home – Kathleen Jowitt

Wooden railway track and cars noodle around a map of the pre-Beeching Isle of Wight railway network

This is where I am, although not when I am. Only a fraction of this railway network remains; today I joined some family members in riding the part that’s preserved as a steam heritage line.

I am not from the Isle of Wight. We moved there when I was fourteen; before that I knew it as a tourist; I’ve never lived there as an adult for more than a couple of months while I worked out what else I was meant to be doing. Many things would have to change to make it make sense for me to move back. And yet, I realised this year, Ventnor is the closest thing I have to a hometown. There’s a part of me that would love to hang out permanently in the Exchange, writing novels. Or walking along whichever bits of the coast haven’t fallen into the sea yet. Or both.

Every time I go back, something’s changed, something in the natural landscape or the human one, or both. And every time I go back it still manages to feel like home.

This year we moved into the first place we’ve owned, and we brought plenty of stuff with us. The curtains, for example. My mother made them for the high Victorian windows of my childhood home; I used them to cheer up the horrible bedsit I rented when I first moved out; turned them up to fit the french windows in the 1960s maisonette that was our last rented property. They’ve always been comforting: good for hiding behind when I was small; good for keeping the draughts out now; bold and cosy.

A glass-fronted wooden cabinet. Behind it, floor-length wooden curtains in a pattern of blue and red curlicues on a gold ground.

Then there was the pig picture, inherited from my beloved godmother Héloïse. Her house used to be full of vibrant, mischievous pictures: this was my favourite. And there, at the middle of it, is that bright red lobster.

A print of a painting featuring a large pig nosing at a bright red lobster on a picnic cloth while a boy sleeps

This was not the only picture we brought with us. It wasn’t even the only one with a red element to it. We also had a drawing of the two of us that we’d had done, in true tacky tourist fashion, at Montmartre, on our honeymoon.

A drawing in red pencil of a man in glasses and a woman in a headscarf

The new house had its own contributions to make. Most of the fanlights in the conservatory were decorated with a stained glass red rose.

A fanlight with a red rose of Lancaster in stained glass

With all that, it became obvious pretty quickly that the dining room wall – an insipid lavender when we moved in – needed to be red. We bought a pot of paint in our first week, on 17 March. We painted the wall on 25 May, bank holiday Monday.

Room, seen through an arch, with one red-painted wall, dark wood dining table and chairs, just a corner of the curtains from above, and the whole of the print with the pig and the picnic

My new book goes beautifully with my red wall, though in fact I didn’t plan it that way. That started with stained glass flowers rather than with domestic decor. I’d had my eye on the passion flowers in one of the windows of the south aisle at my previous/current church (it’s complicated!) for ages, wanting to replace the more realistic one on the cover of my first book. But if it was going to be a series then I was going to have to find other stained glass flowers to match. I knew I wanted this one to be red, but it was surprisingly difficult to find ones that weren’t roses (made it look too much like a historical novel) or poppies (also made it look too much like a historical novel). I eventually found these ones at a church I popped into on last year’s narrowboat holiday. I’m not sure what they’re meant to be – maybe carnations? – but anyway, I’m really pleased with them.