Carol

A Christmas Carol is a story spiced with the liminal. Scrooge, the not so eager and compliant liminar, is spatially and temporally removed from his everyday surroundings, counselled by wise and patient mentors, and emerges so transformed that a bewildered Bob Cratchit considers knocking him down with a ruler and ‘calling the people in the court for help and a strait-waistcoat’. And just as initiates in a rite of passage are structurally indiscernible (van Gennep, 1960 [1909]) (Turner, 1967), so Scrooge is literally invisible: as the Ghost of Christmas Past cautions him, the figures they encounter ‘have no consciousness of us’.

The liminal theme is introduced in the first sentence: ‘Marley was dead: to begin with’. But this point, like the coffin-nails to which the narrator refers, is repeatedly hammered home over the subsequent four paragraphs. The consequent doubt that arises through such over emphasis, rather than confirming the distinctions of life and death, intimates that such categories are not as fixed and immutable as we might optimistically imagine. And this classificatory uncertainty resonates through the whole novella as a tonal accompaniment to the state of anti-structure into which Scrooge progressively succumbs.

Indeed, even the weather confirms this sense of ambiguity. The fog — that ‘came pouring in at every chink and keyhole’ of Scrooge’s counting house — conceals and confuses. Even though ‘the court was of the narrowest’, the houses opposite are transmuted into ‘mere phantoms’ with the material and substantial rendered immaterial and insubstantial

*Ball’s Court Alley, City of London. The location of Scrooge’s counting house perhaps?*

And, of course, ‘phantoms’ are at the heart of A Christmas Carol. But not just one but three — and, ghosts, as we have seen, are spectres of the liminal. As the ‘non-object, this non-present present, this being-there of an absent or departed one’ (Derrida, quoted in Orr, 2014, p. 1055), they ‘elide the distance between the actual and the imagined’ so that ‘frail and cherished distinctions collapse’ (Beer, quoted in Jackson, 1981, p. 69). And this particular ghostly trio of ghosts intensifies such ambiguity as the present is haunted, not just by the past but the future, and in a further dissolution of expected categories, by its own doppelganger: the Ghost of Christmas Present.

And let us consider too where we encounter the first spectre in the story. As Scrooge stands in the ‘fog and frost’ by the ‘black old gateway’ to his ‘gloomy suite of rooms’, the door knocker transforms into the face of Marley. The threshold, with its implication of a margin or edge between two states or spaces and the possibility of transition between the two, is the archetypal liminal space — Scrooge’s former business partner could hardly have selected a more symbolically resonant location in which to (de)materialise. And this ghostly preference for spaces betwixt and between the interior and exterior is confirmed by Marley’s phantasmal companions who appear at Scrooge’s window ‘wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went’.

But A Christmas Carol is also, in many ways, a story of organisational practices. After all it starts and ends in Scooge’s counting house and offers a case study of both organisational and leadership change — even if the methodology deployed is unlikely to feature in any management textbook. And within this we can identify two intriguing examples of how organisational space is enacted as liminal. The first is glimpsed only briefly. After an invigorating Christmas Eve berating his nephew, two gentlemen calling for charitable donations and his brow-beaten clerk, Scrooge retires to a ‘melancholy tavern’ to take a ‘melancholy dinner’ and then ‘beguiled the rest of the evening with his banker’s book’. Perhaps this is an early example of ‘fluid and fissiparous’ organisational boundaries as work strays outside the counting house to colonise a space of social interaction: the ‘inside’ goes ‘outside’ (Fleming and Spicer, 2004, p. 79). Instead of a ‘squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner’, perhaps we should re-imagine Scrooge as an early adopter of mobile working. Replace the ‘melancholy tavern’ with a bright and festive Starbucks and his ‘banker’s book’ with a laptop (though I doubt it would be the latest model) and he is recast as one of Costas’ ‘kinetic elites’, adroitly navigating the porosity of work and non-work boundaries (Costas, 2013).

