He bought me a lovely advent calendar. A childish delight, I know but it does take me somewhere nice nevertheless and I need it in all this dark and with this heavy, lumbering form to deal with it. It isn’t the usual thing but a 3D structure which requires you to add a new little figure each day. I love it.
The sun came out yesterday and was I thankful. I even went out and drew the boats in the harbour. The outcomes were crap (it’s been too long since I’ve done it and I’d forgotten how uncomfortable it is) but I did it. And sometimes, like life, drawing is just about the doing of it, regardless of the result.
Anyway, I am thankful. Thankful for the joy of my advent calendar, the little packs of fairy lights that wait in their boxes to be put out for Christmas, the lit trees in the hotels in town and my love. Well, what can I say? He’s to work with me today on what I’ve written so far on the funding form. His support is tireless and I can be so snappy. He endures it all. What a love, eh?
I never liked it. It brought in much-needed money but it was so scrappy. I couldn’t get a hold of it and no real skills were required, except patience, endurance and an unending cheerfulness, none of which I have in abundance. I want it to be concluded, after all I haven’t been up there since the first lockdown. I want out, if only to stop this guilt when someone calls, though it happens very infrequently. Perhaps I should just insist and not hold our for any redundancy, after all they’ve been paying me my retainer ever since. I’m not a greedy person, but if it comes as a gift I’d accept it willingly. Shall I wait? A little longer? Perhaps.
Winter is here, Autumn has gone. Oh, those poor people with no power up in the North. It must feel like no one cares. May they be warm soon. The rain outside made me yearn to stay indoors but out I went first to read the gas meter which has been placed, most inconveniently at the base of our flat which involves walking down into the car park and back into the Quad. I hate doing it. But it must be done, as must the writing of this application form. I was petulant and self-pitying yesterday about it. Just keep your head down, he said, and get it done. Yes. And stop complaining. I am chastened by other’s real tribulations, mine is merely the doing of a tedious thing, there is no physical discomfort or mental anguish. It’s just it takes the heart out of the idea, it strips it bare. So be it. I will revivify it, once this is done. Then it will be just me and my pen and my book.
A man came behind me on the hill just in front of Alexandra Hall. I was wrestling with the heavy umbrella (anti-wind – it isn’t) he bought me, trying to collapse it and he waved his walking stick at me. Was it in greeting or alarm or was it a threat? I had my music on so I couldn’t hear what he said. Oh well. Another time. There was an ambulance parked outside the Hall. The driver, a woman, was smoking a cigarette under the porch. Nothing else seemed to be happening. The sea was churning.
Even though I only had the window open a smidgen it woke me. The dread of walking out in it plays into my dreams and I am beset by greyness. He writes his notes courtesy of Michael Fish with my morning weather report and urges me to ‘STAY IN!’. But I don’t. Not because I am cussid but because I need to be in the fear of it (and I am fearful of its strength) and survive. And sometimes even enjoy it, for the air is wonderful, so new, though the rain is bugger. I didn’t walk far which makes me ratty, feeling that I should push myself more. Some kids were out bringing their takeaway garlic bread home. They seem invulnerable to gusts, as they laugh and shout and lollop their way up the hill. Sophie’s Café has it’s tree up and lit which gladdened my heart as I trudged past. Oh, how I love to see Christmas decorations on these dark mornings, no matter how gaudy.
We talked about snowdrops at breakfast. I wish I’d planted some as well as the crocuses and hyacinths. Are they the first spring flowers to show?
Some days are just shite. It’s not personal though it may seem so. We both struggled through it, each with our own individual trials. There were nice bits, there usually are but they were fleeting and, for me, a little sugary. (I didn’t have time to do a proper Norwegian session so I listen to NRK radio instead while I worked – never a good thing for me as it is neither one nor the other – and the chat (of which I got about every 6th word in 10) was interspersed with cutesy Christmas songs of the Perry Como ilk. By the end I felt like I’d over indulged in Christmas cake, particularly the royal icing and marzipan which used to make my teeth ache.) Let’s hope today is more promising, though my gut sinks at the thought of beginning this form in earnest. Oh, well onward.
Spotting the jay in our neighbours driveway didn’t help my spirits. Is it good or bad? he asked. I don’t know, I said, it could be either. Seeing one does give me a fillip nevertheless – something will happen. Isn’t that good enough?
I felt a little unwell this time. It surprised me for with the other two vaccines I’ve been fine. And even now my arm is tender. I took it easy. Sometimes it’s nice to submit in that way, though it’s rare, for me. I still went and drew in that cold, cold coffee shop.
He looked it up on Google. It’s been troubling me for some time now, and it’s unquenchable. Firstly, he thought it might be the tablets I take. What a bugger if that is the case. And then he told me this morning that it may be connected to my heart failure (‘It is heart failure’, she said). Agh, all these labels. Can’t one just be well? At least I can do something. I just need to drink and drink – unquenchable or not. It’s down to me – doctors, it seems, are unattainable, and when they are, you never hear back from them. So be it. My body is mine – I will take care of her.
I heard the laughter coming from their flat downstairs. Canned noise. Fake and too happy for the sadness that is contained in there. Or am I projecting a misery that isn’t present? Perhaps he is content in his dying.
