[Jacquin]

A nice easy one. At least to start with

Describe the room you are in.

No more than 400 words, no less than 300. Paint us a picture with prose, draw us into your world and make us feel we are with you seeing what you are seeing and experiencing what you are experiencing.

I'll do mine when I am not so tired I think I might die...

[Jacquin]

338 words

I’m sat in a comfortable leather office chair, the desk in front of me is the least cluttered of the three in the room but it is far from clear. There are two trays to my right that are both full, the phone flex and the cable for the mouse lie tangled together and the black surround of the flat screen monitor directly ahead of me shows the dust. Next to the CPU is a precariously balanced pile of A4 paper. All work to be done.

The room is long and thin with windows down three sides. I am told it used to be an artist’s studio. Light coloured furniture lines the walls in between and underneath the windows and an old whiteboard sits on the walls announcing this month's sales to anyone who cares to look.

The bare wooden floorboards are past their best and under my desk is a hole just big enough for one of the wheels of my chair to fit in. I can feel the air whistling around my feet, it reminds me of my grandma complaining about drafts. It makes me feel old.

Two pairs of fluorescent tubes give the whole room an almost clinical brightness highlighting the cobwebs on the windows and the large stain that reminds me of the time the roof leaked.

My colleague sits in front of me, her desk faces the same way as mine so her back is to me. Her computer is newer, but her piles of clutter are older. As I turn behind me I see the bosses desk, it is made of dark wood with a green embossed leather top. Though it is barely visible under the scattered paper, dismantled electrical equipment and photographs that he accumulates wherever he goes.

Writing this makes me see how I have let the place deteriorate and I am tempted to do some cleaning, but the pile of work waiting to be done is more important. I’ll get onto that as soon as I am finished here.

[Aneurin de Batz]

I can fill in the details of mind in two words; a tip.

A more detailed version of this may be in order, however. Weighs in at 398 words.

I'm sat in a cheap computer chair - although it is twirly. The room is... small. Although that’s generous, despite it’s being bigger than my room back home. If I stretch out here, I’m half a foot too short to reach the far wall, although lengthwise, it’s about three times longer. The bed’s a mess, having not been properly made and subsequently rearranged to make a comfortable seat to read on. It’s also covered in books, and a box of shortbread. At my elbow there’s a couple of CDs resting on a book close to a packet of bobbles. Oh, and a wireless mouse it seems. And an empty bottle of lemonade. Strange, don’t remember that... Anyway, there’s a copy of the university newspaper there too, under a notepad. Further around (the desk curves until only a narrow strip is near the head of my bed) there’s a huge pile of books, and some post – also on a book. The there’re my glasses and my alarm clock.

On my other side, there’s a pile of maps, and an even bigger stack of books, as well as a small heap of loose change. There’s also a torch, lab coat and dissection kit – which I’ll probably be using tomorrow. In addition to all of that there’re some receipts and toffee wrappers, and a few empty water bottles, a lens cover for my camera and some referency-material-leaflet-things also grace my desk. My shelves are... yes, you guessed it... also covered in books! Although half of one of the two shelves is covered in a multitude of CDs with a long DVD hugging the end protectively. Must get some more to remedy that. And really must move the box of cereal off the shelf. I always mean to, and never do. After I finish this I shall continue to forget it.

On top of the CDs is a fluffy toy rabbit that I picked up in France I like the eyes of. They catch the light beautifully, despite only being cheap plastic. In front of that lot is the beginnings of my zoological collection – in other words a selection of crab shells and a fox tooth. It will become more impressive, I promise.

The rest of the room’s just generally messy – couple of rucksacks on the floor, and my walking boots and trainers. Nice view of the mountains from my window, though.

[Hoodwink]

386 words

We are on the first floor, and the elevator is for wimps. I'm only thirty-seven but my knees click loudly on each step. I sound like a corporate grasshopper. Twenty-four steps including the mid-stair landing, carpetted in baby-**** brown, the walls are battelship grey. You can't call it decoration - that would suggest adornment, a disguising of bland. Instead it's like an appetiser of the banality to follow. Up the twenty-four steps, click click click, punch in the door code, and through.

It's an English November Monday. The receptionist's smile is the closest thing to sunshine I'll see today. The kitchen is throbbing with staff nursing their petty hatreds behind façades of smiles. We rush-hour sharks, blank-eyed and predatory, sharp elbows in place of teeth, floundering against treacle tides. It is not blood we scent, but coffee. We stake claims to crockery, to teabags, perhaps stationary. We contemplate murder if the water-cooler bottle is empty. We contemplate suicide if our inbox is full. The Microsoft Outlook is bleak. Our air-conditioning unit is a metal snake running the length of the office ceilling, painted white. The air-conditioning is a misnomer. The PA to the CEO has turned up the heat because she is cold. The fifty other non-reptilians in the office begin to sweat. A fight will break out, and we will lose, because she is the most important acronym, and the most experienced tyrant.

