As I was changing the sheets on my bed it struck me what a very intimate portrait can be painted by the things kept on a bedside table. Anyone with eyes to see could learn a lot about a person from what is kept there. The bedroom is generally a fairly private area and we tend not to hide away the very personal little items in the same way as we might, perhaps, in more public rooms. Not that any room in my home hides me very well… even a cursory glance across the overstuffed bookshelves would sum me up in a trice. That is without Ani’s toys around the room, the paints on the table or the stacks of paperwork strewn across the desk.

Where was I? Oh yes. Each item on the little table holds a story, a small glimpse into a fragment of a life. Let me tell you about them.

The table itself is an old one, recycled and painted. Nothing special. The room looks bright and tidy, but on closer inspection you will see, if you look, that most of what is there has seen better days and been revamped or adapted, given a coat of paint and changed from old to ‘new’.  That tells a whole epic on its own. There are a couple of pictures, a favourite painting unsold and the one of the Clairon in Paris. There are mirrors on the walls, cheap but effective, giving a modern twist and throwing light around the room. The window is a strange shape and almost impossible to curtain decently, so it remains draped in white voile that lets in the light of sun and moon.

There is, beside the bed, the almost obligatory lamp. Purple, of course, to match the walls. Don’t start me on the colour… it flows through most of the house in varying shades… it is amazing how many you can make with a big tub of white paint and a few tubes of acrylic when needs must. Thankfully, I quite like it.  So the lampshade is purple.

The reason for the lamp lies in the small pile of books, duly bookmarked, that sit on the edge of the table. We won’t mention the larger stack on the floor…Ouspensky and  Bennett , for the School of course, and Browning. Not exactly light reading, and to be fair, Browning has to go… Keats, perhaps? Or maybe Spike Milligan…Hmmm….

Light reading is on the Kindle, currently opened to van Gogh’s Letters. It could equally have been displaying a work on the Ennead, Terry Pratchett, Dion Fortune or a treatise on recovering from brain injury. As I said, a glance at my books is revealing.

The wire for the mobile phone charger is trailed across the surface… yes, I take it to bed, just in case. One son rides a motorbike, the other is recovering from brain injury. I’m a Mum.

There is a music box. A nice little thing. A bit of Italian marquetry that plays Torna a Surriento. My mother brought it back from Italy for me many years ago. An innocent bit of prettiness on the surface, but you wouldn’t believe how many closet skeletons that little box represents.  Those are stories I have shared elsewhere or upon which I hold silence. It sits there to remind me that I want to see the Bay of Naples one day. And that I am a lot stronger than I ever used to believe.

There is a photograph, a captured moment of laughter, frozen in the frame. I cannot help but smile back at it, and so every night as I switch off the light and each morning when I open my eyes, my day is bracketed with smiles and love. No matter if I haven’t slept well or if the day has been a pig. It never fails. There is an irresistible joy in that picture.

Finally there is a tiny box of trinkets that deserve a story all of their own. Two pairs of earrings, one from a dear friend in the strangest of circumstances that carry the Eye of Horus. The other pair in possibly even stranger ones! A couple of rings. A miniature sword. A pendant. Each tells a story… of love, friendship, care or loss. Much of human emotion is represented in that tiny collection. They are there because they are dear to me. Not as objects, but because of their stories.

And that is what came to me, really, as I tidied the room. That tiny patch of space, perhaps fifteen inches square, held so much of my life on display. The stories may not be obvious to the casual observer, but they are there. Even the quickest glance could read a fair bit about me from that table, just from the surface without knowing what lies behind them or the associations they may hold.

Of course, that is true of so many things, isn’t it? We skim over surfaces every day, picking up snippets of information yet seldom stop to look deeper and see the stories being played out beneath. Sometimes it is ‘easier’ to ignore the pain in the eyes when the mouth smiles and says ‘Good morning’. Sometimes our own tales are being played out and occupy our attention so much we cannot see beyond them. Yet there are clues and it takes little to see the human stories that lie hidden in plain sight.

From the archives – 2013