A ROOM...

I think I'm turning into a senior citizen, as all I like doing is visiting gardens, taking pictures of flowers, then going for a cream tea. We went to Monk's House, the country getaway of Virginia and Leonard Woolf in East Sussex, on a typically rainy May bank holiday weekend. As we arrived in the tiny village of Rodmell, the skies cleared and a Manx cat bounded up to greet us.

Because it was so wet, there were hardly any other visitors to the house and garden. I had a good poke around the garden - so many sections, with roses tumbling and spilling around the house, lupins and tons of flowers in bloom near to it, a rectangular pond with a bench, then an orchard, a lawn for playing bowls overlooking the fields, the writing hut, a large vegetable garden next to the church. I love when gardens are sectioned like that, which takes real imagination and vision. Anyway I'll stop being a granny for a minute, going on about gardens. Still got some life in me yet.

What really, really got me at Monk's House was Virginia's bedroom. Separated from the rest of the house with its own external door onto the garden it was the most tranquil, calming space I could ever think of. Pink climbing roses covered the wall outside and most of the windows, the inside of the room had that perfectly calming arrangement, where someone with a strong eye has books and possessions and things that don't 'match' but everything is harmonious, everything flows. The importance of a room of one's own - had to say it. The privacy, the refuge. There was a man whose job it was to sit in there, probably to stop people having a nap on Virginia's bed, which was hard not to do. The photos below are of the exterior and interior of VW's bedroom.