Author: Ellen Bell

They’re easily created. You do something that feels right and as far as someone else is concerned it isn’t. And then it seems impossible to make it OK again. They won’t allow the smoothing, the shaking of the hand, the hug that you long to give. I don’t like it when people misunderstand you, he said. My love. What have I done to merit so much loving?

This morning it feels better. An email comes and I think things are better. But I become warier.

I let her talk, though I would’ve preferred silence. She is a good woman though I feel like I’ve been in a boxing ring, and lost, after seeing her. My body aches with its desire to hold onto the stiffness and rigidity that has held it in place for months now.

I dreamt of choosing to clothe my nakedness again. How interesting. Don’t you think? It was a borrowed coat, but it shielded my vulnerability nonetheless. I don’t have to be so open, the dream and my subconscious seemed to say. I saw myself naked in a mirror and then decided.

We’re off soon. Me to draw and he to read. Nice.

I’m going to walk later for the wind is raging out there. And there is rain. He persuaded me to put it off till later. If he hadn’t woken I would’ve gone out. The wind unsettles that little animal inside of me. So I am at my desk, writing this early. And I wrote the other, yesterday. I’m never sure of what I write (or indeed of what I draw). I just do my best. It is all I can do. He says it is enough. And I must trust in that.

She writes and tells me of having to begin packing up her house. I can read the heartbreak and fear in between the lines. It is too much. And to do it alone. I want to help but know not how.

Oh, these wee small hours are a bugger. And I’ve missed being out there, drawing. It’s the energy, you see, and all that life.

It was a strange scene. They were on Llanbadarn Road. First I heard him calling her name. She was a tall girl, with long hair. Evidently intent on ignoring him she kept on walking before deciding to sit down on a low wall. He sat down also, about 500 yards away. Neither said anything. The odd thing was the third person, an older man in a high-vis jacket. Leaving the boy and walking over to talk to the girl (Hi, she said) he seemed to be the mediator. I turned round once more (I was heading towards the junction) and saw the boy push himself of the way and lope his way over to them.

The home-going students all seemed to be coughing as I walked through town. We discussed it over breakfast. Selfish, he called it. Perhaps they haven’t been taught to put their hands over their mouths, I replied. Coughing is the new smoking. Hated and feared. They do it nonetheless. I don’t want to judge them. They are as much a part of this town as the seagulls. Both equally noisy, at times. They’ve always done it at this time of the year (cough, that is). Perhaps we should be more charitable. They are young.

Taxis rush up and down Penglais Hill taking students home. This was last night when it was pouring with rain. They flood out of the clubs and bars, coatless, naturally and are too tired, pissed or unfit to make the climb on foot. There are no fuckin’ taxis in this town, I heard one student shout. There used to be more and you can’t blame them for clocking off early to save taking a load of drunk youths who are likely to throw up in the back of their cab. They speed past, their wheels making a whishing sound across the rain soaked tarmac. A group of students huddle by the entrance to the SPAR on the corner of Northgate Terrace. Two girls who had been standing further up the street on their mobile phones run down to join them, one of them exclaiming, we’ve got a taxeeeee!

I woke from a night of complex dreams. In the last one I was climbing a hill, it was daylight and I could see the winding path ahead of me. Then there were two women just by me. (It seems to happen that way with dreams, people just arrive with no ceremony or warning.) They were close to my face and I could hear them talking. They were mother and daughter but both were quite ancient. The daughter was doing all the talking. A cheerful woman, but her hair was thinning. It was drawn back with what looked like a barrette but looking closer as I could see that it wasn’t a clip at all but bones from her skull that had burst through her skin.

He keeps quoting him. He is the tree surgeon we used to see regularly in a coffee shop we frequented years ago (and have begun doing so again so that I can draw). We saw him and his wife again last week. He’s had cancer treatment and must be in his late 70s, as is she. He’d seen them on the way to the loo and asked how he was. Me and she, he’d told him, we’ve only one way. (A tall, rangy man, whom illness has made more craggy, he is prone to making big, long-armed gestures.) We’ve only one way, he’d repeated to him, forward. Forward, he’d said, his arm making an arrow and pointing, FORWARD.

It is too terrible to contemplate. And what good would it do him or his family? I want to put it somewhere neat, but it isn’t neat. It is a tragedy for all concerned and beyond. Let him rest in peace. And may his family find succour.