I have three flat-screen monitors, ostensibly because I am a programmer, but in reality because it annoys people with only one. A spiderman beany-toy hangs next to my desk in a noose made from the draw-string on the blinds. Understand, I love Spiderman. This was a mercy killing. To my left is the window where I can watch the trains being delayed in Paddington Station. Our office sits above the canal and occasionally long-boats chug past but mainly they squat brooding on the oily surface and vomit detritus. In five years, we’ve seen one fish. It was enormous, bright yellow, and dead.

Numerical inconsistencies litter our office. There are more PCs than people. Almost every female employee has more pairs of shoes beneath her desk than a Jimmy Choo’s warehouse. There will either be too much toilet paper, or none at all. The pictures of people’s children on their desks never age.

[WyrvenGuard]

It’s less a room than a cube, but more endearing still is its ability to make me feel at home. I’ve become accustomed the cool grays and soft tans that surround me on three and a half sides. The faux granite desktop that holds a plethora of office related paraphernalia stretches out like a beach on a cold and cloudy September morning. If you stare straight ahead, you’ll see two monitors, each one beaming lifeless ones and zeroes rearranged into words and images.

The view to the right is lonely and vacant; a near-empty “inbox”, with nothing but junk and clutter. Along the cubical walls sheets of paper, tacks of all colors holding them firmly in view. Scan back this way, though, and you’ll begin to see signs of life. A tan steel bookshelf appears above my left shoulder, spinning as I am in my chair to follow its length to the far wall. The computer that powers the monitors sits monolithic, commanding its attention like a general at the head of a war parade. A phone sits beside it, used nearly as much but loved so much less.

Various books and magazine line up along the book shelf; like children before school, shoulder to shoulder, each one waiting to be picked for some mindless task or another. Stacked plastic shelves hold ink-laden paper whose meaning has been long lost, left where it is for too long. Below is a single light, emanating down onto a calendar and office supplies. More paper is tacked to the cube wall here as well, but used and seen far more often. My calculator sits to the right of the calendar, alone. To the right sit the all star team: a stapler, tape, paper clips, and a tray to hold pens and other useful things. My keys and phone look out of place, haphazardly thrown down and disregarded throughout the day.

I can spin endlessly in this cube; my home away from home. Everything I need to do my job, and survive here is within reach of my expectant finger tips. The one thing I feel longing for, is the one thing I have none of. I have no window, no daylight, no outside world.

[Warzoo]

409 words

My bedroom is small, though quite large by Asian standards. Its walls are a bright cream color and are completely bare but for a few specs of mystery dirt hanging in the corners. There are no decorations, for me a room is a place to sleep and nothing more. A double size bed is the most dominant piece of furniture and sits in the corner opposite the door. As is usual, my snug brown blanket is wrapped up in a ball. It sits on top of a silk sheet that covers the mattress, its color is silver. A word to those who care… Silk is strangely slippery when pressed against human skin. I regret its purchase.

Wedged tightly between the wall and the foot of my bed there is a monstrously sized clothes rack. Steel bars run across the length of it, it is extremely sturdy, no doubt about it. However, it is much too large for my room. Sadly only a few shirts hang from it leaving at least thirty clothes hangers to sit without purpose. They are all of a different color and shape and look terribly ugly. It has been a point of minor annoyance for the last eight months since I moved in.

Next to my bed I have a small cherry colored table, it sits perhaps only ten inches off the floor. By design it was meant to serve someone sitting on the floor though it has served me well as a bedside stand, it is my favorite piece of furniture. An empty mug and my cell phone sit on top along with a smattering of change and old receipts. A fine layer of dust covers the table. My book case sits next to it. It would fit well into the repertoire of any walmart or sears store. A few books lay stacked at odd, random angles. I have given away most of my books, just as I will soon give away the shelf itself.

A large drying rack now dominates my available floor space and has served as my new clothes hanger. A broken hamper lay folded flat on the floor nearby, dirty clothes are spread chaotically around it. As soon as my company coughs up the money it owes me I am moving on to greener pastures. I do not care about cleanliness while I live in this limbo. I just want to leave this place. Goodbye room, I won’t miss you.

[Jacquin]

Good work minions! Except of course Warzoo who managed to fail the "between 300 and 400" part of the exercise. It was only by 9 words and I liked it though so I'll stop making a point of talking about it now...

Anyway, where was I?

Ah yes. Part two of Exercise two. Take the piece above yours and copy it into your word processor of choice. Then remove all of the adjectives, adverbs and unnecessary descriptive words (any uncertainty of what to remove then use your judgement, there are no hard and fast rules) the repost it with a fresh wordcount and any comments you may have.

I'll hold fire for a few days and then do the last one posted.

J

[Dazzlinkat]

Here is mine of 324 words.

I push against a wooden curtain and it silently swings aside, opening a way into an ivory lined shell. The ground I step upon as I enter is the color of sand, and just as soft. Across from the wooden curtain there is a hole in the shell that lets light in through its slatted and sideways teeth. Cloths, tied aside so the lit through the teeth can enter, match the ground in color but are far more delicate.

I go to a strange seat that has small stones for feet. Stones that let the seat roll smoothly across the ground. The comfort of the seat welcomes me, and lets me spin to face a thin flat box set upon a wooden table. Beneath the table, upon a shelf, sits a dark tower, all silent.