*Simpsons, City of London. The ‘melancholy tavern’?*

But if that is too much of an imaginative leap, let us explore the ‘office Christmas party’ hosted by Fezziwig, Scrooge’s beloved first employer. Such parties comprise both work and not work: a ‘relatively free space in which people can and do play, but it is also a space in which ‘fun’ has been institutionalized’ (Rosen, p. 468). Such a space can sanction the suspension or inversion of organisational hierarchies and the promise of transgressive activities such as dance, music, food and performance (although, as Hancock (2023) notes, such parties in the contemporary workplace are proving increasingly problematic). The confusion of work and non-work distinctions is pre-figured by the material transformation of the workplace as ‘every moveable was packed off…the floor was swept and watered, the lamps were trimmed, fuel was heaped upon the fire; and the warehouse was as snug, and warm, and dry, and bright as a ball-room’. Like Rothenburg’s Polish bar that shapeshifts from cafe to restaurant to nightclub during the course of the day (2000), so the identity of Scrooge’s place of work is rendered equally problematic: simultaneously both warehouse and ball-room. But the blurring of categories is short-lived. Following the forfeits, the porter, the Cold Roast and Cold Boiled, the dancing and the fiddling, as the clock strikes eleven, this ‘domestic ball broke up’ and, as the guests depart and the ‘cheerful voices died away’, Scrooge and his fellow apprentice, Dick ‘were left to their beds; which were under a counter in the back-shop’. After the liminal inversion of organisational norms, order and customary practice is restored — for, as Turner observes, liminal phases ‘invert but do not usually subvert the status quo’ (Turner, 1982, p. 42). Once the carnival is over, ‘normal order is quickly and completely restored’ (Rippin, quoting Bakhtin, p. 824).

And this brings us to the close of the novella as we return to Scrooge’s counting house. And here, the boundaries between work and social activities are once more subverted. But if earlier the workplace strayed outside to the tavern, the home has now strayed inside the office (see Attlee, 2022). The transformation of Scrooge’s leadership style (from directive and pace-setting to affiliative perhaps) is mirrored by the replacement of typical organisational activities — copying, accounting, drafting — with the more social, domestic behaviours of drinking a ‘bowl of smoking bishop’ by a roaring fire. Yet, if we view the unfolding of the story as a carnivalesque, liminal experience, normal service is all too quickly resumed. For despite Scrooge’s feelgood rite of passage, as Hancock intimates, the status quo of commerce, consumption and market economics emerge unscathed, if not reinforced (2023). Fittingly, for a tale where certainties dissolve and elide, it is a tale where both everything — and perhaps nothing — changes.

Attlee, E. (2022) Strayed homes: cultural histories of the domestic in public. London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts.

Costas, J. (2013) ‘Problematizing mobility: a metaphor of stickiness, non-places and the kinetic elite’, Organization Studies, 34(10), pp. 1467–1485.

Dickens, C. (1971) The Christmas books: volume one. London: Penguin.

Fleming, P. and Spicer, A. (2004) ”You can checkout anytime, but you can never leave’: spatial boundaries in a high commitment organization’, Human Relations, 57(1), pp. 75–94.

Hancock, P. (2023) Organizing Christmas. New York: Routledge.

Jackson, J. (1981) Fantasy: the literature of subversion. London: Methuen.

Orr, K. (2014) ‘Local Government Chief Executives ’, Everyday hauntings : towards a theory of organizational ghosts’, Organization Studies, 35(7), pp. 1041–1061.

Rippin, A. (2011) ‘Ritualized Christmas headgear or “Pass me the tinsel, mother: it’s the office party tonight’, Organization, 18(6), pp. 823–832.

Rosen, M. (1988) ‘You asked for it: Christmas at the bosses’ expense’, Journal of Management Studies, 25(5), pp. 463–480.

Rottenburg, R. (2000) ‘Sitting in a bar’, Studies in Cultures, Organizations and Societies, 6(1), pp. 87–100.

Turner, V. (1967) The forest of symbols: aspects of Ndembu ritual. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Turner, V. (1982) From ritual to theatre: the human seriousness of play. New York: PAJ Publications.

