ellen bell

According to BBC weather sunrise today isn’t until 7.31am. Too much dark. It is closing in. What can be done about it?

It had obviously been attracted to my glass of orange juice, for I found it in there when I returned from my walk, drowned in it. Poor love. Was it dying anyway, was this its last throes at survival?

The town was smattered with new students, the majority of whom, for some reason were wearing shark hats.

I’ve never really relished them. I need structure to my days and they have none. So I work through them, cleaning, washing and writing. Lying in has never been a habit. Something is lost then, and cannot be reclaimed. And mornings are too precious to be spent.

I’ve always done it. I remember our Nanny telling me so when I was what, four or was it five. I loved her for that. I loved her for recognising it, and acknowledging it to me. In the early hours it is the worst. Then I cannot really see my way through it. When the daylight comes mostly I can. Work is a distraction, again, mostly. It’s a thing, a predilection as he calls it, that must be lived with. There are worse things to bear. So many more…

Are there still adventures to be had, after the work is done? I dreamt of woman who had to go to a prison daily, from which she’d be let out every evening. And how I wanted to make sure that she had a key for her return to the house that we shared. A mirror image, perhaps? Is there more to come? Somewhere else?

It was a gesture of love but I couldn’t match her blitheness. It was all wrong. It went wrong. She’d called during my writing time. I am rigid, overly so, but I hold it so tight this work. It must be so. How could she have known that? And I couldn’t say it. Not then. It unravelled the day.

And then the little boy drowned. Poor little love, to die like that and all alone. His grandfather must be turning it over and over in his head. Rest in peace little one.

Two men in a van came for the last remnants of Margaret’s flat. The door mats in the hallway were left awry after they had gone, and the outer door opened wide.

I don’t know how much longer I will be able to write on here. I heard yesterday that my web designer, who maintains this site, died four weeks ago. I didn’t know him well, having only met him once in Bath to discuss the setting-up of my website. I am sad about it. He was a gentle man and I am sure that his family will miss him greatly. Everything must come to an end, I know this, but this knowing doesn’t seem to make the end, when it comes, any easier.

I’ve been hearing it for some days now. I thought it was someone in the flat below, cleaning or moving things about, but yesterday it sounded nearer, close at hand even. And then I realised that it was coming from the wall between the studio and my bathroom. First it was a scrabbling sound, then a whining like a young puppy, then a squealing. A young chick caught between the outer and inner wall of the flat. Perhaps it had been in a nest, a blue tit’s possibly, and then fallen down into the cavity, out of reach and sight of its parents. It’s cries were pitiful. I heard them again last night and then nothing. And there is nothing now. Has it finally died, poor creature? R.I.P.

We are different, especially in responses to money – he sees freedom where I see constraint, he sees plenty where I see the need for restraint. I was unkind. He’d made a mistake and I wouldn’t let it go. This is marriage. I accept it. It is still a gift.