Keith Slater for helping us achieve this ambitious milestone.”

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AA Milne: shedworker

One of the most popular children's books in the last 100 years was written in a shedlike atmosphere. In his autobiography What Luck!, AA Milne discusses how When We Were Very Young was written during a wet holiday in North Wales in 1923 with another family and various other invitees:

"It rained continuously... In a week I was screaming with agoraphobia. Somehow I must escape. I pleaded urgent inspiration, took a pencil and an exercise book, and escaped to the summerhouse. It contained a chair and a table. I sat down on the chair, put my exercise book on the table, and gazed ecstatically at a wall of mist which might have been hiding Snowdon or the Serpentine for all I could see or cared."

Milne says he had a "fixed determination not to leave the heavenly solitude of that summerhouse until it stopped raining" during which time he focused on writing poems which had been commissioned by a friend for a magazine back in London.

"I had eleven wet days in that summerhouse and wrote eleven sets of verses," he wrote, and then they returned to London, he kept on writing, and by the end of the year he'd produced enough for the book. Sadly, the Shedworking interns have been unable to track down an image of the summerhouse.

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Susan Green: shedworker

Artistan bookbinder and bespoke book maker Susan Green runs Bound by Hand and works from her bespoke bookbinding studio at her home in Wimborne, Dorset. You can read more about her beautifully calming setup on her blog (pictured above) but here's a snippet about how she started as a shedworker:

Like many people, in 2020 I made a hasty shift to working from home when covid hit. Luckily we had not long before moved to a house with a garden room, which we affectionally call 'the cabin'. It had electricity and running water and was a pretty decent size, so I was able to set up a makeshift bookbinding studio. I had a folding wooden garden chair at my desk (not recommended), essential materials in boxes and two trestle tables for workbenches that family members no longer needed.

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John Steinbeck's writing hut in Rooms of Their Own

As I've mentioned before there are several writing sheds and huts in my recent book Rooms of Their Own (dare I say it, the ideal Christmas present for a loved one or even yourself as a special treat). Here is the section on John Steinbeck's, accompanied by the lovely illustrations by James Oses which appear throughout the book.

 

In a 1958 letter to his friend and agent Elizabeth Otis, American  

novelist John Steinbeck outlined his plans for building what he  

described as his “little lighthouse”, somewhere that was too small   

for a bed so that it could never be used as a guest room. “It will be  

off limits to everyone,” he told her. “One of its main features will  

be an imposing padlock on the door.”  

 

Steinbeck’s writing hut on Long Island, New York, was so dear to him that he actually gave it a name, Joyous Garde (he even handmade a sign for it and stuck it above the door outside). Named for Sir Lancelot's castle, the hexagonal structure at Sag Harbor was inspired by Mark Twain's own garden office and enjoyed marvellous views over the cove near Bluff Point. The attractive hut with windows in every wall was built by Steinbeck himelf and he worked in a director's chair inside which he labelled 'Siege Perilous' – indeed, Joyous Garde had only one chair so visitors had nowhere to sit down. A large desk took up much of the room allowing him to spread out papers and books and a bookshelf ran all round the room over the windows. In this cosy abode, which he initially planned to call Sanity’s Stepchild, he wrote his travelogue Travels with Charley and his final novel Winter of Our Discontent.

 

As well as Joyous Garde, Steinbeck (1902 – 1968) enjoyed the peace of his writing room in his apartment on the upper East Side of New York which he described as “a quiet room where nothing ever happens”, so quiet in fact that he talked about getting a myna bird and teaching it to ask him questions. He had a sign on the outside of the door which read ‘Buzzard’s Despair’ and on the reverse ‘Tidy Town’ which is how his wife adjusted it to show she had been in and tidied it while he was out. A keen builder all his life, he used the same room to build a kayak-like boat.

 

But whichever writing room he worked in, Steinbeck – who liked to write rapidly - had one prerequisite. Pencils. And plenty of them.

 

“I like the feeling of a pencil,” he said, which is something of an understatement. He used hundreds on each new book, sharpened to a point which he son Thom called ‘surgical’. “The pure luxury of long beautiful pencils charges me with energy and invention,” said Steinbeck.

 

He was particularly keen on round ones, as he found hexagonal pencils cut into his fingers. Nevertheless, he wrote with them so often that he developed a grooved callus on his finger where the pencil rested. Another requirement was that they be black so that they did not distract him.

