Author: Ellen Bell

Everybody seemed to be having a birthday in the coffee shop – well, at least three people were. It made us feel connected somehow. We talked to people we wouldn’t normally talk to (at least I did). And they let him have a packet of shortbread on the house, which he didn’t, in the end, eat. Save it for another day, he told them.

It rained again when it shouldn’t have. Sneaky of them, said our neighbour at his window. He is looking a little less death-like. I still said nothing.

He told her that it was his birthday today. What will you do? she asked. Oh, just go for a coffee with my wife, he replied. I think she took pity on him (perhaps thinking that this was a paltry way of celebrating a birthday, and not being aware that we don’t like big showy celebrations, that, in fact, just going for coffee suits us) for she thought for a bit and said: Have you ever been to ____? They do a marvellous bang bang chicken.

The cold is here and with it the freezing-up of our flat. It never gets warm in the winter, so we have to resort to hot-water bottles, blankets (sometimes coats) and little 2-bar fires. It’s too cavernous and the radiators are too weedy. So be it. I am used to it, many of the rented homes I’ve lived in have been the same. And how I long for a wardrobe full of huge jumpers down to my knee. He doesn’t approve. Can we reach a compromise?

For some reason I kept seeing cats this morning. Am I missing something? Is it the dry mornings or are mice etc more likely to take risks and scurry about in search of food when it is a bit parky? Though aren’t they meant to be hibernating soon? How little I know. So be it.

And now I must write about blankets.

It was so good to see her back. She is a noisy thing but in a lovely way. Everyone is taken care of – she is unflustered, paying attention to all the details and with a kind word for all whom she encounters. I listen and watch with amazement. The ship is being steered once more.

It was good to get back to drawing again. It begins to flow when I give it a good few hours. Though it was bloody cold. I sit there with a cardi and a blanket around my knees. But it’s better to be downstairs. I like to see the queue and watch the now familiar faces joining the line and searching out their favourite seats.

She replied. I am content. Can I allow myself to anticipate it with something like joy now?

The wind was fierce. I was expecting it to be so and avoided the Prom as promised. I did sneak along South Road however and when it started to gust made my way up to the Castle and then down into Laura Place. It is always wild there, not sure why. Anyway, there was a seagull there trying to fly. It was an adult bird, its wings were huge. But it couldn’t get a lift. The wind kept buffeting it. It flapped and slid and crashed against walls. A horrible sight, pathetic even. Sometimes it would cease its struggle and lie low, wings outspread waiting. I watched helplessly clinging to a car door handle. I thought they were meant to know the wind and ride it.

The writing has been done for the meantime. Today I shall draw. It’s already been too long.

I examine things in my dreams, turning objects this way and that, and even doing the same in my mind. It’s an exploratory time for me. And I have choices. I like that. Last night it was about a pair of my shoes. He had taken them to a charity shop and I wanted them, needed them to be able to walk. And yet, as I remembered, they were tap shoes, red ones with that little metal piece under the toe. It was a tricky thing trying to get them back, all sorts of red tape and high-level officials were involved. I didn’t succeed. At least not yet. Could it be about my legs? I also dreamt of DP. I often do. He is always leaving me, or rejecting me. I grow more sanguine about it dream by dream.

Students and kids dressed for Halloween created a bedlam out of town this morning as I walked. They shout instead of talking. Girls in summer dresses and shorts, some with blackened eyes and fishnets, running and chasing after each other, all so loud. I am in a different universe from them in my waterproofs and with my now broken umbrella (the wind was too much for it).

I must learn to handle disappoint. Turn it to your advantage, he says. Yes. But learning acceptance is a stronger thing. I yearn for that peace of letting be. Let it be. All of it.

And below us he is dying. Slowly.

It began with one ( I usually have three) of my hot water bottles leaking in my bed. It was a horrible sensation making me dive out of bed and reach for the hairdryer. You’re not going to do that now, he said. Yes, I said, I am. It worked, eventually. And I’m glad for that is one more fear I’ve put to rest.

The real deluge was outside. On and on it went. It invaded my dreams. Such weather always unnerves. I feel vulnerable and I lay there barely sleeping thinking of all those homes being flooded. What have we done, eh? Is this how it is to be? 30 homes in Cumbria, railway lines submerged and so many lying in their beds praying for it to stop.

It has now. Finally.