Van Gennep, A. (1960[1909]) The rites of passage. Translated by M.K. Vizedom and G.L. Caffee. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Table

There is a textile mill in the north of England. Closed, abandoned, extensively renovated and now repurposed as an arts and retail complex. If you visit the top floor, you will find a small museum devoted to the mill, the companies that once owned it and the work that took place there. And in this museum, there is a table. A board room table that dates back to the 1850s when the mill was built by Titus Salt, a successful Victorian industrialist. We might dismiss it as yet another exhibit: fixed, inert and defined by the notice that accompanies it. But, like all objects, this table is both part of a story and a carrier of stories. This is no mute witness, but an impassioned proclaimer eager to create and communicate meaning. Our only obligation is to listen.

First, look carefully at the grain, polish and carving. The quality of the wood and the crafting of the finish make material the status, authority and power of the company directors who commissioned it. Objects are rarely neutral — here, the solidity and weight of the construction are not merely empirical qualities, but a cipher perhaps for the sober and severe values of the Victorian age. Perhaps too this table is an organisational memento-mori: a ghost-sign in three dimensions. Discarded on the mill’s closure in the mid 1980s, its history whispers ‘such as I was you are, and such as I am you will be’. It makes corporeal the corporate dissolution documented by the information boards on the wall. And even though the table has been carefully restored, this particular resurrection provides a bitter salvation. Located in a museum that necessarily records what has now been lost, its presence evokes only absence. And the glory of the repair work makes this loss even more poignant. Like a beast in a cage, well-fed and cared for, but deprived of agency and power, the table too has been caged — co-opted as a character within a particular narrative of economic decline and fall.

And there are other stories to be told. A range of emerging theories view the social and materials worlds as entangled and enmeshed (see, for example, Carlile et al., 2013). From this perspective, objects are not passive or incidental but, as ‘non-human actors’ (see Latour, 2007), exist as ‘complex, vibrant and interactive agents capable of influencing and shaping human experience’ (Humphries and Smith, 2014, p.482). If we imagine a board meeting of the 1850s (or beyond), the table is as much a participant as the sombre, bewhiskered directors arrayed around it. For it too plays a role in the discussions conducted, the views proposed and the decisions taken. Silently and without fuss, it affords proximity and comfort, enables papers to be arranged and sorted, and perhaps, in a moment of pause, provides solace or inspiration as a hand moves across its polished surface, marvelling perhaps at the patterning of the grain and the lustre of the finish. Here, the social (the discourse, power inflections of those present and the relationships or bonds between them) and the material meld and entwine, choreographed in the performance of business. We could argue that our table is the central, non-human actor, the star name at the top of the billboard, but with a cast of supporting characters and bit players: the sideboard, crockery, chairs, pens, ashtrays and place mats.

And one final story. In a compelling paper, Shortt and Izak discuss how workplace wear and tear, scars, scuffs and stains can act as ‘material autobiographical archives’ concealing ‘memory anchors’ or ‘time marks’ (Shortt and Izak, 2021). We can only conjecture, but did Titus Salt ever notice the dulling of the varnish or the scratches in the surface at the head of the table, and reflect how this erosion by paper and frock coat sleeve embodied many years of toil and consequently his own history and heritage? Or did he glance at a particular stain and recall the event that occasioned it — maybe, a cup of tea carelessly put down as a discussion on tariffs and imports grew in heat and fervour?

Or perhaps that is not the final story. For, as I write now, I re-imagine the table I saw. At a distance of seven days and with 200 miles between us, it has the power of a potent memory anchor, recalling a joyous family trip to the north in the expectant days before Christmas. And that is just my single memory. For as the dark descends on Salt Mills and the lights in the museum are extinguished, the table stands in the silence, surrounded by the ghosts that once sat around it — a casket in which countless emotions, memories, relationships, experiences and sensations are captured and contained.

Carlile, P.R., Nicolini, D., Langley, A. and Tsoukas, H. (eds.) (2013) How matter matters: objects, artifacts, and materiality in organization studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Humphries, C. and Smith, A. (2014) ‘Talking objects: towards a post-social research framework for exploring object narratives’, Organization, 21(4), pp. 477-494.