Steinbeck also had an electric sharpener of which he was very fond, calling it his most used and most useful possession. Since he began each morning with a wooden box of 24 fully sharpened pencils which he rotated and resharpened during the day, it was certainly a great help. As one began to blunt after a few lines, it would be placed into a second box to await resharpening while he picked up a new pencil to continue writing. As the process continued, the pencils would shorten and once the metal holding the rubber on the top touched his hand, he would hand them over to his sons.

“For years I have looked for the perfect pencil. I have found very good ones, but never the perfect one. And all the time it was not the pencils but me. A pencil that is all right some days is no good another day.” Had soft writing days and hard writing days, according to pencils. Sometimes it changed in the middle of the day. Super soft pencils didn’t use very often as “must feel as delicate as a rose petal to use them”

Favourite brands included the Blaisdell Calculator 600, the Eberhard Faber Mongol 480 (actually yellow), the Eberhard Faber Blackwing 602 (tagline ‘half the pressure, twice the speed’). Bought four dozen pencils at a time. When the metal of the rubber on the pencil touched his hand, he discarded it to make way for a new one.

Steinbeck acknowledged that this love of pencils, what he called his “pencil trifling”,  was one of his eccentricities. But he had others. He wrote his novel East of Eden on the right hand pages of a book (in pencil, naturally), while using the left hand ones to compose letters to his friend and editor, Pascal Covici about the progress of the book, as well as general news, what his family was up to. In fact he started his morning work with the letter to warm up - Steinbeck explained he felt the need to ‘have to dawdle a certain amount before I go to work.’

Despite this low-tech obsession, Steinbeck was actually keen to make use of new technology, using a Dictaphone to try out dialogue for his novels, and typing up manuscripts on his olive green Hermes Baby typewriter, one of the earliest portables. On its case he scratched ‘The Beast Within’.

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Dylan Thomas's writing shed in Rooms of Their Own

Dylan Thomas died yesterday in 1953. Several of you got in touch to ask if we could mark his life and work and shedlife in some way, so here's the chapter in my recent book Rooms of Their Own on this very subject, with illustrations above from it by James Oses.

Dylan Thomas – the appeal of small rooms in Wales

Explaining how he had selected the poems of his he was about to recite for a BBC broadcast in 1949, Welsh poet and playwright Dylan Thomas said: "I decided not to choose those that strike me still as pretty peculiar, but to stick to a few of the ones that do move a little way towards the state and destination I imagine I intended to be theirs when, in small rooms in Wales, arrogantly and devotedly, I began them."

Thomas (1914 – 1953) certainly found inspiration in compact spaces. He wrote in a caravan at the end of the garden while living in a flat in Delancey Street in London; produced most of his Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog in a summerhouse in the grounds of Laugharne Castle in Wales; enjoyed the use of a summerhouse at Magdalen College in Oxford provided by his patron Margaret Taylor; and was pleased to write in the 'Apple House' outbuilding at Llanina Mansion near New Quay, Wales, owned by Lord Howard de Walden.

The most famous of his writing rooms was his last, a former garage in Laugharne built in the 1920s to house the local doctor’s green Wolseley, the first car in the town. It stands on cast iron stilts, cantilevered off the road and jutting out beyond the cliff where it overlooks the Tâf estuary below. In 1949 it was converted into a writing shed for Thomas while he and his wife Caitlin moved into their nearby home known as The Boathouse, paid for again by Margaret Taylor. “All I shall write in this water and tree room on the cliff, every word will be my thanks to you,” Thomas wrote in a letter to her.

The shed was very much Thomas’s personal sanctuary. He had windows and a stove installed, and decorated it with pictures of his favourite writers (Louis MacNeice, Lord Byron, Walt Whitman, WH Auden, and DH Lawrence), lists of words, and reproductions of art including Botticelli’s Birth of Venus and Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s The Peasant Wedding. As well as piles of paper on his desk (its legs painted red), he also liked to keep his favourite boiled sweets close at hand. There were also shelves of books although Caitlin is said to have taken out the Raymond Chandlers and other thrillers to encourage him to concentrate rather than settle in for a comfy read. Here, he wrote out everything by hand, simply throwing unwanted drafts onto the floor.

"My study, atelier, or bard's bothy, roasts on a cliff-top," wrote Dylan Thomas in a letter to his friend Hector MacIver. From this peark, it certainly afforded him fine views across Carmarthen Bay and to the Llansteffan peninslar. Through the windows he could also see St John’s Hill which features in his eponymous poem (“Over Sir John's hill/The hawk on fire hangs still”). The shed itself features most dramatically in his ‘Poem On His Birthday’ to mark his 35^th which starts “In his house on stilts high among beaks/And palavers of birds” and goes on to describe the author as “the rhymer in the long tongued room”.

