My Favourite Vintage Things with Freddie Omm

I'm delighted to have a guest post from Freddie Omm (and Coco the dog!) about his favourite vintage things. His novel, Honour, was published  in 2012 and was an Amazon best-seller in the UK and Germany. In addition to novels, he writes short stories, articles, poetry, children’s stories, blogs, translations, copy and music. 

When I saw Liz' series I thought I  could do one about my desks because that is very writerly-  but then i realized it would be a bit dull so Liz said why not put a pet in - and so here are my desks and my dog!

The first desk and dog is the desk I had when I was 7 and living in California when my writing career began, I think there's still crayon marks inside the drawers. It is an American desk, they said, from about 1870 and the bit that rolls down needs fixing cos it's split in half and the broken bits are all at the bottom of the space at the back...the elephant  on it is Ganesha - Hindu god of the arts among many other things - from Java, where my mother grew up (and we lived there later too). In this pic Coco the dog has the long suffering hangdog expression of a dog being forced to do silly things before she's even been out for a proper walk.

The picture below  is the desk I had when I was living in the Hague (in the hols, anyway). This is an 18th century one made of teak and it stood in my room. I wrote stuff there all the time, using a fountain pen or biros now instead of crayons. The blob on top of it is also a stone figure, this time of buddha. it is also from Indonesia. In this picture taken in the sitting room Coco is staring with a bafflled yet grudgingly tolerant look - replete with the realisation that there's plenty more of this faffing about to come.

This third desk and dog is the desk I use now and stands in my study. It is my working desk and on it I wrote "Honour" and "The Trashman" and much other stuff, including shopping lists and powerpoint presentations about strategic brand communications platforms! It's from about 1890, comes from Java and is made of teak. Coco has relaxed now even though I had to hold up her head for the pic and she is blocking things a bit. If you look carefully you will see my laptop behind her and in the silver mug behind that there are some pens and ink and above them lies an ancient rusty fencing foil.

On top of my current desk, stands this laughing Buddha. My grand-father brought this back from Hong Kong as a present for my dad in the 1930s. 

The happy Buddha's belly is so big and full it cracked... behind it is a speaker with a stone age tool perched on it. The tool is older than everything else, a half million years or maybe a million, I can't remember, but is still viciously sharp, you could easily skin a bear or an otter or a critic with it if you wanted... The Buddha, unlike the desks, went with us wherever we moved. (the desks often had to wait.) anyway they are all in my house now as if purposely assembled for this nice outing on Liz' blog!

Thanks Freddie! Freddie Omm is the author of the compelling thriller, Honour which is out now. You can read the first chapter by clicking here. 

When his brothers in faith kick off a campaign of murderous havoc and honour killing, their pacifist ex-comrade Azeem has to figure out who's behind it, re-evaluate his ideals, and save his lover from a lovelorn sheikh, without getting himself killed. 

A fast-paced, darkly humorous thriller, "Honour" is a controversial meditation on modern evil.