Author: Ellen Bell

I listened to Julie Andrews being interviewed by Alec Baldwin on his podcast, I forget the name of it. I’ve always had a soft spot for her. I think it is her voice, she feels safe to me, steady, dependable. She was honest, articulate and open. A good guest. A good interviewee.

I got through. She answered, though the sigh she lets out when she does always throws me a little. I heard the two of them in the background. She came on the phone and spoke about ‘Bumbelina’, and I’ve no idea who or what she was talking about.

I liked her. I was nervous as I always am when dealing with interactions via technology. She was open and theatrical and warm. I think we shall get on. And what a joy it was to feel that language on my tongue and to know that I was making some sense. She got it and commended me on my acquisition of an already substantial vocabulary. Who’d have thought it? Was it osmosis? How joyous it made me feel? Is it all about belonging?

It’s become a habit (I can’t really say obsession, it’s not that dramatic) for him to visit and read the graves in the cemetery near the college playing fields where he walks each day. He often comes back and tells me about the people he has read about. Initially it was people he had known, schoolfellows, friends of his parents and even distant relations. But now it is mainly children, those who died young, some not even reaching their second year. He knows that I will be interested, touched even. They are mostly from the last century though a few have been from this. One grave is marked with a simple wooden cross, that moved him and he has referred to it a few times. He takes pictures of them. One day I will walk there myself.

Listening to David Sedaris yesterday talking about chatting to checkout staff I realise how much of my journal used to be taken up with recording the speech of strangers that I had encountered. No longer. I am quite alone, mostly, inside my head. Perhaps the promise of sun will take me out. Meanwhile there is much work to do. Onwards.

She or they call it pinching, that is, the act of picking off the top leaves off the sweet pea shoots to encourage bushier growth. I did two of them today. I was nervous about doing, it they are such tender things, and I’ve husbanded them with such care. (The woman I watched on YouTube telling me how to do it shared my name.) We shall see.

I listened to a programme about Edgar Wallace who is reputed to have written 10,000 words a day. He didn’t seem to need much sleep, said his daughter. I am humbled by such energy and confidence. As always.

The wind was strong but not the force that they promised. I ventured down towards the harbour but turned back (I always feel so guilty when I do that) when it became too difficult to walk. The sea looked magnificent. And is the moon full?

I spied three camper vans down by the harbour and they’ve put up the bollards that section off the motorbike park on the Prom. It’s starting – the season is beginning, though as yet the B&B are yet to open. Do we want them?

Is it in fact a word? he asked me at breakfast. Mattering? It sounds like it should be – smattering, shattering, scattering – but I don’t think so.

Two young people were messing about with a skateboard on Terrace Road when I walked to the sea this morning. He was on it first then she had a go. I watched her as she whirled about using her arms like propellers to move her forward. When she turned to face me I was taken aback by the sultry beauty of her eyes. She looked Eastern, perhaps from the Philippines?

He was at his window smoking when I set off. I didn’t feel like talking much so we passed a quick weather ‘time of the day’: a bit blustery, at least there’s no rain yet, yes, fingers crossed. But I didn’t ask him about the pot for my sweet peas. I should’ve done. Next time.

It was just a throwaway line in Call the Midwife aimed at fattening up one of the young mothers-to-be. Have the top of the milk and an extra potato, the midwife said to her, oh so cosily. And it clearly worked away at my mind for I dreamt of being handed a small bottle of milk by the postman(do you remember those half pint bottles at school?) and that the lid had been punctured as they used to be by blue tits and my finger went through and I went to lick it off before I remembered (in my dream) that I was a vegan. How I loved the top of the milk as a child. I’d badger for it, can I? can I? and pour it over my Frosties, Coco Pops or Cornflakes.

He was gentle. It was horrid, as it always is having someone drilling in your mouth. It was quick too. No injection (the hole is quite small, he said by way of explanation) thankfully. But it’s the suction thing and the air and the water that is the worst. To be alive is to be discomforted, I think. Though I was chastened by listening to Ray Connolly’s play Devoted afterwards. He caught Covid-19 and was hospitalised for 4 months, bless him. I had no idea it was so appalling. I am humbled.

I need to list these smells, some for outside on my walk and others pervading our flat from downstairs and in no particular order: sage, salt, TCP, garlic and bacon. How would it be to live in a detached house?

It was National Puppy Day yesterday, apparently. Or so they said on Classic FM, occasioning requests for Gershwin’s Walking the Dog. He hates it and I hear him groan from his chair in the corner of the room whenever it comes on. A man was walking his dog in the rain this morning as I began mine. He was ahead of me on Northgate Street and looked a little unsafe so I crossed the street. He walked with a lurch and kept tugging at the lead. The dog was big and looked like a sort of retriever-cross. It wasn’t happy, neither of them were. The lead looked like a home-spun affair – a rope of sorts with lots of knots. Was the dog pulling? It’s owner janked at the leash and at one point made the dog lie down on the pavement. I was edgy watching him.

The lit-up fishing boat in the harbour lifted my spirits somewhat. It had obviously just come in for its lights were still blazing and there was a lorry parked up with its lights on and engine running clearly waiting to take the catch. I saw the driver as I walked down the hill talking to one of the fishermen. He was on the quay while the fisherman was still in the boat. It’s a life I know nothing of, I just observe it from a distance as I walk by, umbrella up against the rain.

I’m to have a filling re-done this morning. I really don’t want to.

I saw it this morning as I was walking home. It was a streak of colour slipping between some parked cars. I thought at first that it might be a fox. It was big enough. If it had been a fox it would’ve been quicker. No, it was a cat. A fat cat, bushy tailed and low to the ground and the colour of Seville marmalade.

I dreamt that I’d had some and I did – the biggest royalty statement I’ve had from my writing so far. He says he is proud of me.

The single sock that was driven into the road is still there. It is beginning to lose it’s identity, soon to become a fixture, part of the tarmac. I know how it feels. My gut speaks of my inner struggles, it won’t settle. I am so easily tipped up. God grant me the grace of acceptance.

I dreamt I was walking late at night in Aberaeron. Except that wasn’t really were it was, it was too edgy for that sleepy place. At one point I came upon a group of shadowy men gathered around a brazier. I was scared. Who do we have here? one of them shouted, after catching sight of me. He was young with a laughing face but sinister too. As I turned and walked away he began to follow me. I’m an old married woman, I said, and you are beginning to frighten me, stop following me. He stopped, lifted his hands in a gesture of non-committal, and said, that’s brave of you, and returned to his cronies. I woke aware that I’d faced something and come out OK.

Flat has been cleaned, now to all those little jobs that need doing…..

I asked him at breakfast if he ever had them. He said no, he didn’t. They are not really voices, at least not how they portray them in films. They are more like conversations that are playing in my head that I’m not really a part of but just overhear, or perhaps I am just the means through which they are spoken, a kind of mouthpiece, I suppose. They come just before rising. I’ve woken to the alarm and I just lie there awhile trying to psych myself up for the day and giving thanks for all that I have (and a quick blessing – for her and for him and for the little ones) and its then that they come. This morning it was like I was seeing the words written down as well as hearing them. The first word was spoken by a voice that was either not practised in English or had only just learnt to read. It was slow and laboured in its delivery. The second part of the statement was more joyous and ended with the flourish of an exclamation mark. (Where does it all come from, for I am not fashioning it?) Anyway, the voice or voices said: ‘Consented. It’s us!’