Thomas also wrote “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” and parts of Under Milk Wood here.

His normal writing routine was as simple as his shed. In the morning he would read, write letters, or complete crossword puzzles, go for for a drink around midday at the local Brown’s Hotel, return for lunch at 1pm, then work in the shed from 2pm until 7pm. And then return to Brown’s with Caitlin for the evening. To encourage him to work, Caitlin sometimes locked him in the shed.

The shed has remained popular long after Thomas’s death. It motivated Roald Dahl to build his own writing hut to exactly the same proportions following a family trip to Wales, a recreation featured in the 2011 Chelsea Flower Show, and a pop-up replica version of the writing shed went on the road in England and Wales to mark Thomas’s 100^th birthday. After falling into disrepair, it was renovated in 2003 at a cost of £20,000 (it had cost £5 to build) and the interior is a recreation of his working environment, alongside empty beer bottles, his blue and white striped mug (copies of which are now on sale by an enterprising Welsh pottery company), and a jacket over the back of the chair.

Visiting information

The Boathouse (www.dylanthomasboathouse.com) now contains a museum dedicated to Thomas. Visitors can peek into the shed but it is closed to the public. The shed’s original doors were rescued from a council rubbish tip in the 1970s and are on display with other Thomas memorabilia in the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea (www.dylanthomas.com).

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Hallowe'en in a shepherd's hut

A nice piece by Richard Lee from Plankbridge about returning to visit the owner of a local Dorset shepherd's hut bought some time ago and now used as a work-from-home garden office for a keen fly fisherman. Here's a snippet:

It was interesting to hear about the little things, of how he likes to not have a kettle inside the hut which makes him get up from time to time to walk back to the house, breaking up his day when working from home. The small electric heater is more than enough in such a well-insulated space, ticking away on a thermostat without the hassle of making up a wood burning stove. The added expenditure on a really good quality office chair which makes sitting at the desk a pleasure, and the ergonomics of having things to hand, all add up to make this his perfect place to retreat to.

Well worth a quick look - link at top of the post. 

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UK Men's Shed vacancies

The UK Men's Shed Association is advertising various job possibilities including:

Trusts and Foundations Manager (paid)

This opportunity is 21 hours per week and is home based; anywhere in the UK. The initial contract is for 12 months, with the view to extend. As the new Trusts and Foundations Manager, you will be responsible for working with the Chief Officer to develop and implement the Trusts and Foundations strategy, building on and supporting the existing portfolio as well as developing new funding relationships. You will also champion fundraising best practice and use your knowledge to strengthen internal fundraising processes and contribute towards fundraising policies. 

Artists and photographers (voluntary)

UK Men’s Sheds Association potentially has the opportunity to work with two leading brands on the production of jigsaws and calendars for a major retail outlet. Market leader Ravensburg and are looking for paintings that could be used for jigsaws and Gibsons are looking for photography that reflects life in and around a Shed.

Chair of Trustees (voluntary)

UKMSA is looking for a new Chair to lead the organisation and Board of Trustees (‘the Board’) through an exciting period of strategic development and change. As an increasingly influential voice in the arena of men’s health and wellbeing, UKMSA is championing the growth of ‘Shedding’ across the UK and partnering with a range of organisations to promote and support its aims. We reported on this post earlier this year but the application process has been extended to November 30. 

Click the link at the top of the post for more details of all of these positions.

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Steven Mitchell: shedworker

In today's guest post we welcome writer Steven Mitchell who lives a stone's throw from Shedworking HQ. He talks us through his garden office journey.

I’m a writer, and like my childhood hero, Roald Dahl, I’ve always wanted a writing shed, and now I have one! With child number two on the way, we decided we needed a bit more space, so we started looking at new houses. One house immediately drew me in because the estate agent’s photos showed a garden office. When we went to view it, I knew this was the place. The garden office was tucked away in the back corner of the garden, half submerged in bushes, a palm tree beside the door, and in the shade of an enormous chestnut tree bulging with adolescent fruit. I imagined myself in there, furiously working on my next novel. We made an offer on the house the next day. 

Now I’ve moved into the shed, I often pause to breathe in the greenery as a breeze rustles the leaves and rain falls gently on the shed roof. It’s more peaceful than I’d imagined. I write early in the morning or late at night and I feel like I’m truly alone. I have a lovely oak desk, a comfy brown leather chair, and pictures on the wall. It’s cosy, but I’ve only experienced it in the summer so I’m bracing for autumn and winter. I’ll probably be typing in fingerless gloves, bobble hat on my head, wrapped tight in a blanket while chestnuts thunder down onto the roof. 

