The vital feature of the living room is the fireplace, which is enormous and I suppose must once have been used for cooking. Now and then I use it that way, too, in the long winter evenings when there is nothing but time, and in front of it, a few feet from the flames, is a good place to set bread to rise. I have never yet run out of wood, nor had to buy any. Every day except in winter I chop wood, sometimes taking down dead and dying trees, sometimes stripping the limbs and bundling twigs for kindling, other times cutting the trunks into smaller pieces, so that there is always ample by the time the fireplace is needed. It is built into a wall, and the furniture is arranged around it so that it is the focus of the room.

It isn’t for warmth that I take so much concern for it. The cabin is kept comfortable by electric heaters in each room, and often in the winter I find myself turning off one or two of them because it is too warm. I think just that it is a great pleasure to sit in front of a fire, and even the labour is, now, part of the pleasure.

The bedroom, which is next to the living room, is also full of second-hand furniture, wooden, and it, too, would probably look elegant and fine if I sanded it down and refinished it. But I have never gotten around to that, and I don’t expect I will, now.

It has been painted white, not by me. There is a huge old dresser with a place, a kind of broken-off stand, for a missing oval mirror at the back. The mirror was not with it when I bought it.

The bed is a double one, with a plain headboard, and I have set it up by the window so that in the mornings and at night I can lie in it and look out to see the dawn and the wakening birds, or the stars. I painted the walls blue, but not an ordinary blue, a kind of sea blue-green, and the curtains are also a blue shade with a pattern of deep green flowers.

They are lopsided. I cut the material carelessly, hemmed it badly, and this is the result. But still there is a feeling of resting peacefully on the sea, looking into this fragile colour of my bedroom.

The bathroom is only a bathroom. I have done nothing with it, apart from putting up a new towel rack and shower curtains that are an unattractive pink but were the cheapest I could find. The tub, toilet and sink are all white, shining more or less, and the room has faded bluish linoleum on the floor and tired, dirty-pink walls. I pay no attention to it.