She was in a chatty mood. Sometimes it can be tricky to bring our conversation to an end. I like it when she is bright. We talked about her going shopping with her daughter who has a wedding coming up. I don’t think it is going to be a very fancy wedding, she said, they’re all going back to the farm for the reception. There’s a marquee. She says ‘how to say’ a lot. I think it is because she is trying to translate colloquialisms from Welsh into English. It is a hinter world I can never enter, that Welsh one to which she and her daughter and many of the people I encounter at work dwell within. I felt the same living in Norway, I couldn’t get under the skin of it. Always on the outside looking-in, a restful place to be most of the time, but sometimes I long to belong. She talked about the navy dress her daughter opted for in the end, so that she can wear it again. The pink fascinator would be just the thing to make it special. Not a bright pink, she said. Dusky? I replied. And she found some shoes in exactly the same colour. Dorothy Perkins and Debenhams. So cosy. I like the inconsequential nature of our chatting. It is light, easy, and she is in a good, safe place. And I am glad.
I’ve begun Neil Ansell’s memoir about his four trips to the North of Scotland. He writes of his encounters with wildlife. I feel like I encounter something similar when I walk the Prom in the early hours. The other morning there were five bodies stretched out on pebbly beach just by South Marine Terrace. They were silent, utterly still. Were they dead? No, one, a girl’s, ankle was turning in circles. Where they watching the moon, as I’d been? I walked by. And then today a mass of happenings. Again on South Marine, walking along the Terrace, I noticed that at least one of the B&Bs were full and then I saw a young man, a skinny man, begin to climb up onto one of the houses’s porch roofs. Had he locked himself out? Should I say something? He moved silently, except for a bashing noise as he hauled himself up. Once up he just turned about and sat down. He was still sitting there, high up, as I got to the Harbour. Prior to that I’d walked behind a couple. He was a huge man and she was small and stocky wearing silver lame top. They’d been holding hands when I drew close but after a few minutes the hand had been dropped. Don’t, she said, as I neared. But I thought, he was saying in a tiny, weasly kind of voice, and burping and then belching. DON”T! she hissed again. Before then, two men has been standing outside the Pier Pressure nightclub, both had been in shorts. I’ll just have one more, said one, swaying imperceptibly. And then, prior to that (not sure why I’m doing this backwards) I’d watched as man walked up to another man sleeping on a lurid blue mat on a bench in the shelter and leaned over him. What yer doing? the sleeping man had shouted. I want to give you a kiss, the interloper had said. Then there had been the two lads with their bikes on the Perygyl. I’d heard their voices in the dark, as I’d approached. They went silent as I walked past. The moon had gone behind a cloud as I stood at the end. Wanting to be still and quiet. But they have a much right to be there as I, so be it. They’d turned their music on again as I made my way back. Rap music, most deliciously profane, emanated from one of their bikes. Hiya, said one boy to me. Hiya, I replied.
The author Jason Reynold was being interviewed on Radio 2 last week and he admitted to crocheting in his spare time. It’s not unlike the discipline of writing, he said. I think about wanting to interview people about their practices. I like the notion of time-consuming works, how do they sustain themselves?
She was let out for three days. What gorgeous photographs. What a smile. What a smile, he says. I wish her well, I wish her more joy like that.
I hope she goes to the carnival.
