Categories
Writings

Three Hours

I’d only had three hours sleep. We’d got back in decent time from the airport but there was so much to do just to get the flat back to the way we like it. And warm. Three hours. It isn’t enough. I felt ragged. My mouth was dry, my lips too. I was shaky, uncertain in my feet. Ragged. I had seven hours last night. The world seems better. And Spring is coming. The birdsong is louder, more insistent. And tomorrow we are off again.

Categories
Writings

Trace

I know it’s wrong. And I do it guiltily, acting out a sort of charade of buying intentions. But I love to have such smells on my person. It is about familiarity but also about a longing for elegance, and a sometimes elevation from the way I live now. I steal a spray. I know that lots of people do it, and the sales staff and manufacturing companies know this. They no doubt factor it in to their profit margins. But I am stealing, whichever way you look at it. But oh, to smell of Chanel no5 or Miss Dior (it has to be the original) is wonderful. Yesterday morning’s felony didn’t last long. The sweetness of no 5 had gone from my wrist by the time I caught the plane. No trace.

Categories
Writings

Bruise

I bruise easily. Too easily. Is it because my skin is so thin? I asked him yesterday, as we sat in the car at Rhayader, after I’d caught my wrist trying to put it through the strap of my rucksack. A big wheal of dark red was already building up under my skin. I don’t know, he said. My body takes on the black and blue blotches of an old woman. I wince before fall these days, or when I accidentally knock a limb or an elbow for I know that the evidence of it will be imprinted on my flesh for days, weeks to come. When did this happen? When did youth pass? I don’t mind. Truly. It is nothing compared to what so many suffer. A small thing, like my sore-ly knee. I continue. That’s all any of us can do. Continue till we no longer have to. The fruition of God. Ah, how lovely that sounds.

Categories
Writings

Frozen Peas

It was a roller-coaster day yesterday. Full of emotion. Too full. We got home late, both tired and scratchy. He bit his lip. It kept bleeding. I told him to come upstairs to the kitchen. I held a bag of frozen peas against the wound and began to laugh. We held each other and laughed.

I drew at her funeral. And I cried.

Categories
Writings

Losing It

I threw a tantrum. I knew I was doing it. I always do. It’s a long time since I cried in a cafe. I think the last time it was in the same one. The owner who was serving us politely ignored and took herself off as quick as possible. Yesterday, the man who he first claimed that it was Rhod Gilbert, came into the room we were in and then made a sharp exit at seeing me, head in hands. He called a goodbye to us as he left. Perhaps I’d imagined an embarassment that wasn’t there and that he’d just changed his mind about where he wanted to sit. I was tired. And I’d just forgotten to unpopper my body when I went for a pee and had consequently wet myself. The said body had to be removed which involved a complex shifting of layers so as to peel it, soaking, over my head. Stupid. Stupid, stupid.

I have a head full of things that need dealing with. Where to start?

At the beginning?

Categories
Writings

Writing (52)

I’ve got an all day writing retreat today. From home. In front of my screen. I don’t mind. I like the idea of staying at home with my hot water bottles, pot of tea and silence. That is, except for the birds singing outside. He’s been sent out. He grumbles about it, but it’s fine. I know it is. He likes to be off and out to the town’s coffee shops to read papers and mull away time. I don’t know what the day will bring but it is good to dedicate it to writing. I need the thinking and the getting down on paper – albeit virtually. We shall see. Yesterday was chaotic. I did my best but it was a bit like marshalling cats, well trying to and failing. Oh, the first wood pigeon has just begun cooing. I have to let it be, re the teaching. Do my best to guide but to not bully. All will be well.

Categories
Writings

Weariness

I confess I am very weary. I miss my sleep. I miss the falling into nothingness followed by a morning wakefulness with nothing particular to do. I wake these days and immediately search in my head for my responsibilities. Today I must teach. And yet I am dog-tired. Can I find the energy? Yes. I always do. I want to facilitate their learning, their endeavours. I care about this but I am spent. Is there more at the very bottom of me to find? Yes. Always.

It pissed down this morning. Shall I or shan’t I walk? I did.

Categories
Writings

Darts

It’s become a kind of tradition that she reads out, over the phone, the Home’s entertainment itinerary for the week. Last week’s was particularly spectacular, including darts in the lounge. As she explained, this is a seated version in which the carer on duty brings the dart board to the player who then, thrusts a plastic dart in its direction. We laughed rather uncontrollably at this not really taking into account the fact that, when she first became a resident she attended one of these sessions herself. “It is actually quite hard,” she said, leaving us a little shame-faced at our rather noisy ridicule. We have to be more careful. There is an assumption that she is laughing along with us when we gently dig at the Institution’s attempt at distraction, such as Banjo Barry, Bingo and the various folk singers and memory artists they rope in. And she does join in, but there’s a underlying pathos to this, she is there, stuck, incarcerated for the rest of her life, she has to make the best of it, we don’t. He texted her an apology. I hope she understood and accepted it. For I do love and care what she thinks and feels.

And there is yet more horror in R. A woman is to be imprisoned, possibly for 20 years, for treason. She’s lives in America but went home to see her family. Her crime was to pay money into a charity in support of Ukraine. How did they find this out? Poor love. Keep her safe. Please.

Categories
Writings

Bird Whistles

I stopped my walking to make a quick drawing of the student house on the corner of North Road whose windows are always lit up in the early hours. The bird song around me was deafening. I exaggerate, of course. But it is remarkably loud at that junction of the road. I don’t know why. Some of the birds, probably the blackbirds whistle. Well, it sounds like a whistle. Layers and layers of sounds, never discordant. It is a choir, a choral composition. They call out to each other, marking territory or trying to attract a mate, whatever it is I feel privileged to be a part of it. The drawing, by the way, didn’t work. I’d brought a thick stick of graphite in my almost constant attempt to get beyond my preciousness but it was too clumpy, too awkward a tool for such a small book. Heigh ho. Try again tomorrow.

Categories
Writings

Boiler

The boiler is f**ked again. Bless it. It’s on its last legs, I suspect. This time the symbols on the dial read EA – well, when I say read it actually flashed rather alarmingly. Anyway, I found the instruction booklet and located the list of symbols and it apparently means that it can’t ‘find the flame’. I know the feeling. My flame is, some days, beyond finding. So we are without heating and hot water. It could be worse. Of course. I think of Alexei’s family and him (I don’t know how to spell his surname). Such a brave giant of man. I cannot waste more time complaining on the little things that test me. It is enough. I am chastened. May he truly rest in peace. And keep his wife and loved ones and supporters safe.