Latour, B. (2007) Reassembling the social: an introduction to actor network theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Shortt, H. and Izak, M. (2021) ‘Scarred objects and time marks as memory anchors: the significance of scuffs and stains in organisational life’, Human Relations, 74(10), pp. 1688-1715.

Rhythm

There is an experience — one often overlooked — woven into our world since 2020. It is an experience of rhythms lost, silenced and then reformed. An experience of being out of step, caught in a misbeat of time and place. In those early days of lockdown, we were betwixt and between rhythms, suspended in a world where cadence and tempo were dissolved and recast. Suddenly, the old routines and rituals of daily life were unmoored. Commute, café, desk, work, meeting, lunch, walk, work, meeting, commute — these became echoes of a rhythm briskly ended. Then slowly the ebb and flow of the working day was appropriated by new tidal pulses. Some were energising and revelatory — yet others proved corrosive, debilitating. Here the emerging rhythm became one without end as the boundaries between work and non-work blurred and liquified. This was a metronome that vibrated without cessation.

One way, perhaps, to approach this experience is through Henri’s Lefebvre’s collection of essays, Rhythmanalysis (1992), which seeks to understand the emergent and dynamic interplay of space and time. In those early days of lockdown, rhythms once synchronised (in subtle and often unconscious ways) to those we worked with — the informal drift to the kitchen area or a coffee shop at a particular time, for example — were now dislocated. This was Lefebvre’s arrythmia — a ‘discordance of rhythms’ (p. 25) — similar to that charted by Nash in a rhythmanalytical study of the City of London where visitors, unsure of where to go, found themselves ‘not being able to keep up with the rhythms’ of the commuters flowing around them (Nash, 2018, p. 174).

Slowly though, new rhythmic patterns formed — with partners, children, flatmates — as we choreographed our presences and absences around available spaces. Our homes pulsed with new polyrhythmic sequences and, within this, our own particular rhythms became more manifest for, as Lefebvre argues, rhythm emerges through both repetition and difference. And gradually, our mundane workday rhythms were also reimagined. But often with new and peculiar time signatures. For example, meetings which, in former days, coalesced into being and then dissolved as people packed their bags and maybe paused for a final chat —were now ended with the abruptness of a 2 minute, 30 second punk single as we activated the ‘Leave Meeting’ button on Teams, Zoom and WebEx.

And such meetings also introduced new rites, routines and scripts for behaving. Think of that (often briefly lived phenomenon) the ‘virtual office drinks’ where, as if to signal that this virtual gathering was different from other more formal and businesslike meetings, we would hold our drinks to the camera in a way that would be bizarre and, indeed, unsettling in any face-to-face assembly. In this, perhaps, we see the Lefebvrian notion of dressage. In bending our gestures and movements to the values and expectations of this new social interaction, we were breaking ourselves in through the repetition of a particular act (see Lefebvre, 1991, p. 48).

Then, as lockdown intensified, we found other, compensatory (and consolatory) rhythms. Colleagues and friends talked of being more attuned to the turn of days and seasons — more alert to the ‘temporalities of fecundity and decay’ (Edensor and Holloway, 2008, p. 484). One social feed at work attracted pictures of wildlife, fungi, woodlands, the night sky. In this we see Lefevre’s notion of cyclical rhythm — those ‘movements, undulations, vibrations, returns and rotations’ — that exists in the beating of our hearts, the breaths we take as well as the ‘alternation of days and nights, months and seasons’ (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 84). The rhythmanalyst’s explorations are embodied and multi-sensory making them capable of listening to a ‘house, a street, a town, as one listens to a symphony, an opera’ (p. 94) — and similarly our senses were re-awakened. We saw, heard, touched and inhaled the world around us as if emerging from a dream.

