Where I Write by Juliet Greenwood

The place where I write is my crog loft.

If you don’t happen to live in a traditional quarryman’s cottage halfway up a Welsh mountain, I should explain that a crog loft is a tiny room tucked under the eves where the children would have been packed off to sleep. Fortunately mine has been extended at some point, plus I’m short, so I can just about stand up in it, and there’s a window looking over my garden with some pretty glorious sunsets over Anglesey.

Originally you’d have clambered up a ladder. I’ve now got stairs, but they are very steep and not for the faint hearted. As the rest of the cottage is all on the ground floor, it means that my little crog loft is a world into itself. I have my computer, shelves of files and a few books, and pictures and bits of research and information pinned onto the wooden cladding (necessary insulation!) of the walls. I love it. It means I can leave my work behind up there when I go back down into the living part of the house. There’s usually a cat sitting on my lap, and Phoebe the dog has her bed in one corner (when not commandeered by the cat, that is), and I work each morning to her gentle post-dog-walk snores.

The windowsill is very wide (a legacy of thick stone walls) so Phoebe also can sit there and supervise proceedings, with half an eye on the sheep in the fields around us and any goings-on in the garden next door. Plus she can watch for any visitors coming up my path and rush down to greet them through the cat flap.  

Juliet's garden

I love my little crog loft. It’s where my imagination is free to roam, and when I leave I can leave it just as it is, so my characters are there, waiting for me when I return. My thinking time is when I’m in my garden, or dog walking, but I always return to my crog loft to focus the mind and get on with the real business of the day. It is, without doubt, a room of my own.