Beside me is a simple set of shelves also set upon the rolling stones. Papers and boxes, some with tails and some holding papers, rest upon its three shelves. Their jumble a stark contrast to the cleanliness within the rest of the shell.

Beyond the shelves is another wooden table holding another flat box and another dark tower. For now, that one will sleep.

A press of the inviting button on the dark tower beneath the table I have chosen, and it comes to life. A moment passes and then the flat box lights up and things flash upon its surface.

As I wait for things to fully waken, I rest my hands impatiently near a box of little square buttons, all decorated with symbols. Finally, all is awake and I rest my hand upon a plastic stone adorned with buttons and a wheel. I slide the stone across a gentle pad. But my eyes have already forgotten the tropical beach scene upon the pad and are watching the flat box. A click and I launch myself into the world, the sparecity of the shell already forgotten.

[MrJims]

400 words

I sit at my computer desk, an ikea job. It has three levels, on the top is some speakers, my wife’s knitting and a picture of some water in B.C where she and her family threw the ashes of her grandfather. The middle shelf is the monitor, piles of cd’s from photo shop to Dora, and other odds and ends. Bottom shelf is hardware, printer, hard drive and all the cords.

To my right, the gas fire place fills up the corner. The dark brown wooden mantle above holds pictures of me and my wife, the kids sneak into one or two. The see/hear/speak no evil monkeys are there as well as a big swazi candle. It’s a large decorated globe and as it burns the flame descends into the globe illuminating the designs from within. My wife has never, and probably will never, light it.

The space from the fireplace corner on my right, to the toys in the corner behind me on the right, is open, it leads into dining, and I don’t have to describe that. Toy corner has a toy chest and toy shelf with twelve bins that can come out and be strewn across the living room. The toys ebb and flow across the dull blue carpet regularly, instead of being governed by the moon, it’s Major Mom who influences the tide.

To my left is a small table, on top is a case of dvd’s and some books by Dr. Suess and a few others. Underneath the table is a few board games and god knows what else. Beside the table, the couch. A large brown L-shaped model that goes to the corner and then halfway down the next wall. A lamp sits behind the joint of the couch, in the corner of the room, it shade has fallen off sometime ago I should find it and put it back on.

The end of the couch sits under the large bay widow that faces out onto my street. Beside the couch, a large trunk, filled with more dvds, then a bean bag chair, and finally the TV in the corner. The last wall is three feet tall and when you look over it you can see the entrance way a half story down. Next to the TV is the cat’s scratch post, then more toys another archway and your back at the toy corner.

[Hoodwink]

From 398 to 403 words. I've taken er.... a few liberties because I at first grew confused about where things were (it seems like everything is on a bed until the desk appears) and then I just felt the need to play. Lists are dry and dull things, they yearn for expansion. Consequently Aneurin is now unwitting murderous slave to the terrifying cereal box spirit, and his salvation lies with a mysterious french toy rabbit.

I haven't stripped out all adjectives and adverbs because I'm frankly not good at recognising them, and often consider them essential.

*************
I'm sat in a computer chair – the kind that you can twirl – in a room that’s bigger than my room back home, but only just wide enough for me to stretch out.

I didn’t make the bed. I’m a student and we don’t make beds. The best I could manage was to rearrange its covers to make a comfortable reading seat. It’s covered in books, among them a lone box of shortbread, a packet of bobbles, and an empty bottle of lemonade that I can’t remember ever buying, let alone drinking. Sometimes I have blackouts – more about that later. Nearby there’s a couple of CDs resting on a book. A cyborg mouse has escaped and made itself a nest. Or maybe it hasn’t. It’s difficult to tell where the mouse is. There’s a blurring of reality between my curving desk and the unmade bed. It’s difficult to tell where one ends and one begins.

Floating within this blurred boundary there’s definitely copy of the university newspaper, a notepad, great piles of books and letters. My reading glasses and my alarm clock hide in ambiguity.

Definitely on my desk there are maps, and a forest of books from where those earlier ones were mere overspill. Small coins are strewn with reckless abandonment and will stay thus until I need to gather them together to buy beer. Toffee-wrappers, more empty bottles, reference leaflets and a camera-lens cover that is not currently covering my camera lens. Oh and my shelves, stuffed full of yet more books, CDs and a single DVD moonlighting as a shelf-stop. A sinister box of cereal is out of place here. Whenever I approach it my mind blanks and I wake to find a day has passed and I have no memory of it and there is always a mysterious trail of choco-puffs across the carpet, and I’m wearing my lab-coat, holding a torch and stroking my dissection kit. Tomorrow is dissection day, preciousssss, a voice whispers. Tomorrow is always dissection day.

Thank god for Pierre, my rabbit. His all-forgiving plastic eyes reach through the cereal box darkness that fogs my mind, they burn it all away like fires of salvation and purification. Sometimes, when I go walking in the nearby mountains, the cereal box will send demon servants to destroy Pierre – crab demons, fox demons… naught but their bones remain when I return, and the signs of frenzied chaos and battle.