Re-arranging my work-room took longer than I thought. It's also the spare bedroom and I somehow thought I could swing a six-foot-six bed through 90 degrees to fit a seven foot space. The bed used to fit where the desk is now, lengthways in a long narrow room. I'd moved out the bookscases and contents from the opposite wall. I couldn't turn the bed, of course, and had to dismantle and re-assemble. What you can't see on this picture is another bed, a sort of metal shelf on wheels, with another mattress, that slides underneath. That had to be removed and upended, too. No wonder I couldn't move my right arm above elbow level for about four days! After looking on the Internet I became convinced I had something called 'frozen shoulder' , which is really nasty and can take a year to recover from, but it was just a muscle strain.

I was delighted to find that removing a top shelf and balancing it between the filing cabinet and a chest of drawers made a surface of just the right height for writing. I was steeling myself for a trip to Ikea to buy a desk. The radio/disk player is for the music - usually Mozart -that I put on and then hardly notice except to realise it has come to an end. Anything dramatic or any music with words is too distracting, as is silence.

It's surprising the difference it makes in the sense of space, without having increased the available floor area. A long thin space definitely felt cramped, whereas a square space feels twice the size.

It makes me smile, too, to remember that when I used to play golf, at which I was never much good, I always felt my game would go better after a purchase at the 'pro' shop, even if it were only a new set of tees. That's how I feel about the new room arrangement - my writing is bound to improve in the new environment.

New Year Resolution Number 1 : Find a publisher for my book about my year in China, called 'Sikworms and Snow'.