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that using Blu-Tack on the walls is punishable by death. Still, I wanted a garret, and I got a garret. Better get on with it, I suppose.
    The first thing I do is set up the stereo, and put on Never for Ever, Kate Bush's triumphant third album. The rest of the records are stacked next to the turntable, and there's a bit of an internal debate as to which album should go face-out into the room; I experiment with The Beatles' Revolver, Joni Mitchell's Blue, Diana Ross and the Supremes, and Ella Fitzgerald before settling on my brand-new recording of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos on the Music For Pleasure label, a snip at Ł2.49.
    Next I unpack my books, and experiment with different ways of arranging them on the Formica shelves; alphabetically by author, alphabetically by author but sub-divided by subject; genre; nationality; size; and finally, and most effectively, by colour - black Penguin classics at one end, fading through to white Picadors at the other, with two inches of green Viragos, which I haven't got round to reading yet but definitely will, in the middle of the spectrum. This takes some time, obviously, and by the time I've finished it's dark, so I set up the anglepoise on the desk.
    Next I decide to turn my bed into a futon. I've been wanting to do this for some time actually, but Mum just laughed at me when I tried it at home, so I'm going to give it a go here. I manhandle the mattress, mysteriously stained and damp enough to grow cress, on to the floor without letting it come into contact with my face, then with some difficulty I up-end the metal bed frame. It weighs a ton, but I eventually get it stowed safely away behind the wardrobe. Obviously this means I lose a couple of feet of valuable floor space, but the finished effect is worth it - a kind of minimal, contemplative, oriental atmosphere that's only marginally undermined by the bold navy, red and white stripes on the British Home Stores duvet cover.
    In keeping with the Zen-like minimalism of the futon, I want to limit decoration to a montage of postcards of favourite paintings and photographs, a kind of pictorial manifesto of heroes and the things I love, on the wall above my pillow. I lie on my futon, and get out the Blu-Tack; Henry Wallis's The Death of Chatterton, Millais' Ophelia Drowning, Da Vinci's Madonna and Child, Van Gogh's Starry, Starry Night, an Edward Hoppei; Marilyn Monroe in a tutu looking mournfully into the camera; James Dean in a long overcoat in New York; Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man; Woody Allen; a photograph of Mum and Dad asleep in deckchairs at Butlins, Charles Dickens, Karl Marx, Che Guevara, Laurence Olivier as Hamlet, Samuel Beckett, Anton Chekhov, me as Jesus in the sixth-form production of Godspell, Jack Kerouac, Burton and Taylor in Who's Afraid of Virginia Wool ft and a photograph of Spencer, Tone and me on a school trip to Dover Castle. Spencer is posing slightly, head tilted down and to the side, looking cool and bored and clever. Tone, as usual, is flicking the 'Vs.
    Finally, just by my pillow, I put up a picture of Dad, looking whippet-thin and vaguely menacing, like Pinky in Brighton Rock, but on Southend sea front, with a bottle of beer and a cigarette smouldering in the long fingers of one hand. He's got a black quiff, high, sharp cheek-bones, a long thin nose, and a sharp, slim-collared three-button suit, and though he's half-smiling at the camera, he still looks pretty intimidating. It was taken around 1962, four years before I was born, so he must have been the same age as I am now. I love this photograph, but I still have a nagging feeling that if my nineteen-year-old dad had met the nineteen-year-old me on Southend pier on a Saturday night, there's a pretty good chance he'd have tried to beat me up.
    There's a knock on the door, and instinctively I hide the Blu-Tack behind my back. I assume it's Josh, asking me to fag for him or something, but instead in walks a huge blonde woman with Viking hair and a milky