Author: Ellen Bell

Mostly, I do ok. I manage it. But sometimes, like this morning, I want to take to my bed and never move again. They feel like they’ve been wrenched from the socket and are tearing. Torn. And then the aching comes.

Sometimes it is worse than my arthritis, though I think one exacerbates the other. I remember Dad saying once that he was having a break from playing golf as a result of having it. And yet, I was under the impression that exercise was the cure. Perhaps he had it worse. It, like so much these days, must be borne. With, one hopes, grace.

I write, and to a certain extent, draw to remember. I work hard at trying keep hold of my dreams, though I can only manage the details of one a night, when I have several. Last night I was climbing a hill, though, as the terrain was soft clay it was more like crawling on my hands and knees. I was trying to reach the top, which I did. There was a little house up there with huge holes for windows and I think it was roofless. I told my unknown female companion that I wanted to live there, though admitting to the folly of this as I already had a home at the bottom of the hill.

He fell down the stairs this morning. He wasn’t hurt, thankfully but it did take some time to get him up again.

When I left for my walk at 3.00am there was a man on the bridge ahead of me. I’ve seen him lots of times. He has a flat in Block C. He is small, never gives eye contact and looks unhappy. When he leaves for work he is often listening to a small transistor radio that he holds close to his head. I don’t recognise the language that they are speaking.

They come in the wee small hours. And then there is the news with all that bad stuff to further increase them. It is mostly about how I will manage once he is gone. He says it is useless to worry, and he is right, but it is hard to stop. I have worried since I was a child, and do not know how to stop. Not now. I must just live with it, try to breathe, put in place all I can and then trust that all will come right. Mostly, it does.

This time it was an ex-politician and then writer. I liked hearing his voice, treacly, steady, reasonable. A good man, I think. We need more. R.I.P. R H.

There is no excuse. Usually, I am calm and mostly even-tempered, but sometimes, like this morning, when my nerves are all jangly, I behave like a child. It was over nothing. And I know that he doesn’t like it. And I am sorry.

I’ve thought of him alot. He touched my life, albeit lightly. I am sad to think he is no longer here with us. R.I.P. x

I have a strong sense of smell. Sometimes it is a gift at other times it is a curse. It turns me against hotel rooms, other people’s houses and sometimes the people themselves. I don’t mean it to, but my body rejects the noisome. As he knows.

It has become habitual and when it isn’t there my body and mind seek it out, actively. You don’t seem so tense today, he says. But I am. It has just arrived, pricking, like a conscience never to be appeased.

We live so deeply within in when we are dreaming them, and then we wake and they are lost. Where do they go? He says that sometimes he gets flashes of ones that he has dreamt long ago. I think I do too. I try to piece them together on first waking but they slip from my grasp. It makes me sad, that.