She was a delight. I somehow thought she might be. And now I have to write it. Give me courage. Always.

It was pouring with rain this morning. Don’t go, he wrote on the message he left for me on the stairs, stay at home instead. I did go. I wanted fresh air and to see the sea again. And I rather like the sound of rain on my umbrella. It did ease a little and then I felt rather silly under all the layers (two rain coats and plastic bags over my socks and inside my boots to stop the rain seeping in). And hot.

We got back in good time yesterday giving me time to check my emails and unpack before making supper. I’m not receptive to emails when I’m tired, I’m always a little warped in how I read them. There is editing to do. Which I should welcome as it is a good learning process, isn’t it? He says it’s fine and that it won’t take long. After all, they could’ve spiked it if they didn’t like it. I will persevere. And be courageous. I promise

The students go the whole hog for Halloween in this town. There are pumpkin heads on windowsills, bats and witches stuck to windows and one house along North Road has fake police tape stretched several times across the front door saying DO NOT ENTER. THIS HOUSE IS HAUNTED. Bless.

And the rain this morning did not stop them clubbing. Why would it? I saw one lad, soaked of course, trying to flag down an ambulance (did he think it was a taxi?). And then a girl dashing through the puddles wearing a black and white polka-dotted mini skirt and pink cowboy hat. A boy chased after her waving his arms about. Both were coatless.

To work now.

It always amazes me how easy it is to forget routine when one has only been away four days.

Now work.

They are like wild things when they flood out of the clubs on a Saturday night. I catch the worst of it when I’m out walking. They shout, scream, litter and kick things about. They are just normal everyday kids who don’t know how to hold their drink. Bless them. I give them a wide berth though. I don’t want their noise. Sometimes there are others amongst them, who sometimes can feel quite sinister by comparison. The quiet ones. Like the man I encountered on Queens Road. I took note of every detail of him. I do it automatically when I am out alone in the dark. Just in case. He was a thick-set man. And not wearing a coat, I could see that he wore a V-necked jumper, probably navy and a checked shirt underneath. And possibly navy or grey trousers. He was slightly bandy and walked reading his phone. I say walked. He lurched and leaned. That’s what made me wary of him. He was ahead of me so I walked close to the railings and houses expecting him to walk into the road. He didn’t but came closer and then very very near. My heart began pumping. I kept walking but all my senses were alive. Adrenalin was racing. And then he was gone. Could I have taken him on? He wasn’t tall but he was heavy, strong, I suspect. But he was clearly pissed. It didn’t come to that, thank god but my internal reaction surprised me. But we are animals, after all. And fear is a great leveller and energy-giver, in those circumstances, at least.

Two other slightly older men walked past me from Terrace Road. They were talking and laughing together. One of them had on a pill-box like hat in caramel. It doesn’t matter, said one, that you’ve been a fucking prick or that you’ve been more of a fucking prick than I was….

I’ve spent the last few mornings drawing in the café. I say ‘the café’ because, being the creatures of habit that we both are, we have our favourite, or at least it has become so. I look forward to going there, even though it is freezing on account of their having the door open the whole time. But the buzz and gentle flow of the people who come is lovely. And I’m growing used to the faces, particularly in the mornings. There’s the elderly gentleman who sits in the tub chair and reads from his phone, and there’s the young man whom he knows who he thinks has mental health issues. He always has porridge topped with chocolate chips and a Pumpkin Spice Latte. He sits alone mostly, though sometimes he is met there by one of (we think) his carers. He eats, stares into the distance a little and then leaves to go on to another coffee shop – Nero and then probably Costa. You going on the Prom, later? he asks him. Dunno, he says. Then there is the very pale, sad-faced blonde-haired lady whom I find quite hard to draw. Her features as indistinct. And then there is the elderly lady who sits on the end of the long table and reads her paper. She drinks cappuccino. The staff have their idiosyncrasies too. The nervy girl with a pony tail was on today. He asked if he could change the chair at our table (again, we always sit there with it having the best view of the queue for me to draw). Yes, she said but please put it back as I’m on my own this morning.

And I’ve just realised that we forgot.

While I was drawing a man burst in and strode over to us. I’ve seen them through the window, he said, and they’re very good. It took me a while to work out what he meant. Your drawings, he said pointing at them. I’ve been watching through the window.

I was touched, to take the trouble to come in and tell me. So nice.

I didn’t think people noticed me, I said.