Kitty’s Saloon is the name of my cabin/shed/shack/wendy house (all names bestowed upon it by various folk over the ten or so years I’ve had it).

It’s actually a wild west cabin/shack/saloon/trading post, and in those days I felt the need to correct the wrongful assumptions.  It’s obvious just looking at it. A boardwalk lines the front, cattle horns and an oil lamp hang beneath the eaves and a sign Kitty’s Saloon emblazens the apex of the roof.  Wendy house indeed! In its early days it even sported a hitching rail, but wood rot and a tired angle put paid to that eventually . 

          It all began many years ago when I was a wee lass.  A relative

owned a cabin deep among the woods of the New Forest and we were given permission to spend a day in it.  The memory’s very vague – I was only around ten, if that, but I do remember a drippy wet tangle of trees, as though it had been raining.  Inside the cabin  were all the basics that you’d need to feel comfortable for a short stay, including a kettle.  All slightly or not so slightly bent with age and use.  Very basic basics. The sort of impliments your mother chucks out for you to furnish your treehouse with. (I luurve treehouses!)  Anyone who enjoys their home comforts would hate it. That’s all I can remember, but that visit has remained with me to this day, and I was determined to own a cabin like it.

          Spring forward many years to those twelve years ago and we decided, at last, to build the cabin of my dreams.  Husband cross examined me. What kind of cabin was I looking for?  I hadn’t a clue. All I could envisage was the blurry impression of  the New Forest cabin.  Clapboard, perhaps, or logs. An apex roof. Windows. The interior is unclear. Enough utility to sleep in it, perhaps. Certainly enough to cook and eat.  What did I want it for? Apart from realising a childhood dream, that was a good question.  Would I write in it, do art? Would I dream in it? I really didn’t have a clue.