A fox visits the garden, a squirrel often scampers past the door, and one evening, as I returned to the house, I almost tripped over a hedgehog as it scurried across the lawn. In my second week in the shed, I heard scratching in the corner of the shed, a noise coming from outside, driving me to distraction. I stuck my head out to see a parade of wasps going in and out of a hole. Thankfully, they’ve gone, and I have my peace back. 

I’m going to do my best writing here—my award-winning work—I just know it. I wish I’d had this space when writing my first novel, Under The Moss—perhaps the boost of an inspiring place to write might have boosted sales. But it’s not just a writing shed—it’s my den. If I need a break, I have my guitars and electric drum kit (I’d love to swap it for my real one, but I have yet to convince my partner of that), which I thrash upon dreaming of being a rockstar (only one of my bands made it to Spotify (Double Handsome Dragons—check it out). 

I wish everyone could find their own space like this, and if I finally hit on the formula for writing a bestseller here, I’ll share the secret. 

And a quick plug…if you buy Under The Moss direct from my publisher’s website, they’ll plant a tree.  Or you can buy it from your favourite bookshop, and they’ll still plant a tree but maybe not a whole one.

New homeworking survey indicates 7% of people work from garden offices

A survey by workplace health, wellbeing and ergonomics company Posturite indicates that only 48% of people who work from home have a designated room for doing so. Its figures show that 7% of people work from a garden office, with a dedicated study/home office in the house the most popular at 41%, followed by a spare bedroom at 21%, then pretty much every other home in the house. The problem with working at a kitchen table or in the living room is that you almost certainly are damaging your body in the process as a result of poor posture.

Katharine Metters, Lead Consultant in Ergonomics at Posturite, said: “Working from home should be as well set up and comfortable as working in an office and standard home furniture, such as a sofa or dining chair, is not designed to support the body in a suitable position for inputting into a computer. Setting your home office up in an ergonomic way is vital to your effectiveness and to limit the risk of aches, pains and injuries.”

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UK Men's Sheds Association looking for new chair

One of the best jobs in the world of sheds could be yours. The Board of Trustees of the UK Men's Sheds Association is looking for a new chair to lead the organisation and help set its vision and strategic direction including partnering with other organisations to promote its aimes. More details and how to apply here, but here's a snippet about the state of play:

UKMSA’s mission is to enable access to a Shed for every man who wants it. We have ambitious plans to support this development of hundreds more Sheds over the next 3-5 years. Earlier this year we launched the Charter for Wellbeing in Craft and DIY at the Palace of Westminster and it has been a fantastic platform on which to further partnerships across both the industry and healthcare spaces. This is, in short, an exciting time for UKMSA but also the circumstances of the economy and pandemic have set even greater need on the work we do. We are taking this challenge to heart and embracing the opportunity... As an increasingly influential voice in the arena of men’s health and wellbeing, UKMSA is championing the growth of ‘Shedding’ across the UK and partnering with a range of organisations to promote and support its aims.

Closing date for applications is August 31.

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Elly Griffiths: shedworker

Brighton-based bestselling crime novelist Elly Griffiths - author of the Dr Ruth Galloway Mysteries, the Brighton Mysteries, and the Justice Series - writes from her own garden office. Here's how she describes her writing space in an interview with the i newspaper:

It’s a shed in the garden, just big enough for a desk, chair and bookcase. There is also a painting of the Norfolk coast and a spider plant called Sir Gawain. I used to share the shed with my cat, Gus, but sadly he died a few months ago, aged 18. A neighbour’s cat has taken to miaowing at the door but I’m not sure whether to let him in. It still feels like Gus’s space.

And in an article for Crime Reads she explains how it helped during the first 2020 lockdown:

Every day I walked through the garden to my writing shed and felt very lucky to have a job to do and a fictional world to escape to.

You can hear her talking about her work and, from about the 5:30 mark, what her garden office is like in this podcast interview below with the Cambridge Creative Writing Centre, Inside The Writing Shed.

CambridgeICE · Cambridge Creative Writing Centre - Crime and Thriller

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Slippers and shedworking: Working from home footwear - Part 1

The Shedworking staff are long-term slipper-wearers (pictured above). But just how good are they for your feet? We asked podiatrist and biomechanics expert Christophe Champs, founder of the PODO Clinic and Workshop in London, for his thoughts. So here, in a two-part guest post concluding tomorrow, is what he says...

