The Importance of Nooks

November arrived yesterday, my second favourite month of the year. I tidied away the offerings left out for Samhain, dusted the shelves and tables and readjusted my reading nook for the oncoming of the dark.

We all have favourite places to read, don't we? In a previous house, in a previous life, my favourite reading spot was in a big blue armchair. It had a comfortingly deep seat that cradled me as I read, a handy blanket on the back for when my feet got chilly and was near enough to the radiator to keep it warm. There was a table next to it for my mugs of tea, phone and pile of books. Dog used to rest next to it, his head on my feet and the arms were wide enough to take a sprawled cat or two. A turn of my head and I could see outside to where the starlings gathered and shouted in the tree.

I've had favourite reading spots in all my houses. When I was very small and the airing cupboard was just outside my room, I'd climb up into it with book, blanket and torch, closing the sliding door behind me so my sister didn't know where I was and hide away with nothing but oceans of words and a pile of clean laundry to drift away on. Wind in the Willows, the Worst Witch, Wolves of Willoughby Chase and One Hundred and One Dalmatians are forever linked with the smell of Lenor fabric cleaner and the distant sound of my little sister saying "I can't find her!"

 At my grandparents, it was in the little blue and white bedroom, it’s window facing the farm my sister and I would spend hours playing in, feeding the animals, playing in the hay barn, patting the great bullock leaning mournfully against his fence as it creaked under his weight and the ring in his nose glinted. In that room, with its white painted furniture and blue-flower sprigged sheets, I could read for hours under the guise of ‘doing my homework.’

 In the last of the parental homes I actually lived in, it was nestled in the corner of my bedroom where the radiator was. Piled with pillows and in a suntrap, it was warm and comfortable. The family dog kept me company, his whimpering dreaming occasionally farting self the only noise beyond the turning of pages. It's here I read Wuthering Heights, Animal Farm, Jane Eyre, and my first ever Jackie Collins, emerging hours later with popping eyes, blown mind and a desire to wander about wind-battered moors.

Bed has always been a good place to read. Under the covers with a torch when young, sat up against the pillows with tea when older. Lying down to read now runs the risk of falling asleep and then clouting myself one with a falling tome. Baths too. There is nothing finer than a long hot bath with a damn good book and a glass of wine, the bubbles creaking as you settle against them. Cross-legged on the sofa, or in the open boot of the car during days out. Stood in the kitchen, absent-mindedly stirring pots of dinner with one hand, or perched on the chair in my bedroom, pile of washing temporarily forgotten by my feet as I just have to finish this chapter.

And nooks don't have to be permanent. Or even indoors. I have created them in hotels, in rented cottages, in gardens I'll only know for a week. Once, on a beach in Wales, fifteen months after my father had died and I'd tried to outrun grief. It didn't work, of course, but, nestled with my back against a sun-warm rock, the sound of the sea hushing me like a baby, I could read for the first time in those fifteen months.

 In Bruges, it was the chair by the fire, my feet up against the cold of the flagstone floor, one eye on the door that creaked and shifted for no reason and no draught.

 At home, in the early days of summer, I have a chair hammock that I sit in to read where I am shaded by the jasmine, lulled by the sound of bees, the water trickling in the pond, a glass of something chilled on the cast-iron table next to me. Yesterday, I reset the tub chair in the living room; tucked inside the right angle created by two bookshelves, it has a footstool, a blanket and a table for snacks. Then I settled down to start my annual reread of Dracula. This is my winter spot.

Tomorrow, I'm off to the Forest of Dean to spend a few days in my son's company, exploring caves, graves and old stones. I will undoubtedly create a new, temporary nook where we are staying. Somewhere to read and daydream and listen to the calling of the birds.