For Lefebvre, cyclical rhythms contrast with the linear — those emerging from social practice and human activity. At one time, Lefebvre argues, this link between the everyday and the cyclical was clear but then it twisted apart (see Elden, 2004, p. 196). Yet, perhaps in lockdown that link was, for some, reforged. As the clocks went back last October, friends spoke of recalibrating their working day to enable a walk, run or cycle during daylight hours — here the cyclical and linear were bound together once more. They were seen to ‘unite with one another’ in a state of eurhythmia (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 25).

Perhaps too we became more aware of the linear rhythms of others. From the window of my house, I noticed the vans and agricultural vehicles that drove by at particular times; the commuting cyclist (regularly spotted at 8.50 am) on their way to the nearby village; the daily runners and walkers performing a circuit of the local lanes. That such appreciation was gained through the window is significant. Shruti Ragavan argues that balconies, windows and terraces are spaces that have assumed new meaning over the past year as the ‘locus through which our active interactions with the outside world took place’ (Ragavan, 2021, p. 675). Similarly, in the essay ‘Seen from the window’, Lefebvre notes that to grasp, and be grasped, by the fleetingness of rhythms, it is ‘necessary to situate oneself simultaneously inside and outside’ (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 37). The liminal, it seems, is a friend to rhythm.

And, now, as many organisations explore more hybrid ways of working, the rhythmanalyst is presented with a rich field of study. With different sequencing of days ‘in’ and days ‘out’, many workplaces have become multi-tidal, a polyrhythmic harmony of different flows and gatherings. For some, this is an experience of eurhythmia — a sense of being in step once more with old rhythms resurrected and replayed. For others, it carries the dread hand of dressage: movements and activities bound once more to the constrictive beat of linear time.

And, as we adapt to these re-sequenced pulses, we may find it hard to evade the ghosts of rhythms newly acquired over the last year or even, perhaps, those that haunt us from our pre-lockdown lives. The drive to the station at a different time to catch a later train — as unsettling and disquieting (at least at first!) as any spectre.

But maybe, like a restless drummer absconding from the restrictive cage of 4/4 and exuberantly exploring new rhythmic patterns, some feel liberated by the intensifying beat of hybrid working. For them, it is an emancipatory cadence that blends the linear and cyclical into a polyrhythmic mix of promise and possibility. And who knows where this particular tune might lead.

Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
‘The Burial of the Dead’, The Waste Land. T.S. Eliot

With thanks to Daniel Beunza for alerting me to the peculiar glass-raising ritual of the virtual drinks!

Eleanor Rodwell, *Untitled 1*. Outpost Studio, Norwich. Uninhabited, September 2021.

Eleanor Rodwell, *Untitled* 2. Outpost Studio, Norwich. Uninhabited, September 2021.

Photo credits: Photos 1-2, Eleanor Rodwell (www.eleanorrodwell.co.uk)

Edensor, T. and Holloway, J. (2008) ‘Rhythmanalysing the coach tour: the Ring of Kerry, Ireland’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 33(4), pp. 483-501.

Eliot, T.S. (1954) ‘The Waste Land’, in Selected Poems. Faber: London, pp. 51-74.

Elden, S. (2004) Understanding Henri Lefebvre: theory and the possible. Continuum: London.

Lefebvre, H. (2013[1991]) Rhythmanalysis: space, time and everyday life. Translated by Stuart Elden and Gerald Moore. Bloomsbury Academic: London.

Nash, L. (2018) ‘City rhythms: walking and sensing place through rhythmanalysis’, in
Kingma, S., Dale, K. and Wasserman, V. (eds.) Organizational space and beyond:
the significance of Henri Lefebvre for organizational studies. Abingdon: Routledge.

Ragavan, S. (2021) ‘Between field and home: notes from the balcony’, cultural geographies, 28(4), pp. 675-679.

Bench

The bench is ‘on the bench: sidelined, condemned to spectate, peripheral’ (Dyer, 2005: 174). This is an artefact that is marginal in more ways than one. Ignored and overlooked, it shyly retires to the shadows — only registering when we desire rest or solitude. Cloaked in its, well, ‘benchness, it hides in plain sight. Modest, undemanding and comfortable in its insignificance.

