For as long as I can remember I have sat at a desk – whether in prep school, undergraduate studies, law school, law office and into retirement. The nature of the desks has evolved simultaneously – from unimpressive synthetics to weathered pine to mahogany hardwood laterally adorned with brass handles and corners. Commensurately the history of desk lamps has also gradually changed – from goosenecks to candlestick lamps to Grecian urns. My drawing room leisure has always been focused on the desk which constitutes my current perspective to the world.

It is one of my few regrets about wintering in the United States of America that every place we rented there was void of a proper desk at which to conduct my daily routines.  If there were a desk, invariably it was reminiscent of my school desks; that is, small, strictly functional and often poorly lit. Regularly the small featureless desk was stuck in a corner. As a result I frequently opted instead to position myself at a large dining table from which as often I could look out the drawing room windows onto the adjoining property and the sea.

When I arrived in Almonte as a young lawyer aged 27 years, not having a penny in my pocket, i bought a used desk to complete my study.  It was enormous and weighed a ton, of dark wooden construction, bruised and poorly painted, probably having been a government or institutional desk to house a typewriter (with retractable shelf). While the desktop was spacious and allowed for the accumulation of limitless irrelevancy, it suffered the equally persuasive lack of artistry. It reeked practicality above all else.

The transition from youth and employment to old age and declension has at least had the enviable advantage of refining the contents of my drawing room. I now surround myself with only what to my estimate are attractive and meaningful. I have jettisoned the dregs of my erstwhile temporal explorations. Unwittingly I have been overtaken by gallery-style portrait hanging which – more than style – is an admission of limited space. And wherever there is room, I’ll hang anything from the half of a hull to a bespoke canoe paddle or even an original Ramsay Township indenture dated 1828 (“in the Ninth year of His Majesty’s Reign“).

Naturally a laptop computer has replaced the former blank paper ledgers and typewriter. If I wish to withdraw from my desk to a more comfortable lounge chair, I carry with me either my iPhone or iPad from which I can continue precisely what I was doing on the computer. At the same time I am able to preserve the historic monuments of my existence, those trifling indicia of my past (including often the memory of the people and events which distinguished the acquisitions). Unquestionably there is a story behind every item within the drawing room – because the accumulation was always aligned with a direct and meaningful feature.

I cultivate the ambience in the drawing room with sound – once again derived from modern technology, a combination of Bluetooth connection, miniature speakers (Harman Kardon, Bose or Sony), earplugs and headphones. To assuage my indolence I wind the carriage clock.