Floor life.

Sleeping on the floor – in fact living on the floor – is a revelation.

I’m intrigued by the extent to which manufactured objects have slowly but surely taken over our lives, so that people talk about ‘going to bed’ not ‘going to sleep’. I mean, I know they still say ‘going to sleep’ – but bed is where you have to do it.

I’m interested in creating a portable life. I’ve got my personal belongings down to what will fit in a medium-sized suitcase now, and have turned my attention to what my requirements would be of any place I took that suitcase. What else would I need? How small could I live? How little could I ask of a place, to settle there and call it home?

I’d need an electric supply, but one socket would do the trick. Somewhere to charge my lap-top and kindle and phone – oh, by the way, I didn’t keep that iPhone. I was beginning to feel swamped by electronics, gradually absorbed and digested by a world of wires. Tangled up. And more accessible than I wanted to be. Email provides all I need, in terms of accessibility. It lets you stay a little higher up the mountain. 

Lights? In the winter you need lights. I have an LED string of tiny fairy lights that give me all the ambient light I need. They just wind up round the battery when it's time to move on - the whole thing no bigger than a pack of playing cards. I keep a rubber band round it, to hook it up to a nail in the wall, and string out the lights from there.

I’d want a source of water – a standpipe would do fine, or a sink and tap would be handy. A bathroom would be nice. Some sort of sanitary arrangements an obvious necessity.

I’d need big windows, ones that open, because I have to be able to see the sky and breathe the fresh air.

And I can’t imagine life without a living fire; so, a fireplace.

I think, now, that’s all I’d need. I have my suitcase of clothes and bits & bobs. I have a sleeping bag, blanket and cushion. I have a tiny wood-gas stove that packs away into a little saucepan and can run on twigs or wood-pellets or torn up packaging or whatever’s to hand – or accommodate a tin of chafing fuel, which has the handy advantage of not leaving a layer of soot on the pan. And I have my little kettle and a hot water bottle and a thermos flask.

That’s all I’d need. I’d pop into Marks and Spencer and buy a ready-made salad – which would furnish me with a permanent bowl until it was time to move on. I have a knife and fork and spoon tucked away in my suitcase.

Et voilà!  Instant life.

No removal van needed. I think I’d need a car, to get to that place. A suitcase, sleeping bag, blanket, cushion and small bag containing kettle and saucepan do all amount to a surprising lot to wrestle on and off a bus.

And the place? A shepherd’s hut in a field by a wood, maybe. A one-roomed apartment with a bathroom would be fine – provided I was allowed an open fire. Flats can be difficult about fires.

I would like my life to be even more portable. Think of Peace Pilgrim! Astonishing! How did she do that? I can’t manage it. I’ve wriggled my way down, shedding more and more, and this is as low as I can get. At the moment anyway. I like the idea of being able to get my life into a rucksack, with a sleeping bag that just rolls up and straps onto the bottom of it – but those sort of sleeping bags aren’t very warm, are they? I mean, why bother? Why not just put thick clothes on to go to sleep? My sleeping bag is capacious and cosy, and consequently rather large when I roll it up.

It took me a while to get used to the idea of sleeping on the floor. First I got one of those breathing camping mats – I mean the kind that suck in their own air. That’s very comfy. It’s handy if you are actually camping because the ground is so cold and the mat provides insulation. But I discovered you don’t need it in a house. Or in a shed. I thought the wooden floor in Komorebi would be uncomfortable to sleep on. But it’s the idea, really, that has to be overcome. Once you manage to struggle free of the clinging concept that you absolutely need a bed and can’t possibly be comfortable without one or get a good night’s sleep – well, it turns out just to be not true. If you lie down on the floor with no concepts and no self-pity, you sleep perfectly well. It sorts out a lot of ailments, too.

What I find really, really exciting about floor living is the

S P A C E ! ! !

Furniture is so cumbersome and claustrophobic.

My beautiful mama wants to have her carpet cleaned. When the men come in to do that, they will expect the rooms to be cleared – at least one room. And how’s she going to do that? Every room in her apartment is stuffed to the gunwhales with sofas and armchairs and bureaux and tables and coffee tables and little stools and chests of drawers and trunks and occasional chairs and hat-boxes and ornaments and pot plants and baskets and stools and aaaaaagh! Aaaaaagh!!!

Floor. Person. And a sleeping bag handily rolls up into something you can sit on or lean on in the day, if – like me – you are not so much of a sitting up straight sort of person and more kind of floppy.

Oh, the uncarved block of infinite possibility, the childish delight of sleeping anyway round or in any part of the room, in any room of the house – hahahaha! It’s such fun!

Last winter, sad, I turned back to look at the dying embers on the hearth when it was time to ‘go to bed’, and wished I could sleep by the fireside. This winter, I will.