In our village, the bench is marginal in other ways. Here, four benches overlook the parish boundaries, a role of delineation diffidently shared with river and road. These are edgeland objects, consigned to the tracks and headlands where territories merge. And, in a spirit of admirable neutrality, they turn away from their own village, blessed (or condemned) to gaze on foreign meadows and lanes.

But such liminality is not only spatial but temporal. An empty bench (and, you may not be surprised to learn, these benches are often empty) invites us to slip through time. We remember the occasions when they were occupied — maybe a passing driver escaping a cramped vehicle to eat their secluded lunch in the open air. Or we imagine the figure who might be seated when next we pass. Here, we are anchored by memory and liberated by possibility. The shades of past and future occupants flit around us. And nowhere are such hauntings more keenly sensed than by the memorial bench.

As we read the brass plaque, recording perhaps how this location was where the memorialised felt most at peace, the place where they could ‘truly be themselves’, we too take in the view, breathe the air and, maybe, lower ourselves onto the bench, imagining what it would be like to be tied to this prospect for eternity. Indeed, what it would be like (material wear and tear aside) to be this bench forever and a day. And as we sit, the soft touch of a hand on a shoulder or the gentlest of whispers in our ear, alerts us to the presence of another. For the spirits evoked by the plaque are always there, the spectres who transgress time to remind us that ‘Such as I was you are, and such as I am you will be’.

Of course, this memorial also declares a spatial victory. This space, among the innumerable spaces experienced in a life, is the chosen one. And, perhaps the confidence acquired through such validation is common to all benches. For are they not all indifferent to their occupation? Even when transformed into Dyer’s ‘busy street in which people are sitting rather than walking’, their role is one of forbearance rather than facilitation (Dyer, 2005: 176). In Tony Ray-Jones’ photograph of elderly holidaymakers seated by, what we presume to be, the promenade (unknown circa late 1960s), the caliginous wood of the bench has faded almost to invisibility. It blurs into the murk of the shrubbery behind and the blackness of the shadows in front to leave its occupants seemingly perched in mid-air. So confident is it in its own presence, the bench can afford to slip from view, to dematerialise with its existence intimated rather than apparent. Like the bench suggested, but never named, in Bob Dylan’s Simple twist of fate (‘They sat together in the park/As the evening sky grew dark/She looked at him and he felt a spark/Tingle to his bones’), its very absence is a sign of its enduring being. The bench is — and always will be.

Dyer, G. (2005) The ongoing moment: a book about photography. Canongate.

Dylan, B. (1975) Simple twist of fate.

Parr, M., Thoemmes, R. and Groves, T. (eds.) (2019) Tony Ray-Jones. Martin Parr Foundation & RBB Photobooks.

Rosen, M. (2019) ‘A street photographer’s take on 1960s Britain: style meets tradition’, Huck, October 30. Available at: https://www.huckmag.com/art-and-culture/photography-2/a-street-photographers-take-on-1960s-britain/ (Accessed, 8 May, 2021).

Nest

Once, on a cold winter’s morning, in a half-empty train heading east, you peer through the grime and frost cracked window. A slope of field blurs into fog and then, as the train slows, a small, dilapidated lineside hut creeps through the mire then withers, like a ghost, back into the past. Was it ever there? Or did you imagine the carious window-frame, a few shards of glass enduring like shattered teeth, the cracked, lichened walls, flat roof and chimney stump? How, on all those journeys down this desolate, fen-bound line, did you never see it? Or, maybe, like a latter-day Watson, you saw but failed to observe.

Perhaps then you slip through the years to imagine three men — railway platelayers —walking through the same bleak December roke, hands like frozen clods of earth, backs sore and bent. For them, the hut, now restored to its simple and austere glory, bestows warmth, safety and conviviality. The stove lit, a kettle boiling, the fug of damp clothes and tobacco smoke. A place of conversation and companionship, and of stories I suspect, no doubt some as long as the rails that stretch to east and west. Tales of tracks repaired, a signalman’s mistake and the inevitable railway hauntings.

