Women holding desks of their own

My feminist icons

Dear Friend, 

I hope you’ve had a good week. 

If this is your first Pen Friend letter, welcome! I am delighted to be writing to you. 

As I write, I am at my desk. This may seem unsurprising as a piece of scene-setting, but it’s actually the first time in a long time I’ve been able to say that.

I bought this desk when I was 16 from an antiques shop in Kingston-upon-Thames in the suburbs of London. The shop is called ‘Antiques of Kingston’, and a cursory Google has just revealed to me is still in operation. It’s a magical Ali Baba’s cave type of place, whose aisles and shelves when I was a teenager could enthrall me for hours. I imagined the times gone-by that the pieces evoked,  and pictured the future unfurling years of excitement I might spend in the company of such objects. 

It’s a simple wooden desk with one small drawer about big enough to store postcards or stray pens in, but it’s striking because of the jutty outward angles of its legs and its colour – a pastel mint green, which was clearly painted on some years into the desk’s existence. When I bought the desk, I had just finished school and had spent a week of my summer holiday repainting my bedroom, ready for my sophisticated new life as an A-Level student. My mother and I carried it out the shop and angled it into the car then set it up in my new-look room. 

The old gal herself

I’ve acquired other pieces of furniture over the years, but this desk is the one that’s stayed with me almost everywhere. It came to different flats in London, then back to my mother’s house. Six years ago, after searching for a new desk in Parisian Ikea, I suddenly had the idea that maybe I could bring my old green faithful to me. I found a man with a lorry who came from England to France once a week who would deliver my desk door-to-door for 100 pounds – a few days later me and my Kingston-antiques desk were reunited! 

But when I moved flat 18 months ago, I put the desk into our allotted cave (cellar) and have been meaning to bring it up and find a space for it ever since. I put it off until one day (two days ago) I realised that, although I write more now than I probably ever have, this had been the first period in my whole literate life that I didn’t have a desk of my own (what would Virginia Woolf say?). 

Last week I wrote about a book called Women Holding Things by writer-illustrator Maria Kalman, which the author describes as “a love song to women, and at times everyone”. Inside, through beautiful paintings, women are depicted holding things both physical and metaphorical. (>> You may think, ‘why is Hannah telling me about this now when I have just become invested in the desk?’ But don’t worry, we will get back to the desk and everything will make sense). Here are some examples: 

Image: Maira Kalman

Image: Maira Kalman

Ever since I read this book last week, I keep seeing women holding things. In Paris, most people do their groceries on foot and often bring them home in bulging, unwieldy tote bags or shopping caddies on wheels. Sometimes, though, you see two women carrying home shopping together, holding one handle each of a sturdy long-life bag. Earlier today as I picked up some food on the way back from gym class, I found MYSELF holding a large, cheerful cauliflower under my arm like a benevolent severed head. 

Yesterday, after I decided I was going to reinstate my desk into my life, I realised the process would go smoother with some women holding things. I had plans to have lunch with my friends Fiona and Anna, as well as Fiona’s nine-month-old daughter and my four-year-old dog, Babs. Just before lunch I texted Anna to ask if she would mind carrying up my desk from the cave with me and she kindly agreed.

Once we had had our bagels at Bob’s Bake Shop, Fiona, Anna, the baby, the dog and I walked back to my apartment. We left Fiona in the flat with the baby and the dog (it’s like that riddle with the farmer, the fox, the grain and the chicken, but more supportive), while Anna and I went down the four flights to the cellar and extricated the poor dampy, dusty green desk. I produced cleaning sprays which I had transported in a bum-bag and we set about returning the desk to its former dignity. Then we carried it back up the four flights, where Fiona, the baby and the dog were serenely reading. Anna and I put the desk in place. It was done. 

Wallace Fountain (women holding things), by Hannah Meltzer

Anna is an introvert and at some point in any meeting invariably reaches her capacity and extricates herself in a way that is as swift as it is graceful. The remaining four gals (Fiona, me, the baby and Babs the dog) set about sorting the books that had been jettisoned to make room for the desk. The result was most pleasing. 

A few weeks ago I sat down for an interview with Lou Binns for the

The FBC Paris

(Feminist Book Club) podcast, which has been released this week. I hope you will listen. We had such an interesting chat about French politics and political characteristics (protesting), our shared experience of being Brits in Paris, my mum’s guinea pig collection, and more. The FBC is, as the name suggests, quite concerned with issues pertaining to feminism, and as part of the interview, Lou asked me about my feminist icons. I mainly spoke about the women I know who hold (and carry) things including, but not limited to: each other’s shopping, each other’s furniture and each other’s wellbeing, hopes and dreams.

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Thirty-second book club

As well as Maira Kalman, I am also reading The Sellout by Paul Beatty, described in its blurb as, “a biting satire about a young man's isolated upbringing and the race trial that sends him to the Supreme Court”. The book was the first ever novel by an American author to win the Booker Prize in 2016. So far, it’s been a tragi-comic high-speed ride of almost overwhelmingly rich prose. I look forward to the rest. 

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One friend recently told me that she uses Pen Friend as her main source of French news. I hope this person is not currently very confused given that the last couple of editions have been about: Sweden, news from four years ago, Renaissance theorbos, a ten-minute video of me, and a table.

I will surely be writing about all things French current affairs before too long. However, we do speak quite extensively about French politics in the FBC podcast, so please do have a listen for your Macron fix!

I will be away in Guernsey (of all places!) this weekend, so I won’t write on Sunday, but you will hear from me very soon (not in an ominous way). 

Thank you very much for reading and have a lovely week.

Yours,

Hannah