Author: Ellen Bell

I catch Dr Mosley’s podcast One Good Thing on Radio 4 as I’m preparing lunch on a Sunday. Yesterday he was encouraging us take a regular cold shower. The idea horrifies me. I need warmth. I sit at my desk with two hot water bottles, not because I’m cold necessarily but they comfort me. And yet his argument was so convincing that I’ve been wracking my brains how to manage it. I don’t like showers. Could it be a cold bath instead? And if so, when? Before or after my warm one? I do the walking, and I eat fermented foods (his last two recommendations) – must I do them all?

I’d bought a series of small frames to frame my sewing trials with but they are not deep enough. It feels wasteful but I had to try. What to do with them? Well, yesterday I put an old postcard I had of Gwen John’s self portrait in a red tartan dress. How I love it. I’ve leant it against the window to hide the paint that is chipping away on the windowsill. It looks perfect. What a fillip it gave me. Such a small thing and yet so transformational. Joy comes in tiny packages, I think. The real stuff, anyway.

There is that expression ‘withered on the vine’ which I suppose is meant to mean something has died even though it was attached, or still part of its source of life and sustenance. Some of my sweet pea seedlings have withered. How upset it makes me. The rest seem fine, but because I can’t work out why some have died it makes me nervous for the rest. Will they all go the same way? I have tried my best, but my knowledge of these things, of horticulture in general, is small. Poor loves. What can I do to nurture you better? He, as always, is more sanguine. ‘Tis best to be so, I think.

There was silence when I set out this morning. Where are the birds? I asked myself. Is there a particular time when they begin their song? And then I heard one, in the distance, nearer town.

She died. And she was so young. I didn’t think you’d know her, he said, after I’d let out a cry at the headline. Poor love. I read her husband’s tweet. My heart goes out to him and her family. I didn’t think it still killed people. Of course it does, he says, rather sharply.

Of course it does. Rest in peace.

We sat out again, twice in fact, now that my articles are done. He wittered and I listened, my face turned like a bloom to the sun. He told me about the Coronation Tea that a neighbour held in their garage (the only space large enough to hold everyone and in case of rain). It’s funny that people had garages when there were so few privately-owned cars. I think of them in that dark space, the door or doors open to the daylight, standing around with mugs of tea (or did they sit at the table on deckchairs) eating cake and talking about the Queen. It would’ve been decorated with bunting and perhaps there were Coronation napkins (I’d say serviettes but he says that’s common). He did say that there were Coronation mugs. He’s lived almost 2 centuries more than me and has memories, as you can see, that I find hard to conceive of – such as the rationing, the roads free of cars, horses and carts still being used (he told me that there was a smithy) and no central heating with ice on the insides of the windows in winter. I think he was happy though for all the comparative discomfort.

The bluebells are out in the gardens along Llanbadarn Road, and those huge, fat red poppies in the old bakery. I tell him of my sightings from my walk – the benches on the Prom being newly painted. And he tells me his.

I love him, do you know that?

It is a comfort when it’s still dark to see lights on in the other flats around the quad. This morning the one directly across from us was ablaze. I could see the woman who lives there with the man with the long blonde hair that works at the Film and TV department of the University (the one he says has got ‘porky’) working at two laptops. She was still hard at it when I got back from my walk at 4.30 am. Sometimes the lad who works at the bike shop in town and who is going out with the colonic nurse has his lights on, which I can see from my studio. And the Americans, who I always think of as Canadians, they too have their bedroom lights on early. I feel a strange connection with these early birds or night owls. We breathe the same air.

The sea was gently lapping this morning, its sound disturbed only momentarily by a parked car pumping out music. And I caught a blackbird perched on a fence singing its heart out, its whole body swelling and pulsing out its song. Glorious.

We sat out last night after supper. The sun was too lovely and I longed to be still in its warmth. He came with me and I listened to his stories, my eyes closed and face lifted. It makes me feel better, it gets me out of my usually fearful head. And I am grateful.

She writes describing her anxiety and my heart goes out to her. I feel so useless when dear friends write of their sadness and disease. Will warm thoughts ever be enough?

Will Self on the radio talking about the editing process and I think about combining fractional pieces of sewing and imagery and text. All I ever need is time. Meanwhile, I have this last one to write.

When it’s sunny and there isn’t time to ‘go and sit out’, I stand up on the window seat in our kitchen upstairs and stick my head out of the skylight. I love seeing the world, our small world, from the rooftops. I can see far off into the distance and I can hear human sounds from the quad down below. Last night someone was playing a penny whistle (or was it a flute). It sounded so light and cheerful and happy. It stills me – the sun on my face, that expanse and those gentle sounds of living.

Lucky: they call my sister lucky, was another one of the half-asleep, half-awake sentences that came into my head this morning. They make him laugh. I even see the punctuation, I tell him. There was definitely a colon.

I was slow this morning, and didn’t manage to do my whole walk. I did make it to the harbour nevertheless, in time to see the fishing boat out at sea, its lights blaring like a flame.

I dreamt that my father, now sometime dead, wanted to take us all, the whole family, including my mother (who is also a long time dead) from whom he’d divorced long ago, on a holiday. The whole caboodle and for a month. Unheard of, but he was delighted at his largesse. One of my sisters who I saw at the hairdressers was planning to have all her teeth re-arranged (or was it taken out and put back in again?) before the arrival of her next child. I see where the notions come from and even if rather implausible it warmed me.

He insists that I stop having my detox day. You lose a whole day, he says, meaning I feel like shit with headaches and such. And my mood sinks. Who would’ve thought a pot of tea a day could do so much? Heigh ho. Back to it. And my last interview today.

He holds no truck (is hold the right verb) with dreams. I do. If I can’t make sense of them I like to see where the germs of them might have come. Last night, or possibly this morning, I dreamt I’d made a fried egg sandwich for Boris Johnson. It was in an envelope and I was dithering whether to give it to him or not. We were having a meeting about some government owned flats in an airport, not sure which one, that were being used and abused by civil servants, one of which had a girlfriend called Jordan. I was to make a performance piece about it. He took the sandwich and I watched him eat it. (He separated the slices of bread to see what was inside before he ate. It looked more like a cold egg sandwich then.) He didn’t thank me but took it as a matter of course that I would’ve considered his appetites. So where did it come from? Well the food represents my endless planning for his meals. And BJ? Well, we’d been discussing a crossword clue and the solution looked like ‘bumbling’. Need I say more?

He shares the same name as my love, though I don’t if the Queen ever shortened it to the three letter word that I use. No, I doubt it, though the satirical programmes will have it that he’d call her Liz. I am sorry. I cry because death and loss are moving, any death, even a great public one like his is. I bet they hate all this attention. The BBC has given over to it completely, no John Shea or Celeste this morning – just dirge after dirge after dirge. So be it. It is respectful, I suppose. But then I think of the man in the Oslo flat, found after 10 years dead. Had nobody missed him, noticed his demise? That too is sad, to be so utterly alone and friendless. May he rest in peace and he.

I’ve almost finished but I need to make it warmer, kinder somehow. You don’t have to like them, he says to me. No, I suppose not. But I want to be kind and respectful. I will do my best.