And, of course, this platelayers’ hut occupies a liminal space. It stands ‘off the geographic grid’, squatly alone on the border between rail and field. This hut is on the line, an edgeland structure that is strangely both visible and invisible. A mundane, graffitied ruin that elicits rarely a first glance, let alone a second.

This liminal place is one of withdrawal and seclusion yet also one of comfort and security. As such, it evokes Gaston Bachelard’s image of the nest. He writes of the well-being felt when seated in front of the fire while bad weather rages outside. This is the primitiveness of the refuge, where the creature ‘huddles up to itself, takes to cover, hides away, lies snug, concealed’ (Bachelard, 1958:112).

In my research on the spaces where organisational stories are told, certain sites — pubs, toilets, a street corner, an enclosed booth in a staff café — drew similar words of description. Participants spoke of them as ‘safe’, a ‘haven’, ‘enclosed’, ‘private’. These are the platelayers’ huts rebooted for a modern age.

And one other space was also chosen — that of the home office. Here stories were consumed and exchanged via phone, instant message and videoconference. Yet the office itself was described as a ‘safe shut away hole’ — somewhere ‘tucked away’ where one participant ‘longed to be’. Like the nest, these home offices, are infused with the domestic and the familial. They are refuges of concealment and security.

Yet, there is a shadow. Bachelard identifies a paradox: a nest ‘is a precarious thing, and yet it sets us to daydreaming of security’ (Bachelard, 1958: 122). This unsettling fragility is reflected by Edward Thomas who writes of the ‘summer nests uncovered by autumn wind, /some torn, others dislodged, all dark’. These nests ominously ‘hang like a mark’ (Thomas: 43)

And perhaps this ‘mark’ prefigures our own experience over the past year. For some, homeworking has seen the nest invaded, its sanctuary compromised. Harriet Shortt and Michael Izak write of the ‘contested home’ — a space, previously hidden except to those we invite in, but now exposed to the unwelcome Zoom gaze of many. And those ‘guests’ may include those we would not normally beckon across the threshold, indeed some we may actively dislike (Shortt and Izak, 2020: 45).

This unease may also arise from the very betwixt and between nature of the videoconference. We occupy two spaces simultaneously. We are both in the nest and outside it. One is a lived space of memory and narrative. It is also a material space of physical sensation — the feel of a chair against the back, the sound of a passing car, the smell of bacon cooking from the kitchen downstairs.

The other is a virtual space where senses are peculiarly compromised. The border controls of this territory demand we leave touch and smell behind while sight and sound are eerily degraded. Here we perceive fuzzy, corroded images of disembodied heads and shoulders as incorporeal as colleagues glimpsed through a Victorian, London pea-souper. Meanwhile, voices are randomly subjected to echo, reverb and delay as if this in a land governed by an erratic, and occasionally malignant, sound engineer.

Ares Kalandides suggests that virtual space is not a place, in the sense of a meaningful location. In engenders no sense of place and, consequently, drains emotions — not through consumption but numbness (Kalandides, 2020). In this world, we have no memory, no associations. We are insensate.

And yet…Maybe there is a way to merge these two worlds. Some have embraced the idea of the ‘silent meeting’. Having invited a colleague to a videoconference you then work silently together — as if your homes have been conjoined in this third, virtual space. Apart but together. And like the platelayers, warm and secure in their lineside hut, you and your colleague can, in your silent meeting, enjoy companionship while seeking shelter from the metaphoric storms that rage without. A virtual nest spun from intention and desire, yet still, maybe, one that protects and sustains.

Bachelard, G. (2014[1958]) The poetics of space. Penguin.

Kalandides, A. (2020) ‘Online meetings: a global sense of ‘virtual place?’, Institute of Place Management (IPM) Blog, September 16. Available at: http://blog.placemanagement.org/2020/09/16/online-meetings-a-global-sense-of-virtual-place/ (Accessed, 5 December 2020).

Shortt, H. and Izak, M. (2020) ‘The contested home’, in Parker, M. ed. Life after Covid-19: the other side of the crisis. Bristol University Press.

Thomas, E. (2008) The annotated collected poems. Bloodaxe.

Liminal Narratives

stories in the betwixt and between