How Small is Small?

In Jenny Diski’s extraordinary and uncategorisable book about, as the subtitle has it, “daydreaming and smoking around America with interruptions”, the author spends a lot of time squeezed up into a variety of small spaces: cubicles, ship’s cabins, sleeping compartments on trains, smoking sections, mobile homes, dining booths, etc. It’s not necessarily part of some wider plan she has, this business of wriggling into one cramped space after another, but of space – I have lived in smallish flats for the vast majority of my adult life, and find myself at a bit of a loss when given the run of an entire house. I do need though. Just a little bit of space where I can pile up my books, and leave my coat in a heap on a chair that does not have a particular purpose other than being a place to leave a coat. It would make me insane, having to put my shoes in the same place every single day at the risk of chaos being unleashed and the whole carefully planned ship-shape living space falling into madness. Impossible. Unsustainable for anything longer than a very long train journey. I understand, of course, that for literally billions of people around the world, living in a very small space is not a cute lifestyle choice, but the only option available. What I do not understand is the people who seek this out deliberately. Tiny bed, tiny table, tiny knife and fork. One spot for the shoes, one spot for the one dress that can fit into your one tiny wardrobe cubicle that doubles as a desk. Unthinkable. I cannot speak for Jenny Diski, but I feel sure that she would have agreed with me that one of the very best things about being squeezed into teeny-tiny spaces is the fact that you are able to leave them, at some point, and to return to the smallish flat you call your home, and throw your coat on the coat-throwing chair with a powerful sigh of relief.