He isn’t well. We’ve both said it. He even stopped the district nurse on her way back to her car to ask how he was. He’s doing OK, she said. When he asked if it was cancer, she said she wasn’t at liberty to say. I shouldn’t have asked her, he said, afterwards. He is failing, people would say. His body is shrinking. And he is unkempt. His hair and facial hair go uncut and untended. Is he imploding, is he in pain, is he willing his demise? And he rarely smokes. We never hear him coughing out of his open window. I want to say something but he doesn’t invite confidences. You well? I ask. Not bad, he says. I fear you’re ill, I want to say. Not because I am nosy, or wanting to pity but because I feel for him. I do. Though of what help we can be, I don’t know. Will she outlive him? Their family are rallying, brothers have been back and forth. It’s the silence. And the waiting.

And autumn comes swiftly. Already the pavements are made gold and yellow and orange with leaves.

A crap drawing day yesterday. I was too tired to think and make good decisions. I ended up drawing a left-behind Peroni bottle that someone had put a twig in, in lieu of a straw perhaps. It was perched on a wall on North Road. I drew it with a continuous line – a failsafe rush of mark-marking when your head is full of mush and you must do something, draw something.

Paul Hogarth always tried to surprise himself with his drawing. And I realise that I do the same. I want to break out of my habitual methods of beginning, of the materials I choose to use and the places I opt to study. Always trying to get better, to draw, make or write something that feels as if it has come from somewhere or someone else. It takes energy and boldness and confidence – none of which I have much of, though some might question this. But I do have the drive to improve. I always have. Nevertheless, after a day of doing battle with my funding application (and all those little things that must be established and ironed out) my afternoon session of drawing was a lack lustre one. I ended it with a continual line drawing of a pristine red moped parked outside the Church Surgery. Perched on the end of a little wall I worked speedily, aware of but not really hearing all the chatter that walked or buzzed past me. Like the woman on the phone saying to someone, ‘ It’s the then and now that matters’. Or one of the gentle boys from Goa (with names like Shubert and Wellington) who we used to see in the Shilam when it was still a restaurant and not a fast food delivery outlet on the industrial estate, who rushed into the doctor’s leaving his little two-seater car double-parked and flashing. The last drawing made me late getting home. But then, climbing hill onto North Road I saw something I shall try to draw today and that felt better. To have a plan is good. Don’t you think?

Town was quiet this morning and the wind a mere nothing (Kettler’s was wrong, eh?). A gaggle of lads hung around on the corner of the street opposite The Pelican Bakery, shouting and throwing things. Just japes, no doubt. There was a girl in shorts. Then, walking down the Prom towards Terrace Road I heard the pulsing of music and loud voices. There was no one about, except a few lonesome stragglers. I saw a opened window in one of the terraces facing the sea. It was wide open and a throbbing yellow light came from it and a voice. It sounded disembodied. COME BACK! it implored. COME BACK TO US.

The Prom has been quieter these last few mornings. There are a few students dotted about but nothing like it has been. Perhaps it is a sign of the end of Fresher’s Week and the novelty of being here or being back. Or maybe they have settled down into the reality of having to actually work. Or perhaps it is symptomatic of the new ‘passport’ regulations for clubs imposed by the Welsh Government. I still saw some, like the two girls leaning against the window sill of the ‘Vaults’ eating, or the boy on a bench by Castle Point hunched over and reading (in that dim light) from a book or the lad, lying on a backless seat across from the sandpit staring up at the sky eating chips from a carton on his chest. The rain didn’t come and the wind was a mere whisper. It was nice to be out and quiet.

I read from Paul Hogarth’s book on pencil drawing while I waited for him to return with our weekly shopping. I had no idea that he too felt fear at the start of a drawing. He had his methods, some of which I might try and adopt. And he’d use the observers as a kind of energy boost. Not sure that I can do that. And that he would not look at a drawing he’d made for three days and if he didn’t like it when he did he’d chuck it. Should I be braver and draw bigger? And perhaps even invest in a camping stool?

They don’t want me staying in their homes. I understand.

I need to explain. It’s not that I have noisome habits, or talk with my mouth full or put my elbows on the table ‘or nothing’. It’s more that I am singular in my waking and sleeping. I wake early, as you know, and it has become ingrained, to stop now would unsettle me. So my routine disturbs theirs, which is, of course, more normal. I understand. And if I’m honest I prefer the anonymity of a hotel. I feel constrained in the other people’s houses, I always have. I try too hard to do what I think is best. I try too hard to be a good, an exemplary houseguest, except, that is, in my rising. So there we have it. She loves me and I love her but she pulls a face when I suggest we might stay. A hotel it is then.