Anyone who is serious about working from home knows that it is important to assign an appropriate space as a working environment and to source the right kit. Depending on the form your work takes, that equipment may include a decent ring light and a good external camera and mic. But surrounding yourself with good tech isn’t enough. Just because you’re not in a corporate workspace you’re not absolved from putting some thought into health and safety issues, and this may see you investing in a sit and stand desk, an ergonomic chair, or even blue light glasses. If you’ve got all of that covered, well done. But take a look down – at your feet. Are those slippers you’re wearing?

 

Slippers are convenient, feet go in and out within seconds. But this doesn’t make them the healthiest form of footwear. Their shape is not supportive and the materials they are made of are not reinforced.

 

Ideally anything you have on your feet for a long period should offer proper support and protection.

 

Providing your feet, which make up one quarter of your skeleton, with minimal support can negatively affect your aging body (however young you are).

 

Slippers can also contribute to falls. And as older and more vulnerable people are the number one users of slippers and the most at risk of a fall, it is not a great combination.

 

The more support your shoes can give you the less unbalanced and unstable you will be, and therefore the less likely you are to slip, trip or fall. And this applies to any age group.  So, choose a pair of comfy shoes for indoor wearing that offer support and then use them as you would a comfy pair of slippers.

 

Slippers are the chocolate of footwear: lovely, but not good for you if you have it all day, every day. 

Lockdown lessons

The lockdowns have shown us how dangerous slippers can be for our health.

 

In my experience, the number of people suffering joint pain has increased since the first lockdown, and this is as a direct result of people wearing unsupportive slippers at home for long periods while working.

 

When travelling to the office and working with other people, most of us wear shoes, not slippers and this helps to support and cushion our feet. But take this away and swap it for spending the entire day barefoot or with slippers on a hard floor and it is no surprise that joint and foot pain has increased.

 

Another change is the reduction in walking when working from home. When we walk (and I mean walk, not just take a few steps) we swing our arms, and this helps to take some of the load off the feet. Walking puts around 80% off the load on your feet, whereas stepping in an enclosed space with no arm swing applies 120% of your body weight on your feet. In turn this can result in increased joint and muscle pain.

 

Watch out for curly toes

With every step you take in slippers, your toes are forced to grasp the slipper to lift it off the ground and carry it until your next step. This is because your heel is not grabbed by the footwear. When the heal is secured within the shoe it helps to lift the entire shoe and carry it forward even as you bend your foot.

 

Your forefoot is beautifully designed to change direction and adapt to uneven surfaces, but this clever skill should never be overloaded or overused in the way it is with a slip-on slipper.

 

Those who spend a lot of their time on their toes or using their toes to grasp as they walk, often develop toe deformities such as hammer toe and bunions. Plus, the skin under the ball of your foot, as an auto-defence, tends to build up and become hard to cope with the extra pressures applied on the area.

Part 2 of this guest post will appear on Shedworking tomorrow.

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EB White's writing hut in Rooms of Their Own

There are, unsurprisingly, plenty of writing huts and sheds in my new book Rooms of Their Own and I'll be posting a few of them, all illustrated by the talented James Oses, over the coming weeks. We're starting off with writer E.B. White's, and here is an exclusive extract from the book below

Rather than fill his writing hut with momentoes of trips or family members, American writer EB White (1899 – 1985), famous for Charlotte’s Web and his Stuart Little stories, kept his starkly spartan. 

It was not purpose-built as a writing studio, but was originally a boathouse. White remarked that it sheltered him better than his actual home, a late 18th century farmhouse, and said that inside his shed he was a “wilder and healthier man”. He wrote that he shared it with a mouse and a squirrel, and for a while foxes burrowed underneath it to make their own den. 

The wooden shack at his coastal home in Allen Cove, Maine, New England, had a lovely view out to sea but was not fitted out in luxury. White had a chair, bench, desk (which he built himself), blue metal ashtray, a barrel as a waste basket, a cupboard upcycled from a croquet set box, and his black Underwood typewriter which his caretaker would drive down to the shed in the morning and bring back in the evening. “Tight and plainly finished,” was White’s description of it. It was here that he wrote the first draft of Charlotte’s Web, the farm on the property providing stimulation for the story while the initial impetus came directly from watching a spider spin an egg sac on the ceiling of his writing shed. 

The idea of working in a small detached space had an extra appeal for White. He loved the writings of the writer and naturalist Henry David Thoreau, especially Walden, his account of carving out a simple life in nature in his homemade cabin by a lake in Massachusetts. By happy chance, Thoreau’s cabin was almost the same size as White’s boathouse, 10ft by 15ft. Writing inside must have been an additional inspiration for White as well as a pleasure.

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