Outside was cold as I walked. Three pairs of gloves kind of cold. The wind was a whisper from the East. It was quiet. A quiet cold. Only a few bodies huddled against the dark and chill scurried around corners. I like the stillness. Though there were birds. A robin hopping under a fence. A blackbird in song. There is always joy if you look hard enough.
A sorting out kind of a day. Clearing the decks in readiness for tomorrow.
I’ve finished Middlemarch. He returned it to the library for me yesterday. I shall miss it. I love being inside a book. The middle is best when you have begun to belong to it but are, as yet, far away from its completion. Eliot was so compassionate towards her characters – as loving towards their flaws as their good points. I relished being inside their heads, Dorothea’s especially as she shone with her naïve, yet simple, goodness. May it not be too long until I return for I will.
We are not all the same, he tells me in his infinite wisdom, we don’t all think alike. And we don’t. I know this, but I forget. My gestures are, I trust loving ones, but they may arrive or be received when the receiver is not open to them. In the end it doesn’t matter, we, I, can only do what I can do. I try, that is all. Do you understand?
I catch only snippets of the news, mostly on radio bulletins, be they on Radio 3 in the morning or Classic FM in the afternoon. Yesterday there was a brief comment about it being a legal requirement that councils in Kent and the SE house unaccompanied migrant children. We grow numb to such phrases and words – we no longer hear their true implications. Unaccompanied children. Children who are alone, away from family from home in an oh so foreign land. The children of migrants who are unable to speak English. Migrant is another such word. People who migrate, who move, nomadic people in such of another life. Hasn’t there always been such – what made them into semi-criminals? Pariahs, even? Is there not enough to go round? And why are they migrating? Are they not really refugees, seeking shelter, safety from abuse, war and poverty? Why are their children alone? What has happened? Give us the real story, their stories so that we may listen, and empathise and help.
I saw the milkman in his van this morning. It’s a little more sooped up than a float (now that is a sound of my childhood, it was a kind of wheeze, not an engine sound, more an expelling of air, a sigh even – I also remember the clip clop of the horse’s hoofs when the milk was delivered by cart to our Nanny’s flat) an open van of sorts all lit up. A comfort in the darkness. Though it wasn’t the man who looks like Bruce Springsteen that I used to see in Morrison’s on a Saturday with his kids. The lit Christmas trees and lights that are beginning to pop up in windows across town are equally comforting in these fast becoming thick black nights. Thank you.
I woke from a dream that perplexed me. What did it mean? He and I were looking at a boat, which was actually a carboard box (like a huge lever arch one) and all lined with text-covered paper. It was in the harbour and waiting for customers. Someone had written in hand – Free but can be Wild. They were clearly offering fishing trips. As we watched a man and a young boy turned up. Neither had coats or waterproofs. He wore casual office wear, a jumper and chinos. They climbed in and set sail. The boat by this time was full of water – the child was completely submerged and the man was up to his chin. Neither seemed deterred or bothered, clearly they were used to it. And I watched it sail off out of the harbour into a rough sea. Is it about my application? Is it my fear of being subsumed by it? They appeared so content with their situation, accepting and meeting it, however, hopelessly.
The town’s Christmas tree is up though still denuded of lights.
He has told me about her before. She works on the till at Tesco’s. Yesterday they were talking about illness and her mother who is dementing. Then she let it slip that her father had stabbed her and got 5 (or was it 7) years for it. Her mother has a collapsed lung as a result of it. And apparently both her sister and brother-in-law died of Covid-19. And then she told him that her father (when she’d visited him in prison) had ‘tried it on with me’.
We were driving into town so that I could draw in the coffee shop (there was a threat of rain, else we would have walked) when I saw it. It was climbing up the wall of a student house on the corner of Penglais Road before secreting itself into a cavity underneath a wooden window sill. Oh, my God, I said. What? he asked. It’s a rat. A long discussion followed about whether we should let the letting agency know. And I had an internal one too – they will use poison and so on. He said no, and that it wasn’t our business. They tell us that there are rats everywhere. And they must be right – I certainly saw enough of them in the students’ hall in Oxford. But there was something chilling about seeing it in the glare of day and so close to human habitation. It is always so hard to know whether to interfere or not. It’s a bit like the flies that have started to infest the window ledge again. Don’t they know it’s winter? And I have to clean them away though I shrink from it. Poor loves they only want to live, as we all do. And then I worry about the hyacinth bulbs I’ve planted. Seven are showing but what about the other two. Are they just slow in sprouting or are they dead? Be patient, I hear him say in my head.
The tides are getting fuller, stronger and higher. There are great trunks of broken trees on both beaches and shale lies in swathes on the Prom.
His light was on in his kitchen as I returned from my walk. I want to peer in to see how he is, we so rarely see him now. The TV, though on was barely discernible from our communal hall. No Rawhide this morning. I’ve taken the liberty (without asking him) of re-taping up their post box. His mother had mislaid the key so they have to have it semi-open and had used a bit of sticky bandage for the purpose but it kept gaping open. I’ve stuck it with some duck tape. Will he mind? How is it to be in the state of dying as he is? He has two kinds of cancer, diabetes and ulcers on his legs. Poor love. I want to ask how he is but he and I maintain a socially-manufactured distance of inane pleasantries. I keep meaning to break it and ask how he is really but bottle out. I must, just to show how much I care. For I do. I do.
