Author: Ellen Bell

We got to the coffee shop a little early and followed a bearded man inside. Give me another 5 minutes, said the assistant manager, we’re not open yet. Somewhat shamefaced we slunk outside to stand by the door. Is that patchouli oil I can smell? I asked the bearded man (he was small in stature and there were strands of grey at the end of his beard, though he can’t have been that old). No, I don’t think so, he said, smiling, perhaps it’s Shea butter. Yes, I said, not wholly convinced. We struck up a conversation, nevertheless and I learnt that he was a chef (‘an unconventional one’ – he used real lemons in his humus and got the push for it) and a sound engineer. We ended our chat by agreeing that coffee tastes different (and toast) when someone else makes it for you.

There were a few soldiers in uniform and ex-servicemen in civvies in the café, one who couldn’t have been more than 30 had two medals on his lapel. His friend joined him at the table with shaven head and beard and a very very sharp suit finished off with leopard skin winkle pickers. Fantastic. (He had nudged me when he’d arrived and hissed, look at his shoes!) I tried to draw them all but my confidence was ebbing and there was too much to capture.

We stood together in silence as the clocks struck 11. The silence was inner rather than outer, cars still drove past and parishioners at a nearby church chattered. I held you all in my head and heart wishing you peace. I hope you heard and felt it.

We used to do them at school. This was the boarding school we were all sent to (well the eldest three). Even at the time it struck me as a rather antiquated form of entertainment, both for the actors and the audience. It was centred on the Nativity and we ‘struck’ scenes, holding our poses, wobbling and trying not to fall for the time that the curtain was open. I never got to be an angel, not having the required blonde hair (it was the 70s) and was mostly cast as a water-carrier or a shepherd, and usually with a glued-on beard. (My school acting career did reach a more giddier height than that when I was cast as Elvira in Blithe Spirit but that was sometime later and due to Mrs Plaice’s careful nurturing (up in that attic room) of what she saw as my talent.) But back to the tableaux. I thought of them this morning as I walked and saw various groups of figures, mostly students, in the dark. Most were still, leaning against walls, talking in huddles or, as in the case, of the two boys outside the corner SPAR vaguely communing, with one standing reading his phone as the other leant forward, his hand clutching a railing, being sick.

The White Horse has put up it’s Christmas lights – long trails of them flicking on and off. Nice. It challenges the darkness. I hope that there will be more to come.

It’s Remembrance Sunday today, isn’t it? I said to him this morning. I’d thought of it as I’d walked home. My head is so full of my own worries that I forget the loss, pain and aching of others all too often.

And my hyacinths are beginning to come through. It is too soon, isn’t it? There are just the smallest of pokings – a pin prick of green. Will they last till the Spring?

There’s nothing else to say or think about. Let her go. That’s all. Let her torment end. Return her to her family. Enough. Let her free. Please.

Journeying always throws me. I belong nowhere, I’m in an no mans land with only the occasional respite from a cold, bleak motorway service station. And then there is the unpacking and getting used to the smell (now unfamiliar even after only 3 days) of home. I cleave to spaces. I make homes of them if only for a brief time and the leaving of them (and all their as yet unexperienced possibilities) is a wrench. Don’t get me wrong I love my/our home but it is my place of work too and I long for a longer, more sustained escape (and one that is free from obligation, however wonderful). And seeing them was wonderful. Those brave, strong little bodies so full of life and hope. How I love them. And her. And her.

There is a red light shining on the war memorial. They make it red every November. It is a gentle and poignant tribute. And we forgot yesterday. I am ashamed.

It’s just a job of work, he told me after I’d received a 2nd edit request. It’s ugly to me, all that chopping and rearranging and questioning. I feel flayed by it. But I know that I’m overreacting. They want it to be the best it can be for their journal, I know this but the child in me wants to stamp her feet and yell. Which I pretty much did most of the morning yesterday. He was very patient. And then the café I’d set aside 3 hours to draw in wasn’t open. There were no lights on and that pretty, china-doll-faced barista was outside frantically texting. We went to Nero instead where the coffee is better and sat in the window. The drawing isn’t so good there, I can’t see faces as well. And we sat in his favourite seat – another customer, that is, and when he came in we both knew he would come and sit by us and talk. Which he did. I didn’t say much but he was kind. He’s the one who sells fruit machines to pubs (and has a huge store of Wurlitzers, and tried to sell us one – love to, but no room) and he’s just lost his father. I felt for him but said little. But as I say, he was kind. Like so many people in this town, the fruit-machine man says ‘isn’t it’ at the end of most sentences. I ended up listening for it while I drew. She sketches a lot, doesn’t she, he said to him. Yes, he replied, she’s an artist.

The better café (drawing-wise) opened eventually – the opener had overslept. And later we got our seat. I drew and drew – though not particularly well. But practice is practice, is it not? People are beginning to notice what I am doing. It has to be so, I suppose. The china-face girl came over to talk to him about it when I’d gone to the loo. She wanted to study fashion but Covid put paid to it. I might go back, she said. She’d asked him if I sold them. And an elderly man who’d sat next to us and I’d tried to draw noticed and smiled. He sat in silence while his wife talked or rooted through her handbag. I noticed he clasped a pocket calculator for most of the time. When they left their table was taken by a garrulous women and two friends. They spoke Welsh but with English words inserted in now and again.

This morning the wind was off the sea, blowing. I walked along Terrace Road into it. 3 lads ran past me, shouting and racing each other. There is no way, one roared, that I’m going to sleep in no bus shelter.

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.