Author: Ellen Bell

I remembered his name when I was walking. The character from Sanditon was Sidney not Stanley Parker. Remembering is a slow process these days. I get cross sometimes when he asks if I remember the name of actor or the title of a film because invariably I don’t and the trying to find it in my head can hurt.

I woke early – I’d slept badly with the article I have to write whirling round and round inside my head. So I got up. The moon was beautiful turning the roofs of the houses silver. I didn’t need my torch. And I walked the Perygyl. I forgot to say yesterday that I saw the man who works on his computer in his kitchen at 3 in the morning. I thought he’d gone, I haven’t seen him in ages. Life felt restored to normalcy, for a while.

My lovely laptop went a little awry just now. He held my hand and I cried a little from the fear of not being able to write. What a baby, eh? She’s back now. Thank God. To work.

The wind was forecast to come from the North West so I walked a different way this morning. And besides, I told myself, the bakery is shut so no gorgeous bread-making smells to miss. So I walked along North Road hoping to see some rogue Christmas tree lights still on. There were none, though the house with all the huge teddy bears (I wonder if it’s hers?) in the windows had a positive cornucopia of decorations. An array of streamers and different trees – a real one and some fake – hung from or leaned against the windows and the teddies all had hats and tinsel draped around them. It made me tired just looking at it. Someone is clearly hanging on to childhood in that house and whoever lives with them humours them, or perhaps they love it too. Can it be hers?

The moon was a big white circle – just lovely, particularly the way it lights up the water and the path as I walk. It’s just that little bit of light, like Frank and Peggy’s ‘little bit of perfect’.

I’ve much to do. I liked hearing her voice but so much is lost in the translation. I was sorry for it, I think we would’ve got on if the tongue had been a shared one.

Shall I learn it properly?

I dreamt of prospective lovers, including the actor who played Mr Parker in Sanditon (was it Stanley? ), I couldn’t believe that it was me he kept looking at, and there was a younger man, let’s dance I said as we walked through a plaza – all inspired no doubt by my re-reading of P&P. What a joy that is – and the notes too.

Now to work.

It was only a dream, nevertheless they unsettle me, after all I’m usually 3 hours alone with their import until he wakes to shake off the bleakness. I was in a bus terminal. It was busy. All of the passengers were women. I noticed one of the buses were going to London. Where was I meant to be going? I had no idea. I spoke to one woman who was sitting on a bench. She was going to Wrexham, she told me and pulled a face. That’s difficult to get to, I said. Then I was in a some kind of conference hall and that too was full of women, older women of a certain age and income bracket. They were friendly and most smiled at me. I was partly naked, I think, though I had a dress draped around me. Why not just put it on, I told myself. I decided to try and get out of the door but I got caught up in one of the women’s scarf. She was very nice about it. I had also lost my bag and all my things but the distress was minor. Plus my father had given me a lot of money, though I knew he was dead, and yet I wanted to send a text thanking him but couldn’t find him on my phone. Then I woke. Too much. Too unsettling.

I saw another of the red lightning bolts in a window along Thespian street – it read ‘She’s someone’s sister, daughter, wife and mother’ but the apostrophe s and sister, daughter, wife and mother had been crossed of so it read ‘She’s someone’.

They weren’t the 50 or 60 mile an hour winds that they predicted, at least they weren’t when I went out. I still had to cling to a wall and a drainpipe when I turned the corner off the Prom but otherwise it was merely blustery. It did blow earlier on, so much so that I had to shut my window. I’m sure it coloured my dreams. I was in my mother’s house in Spain and yet it wasn’t. And a whole host of people were trooping through using it a through-path ostensibly. For some reason I tried to be welcoming thinking that is what she would want and even laid on some food and drink for them. She was present and yet she wasn’t, leaving a plastic bag of food for me. I looked inside and it was all exotic fruits and vegetables, I was bemused and unsure how to cook or indeed eat them. But I appreciated her attempt to please me.

I always read the introductions to novels, do you? I’m reading the one to Austen’s P&P by an academic called Vivien Leigh (?) I think, though it would be remarkable if it was. I’ve enjoyed it. Lots of scholarship and quoting of Mary Wollstonecraft, Hannah More and Burke (sorry I forget his Christian name). It gives the novel a wonderful weighty context. Fascinating.

I felt unwell yesterday afternoon. Surely it wasn’t just my usual non-tea Saturday? I succumbed and dozed in the afternoon instead of working. I feel a little better today and my knee, though bruised, is moving better. What an old codger I sound. Now, to more important things what shall I listen to today?

I can’t always make things out as I walk in early morning gloom. I think it was a feather, caught in a coweb in the eaves of one of the tall terrace houses along North Parade, that was flapping about in breeze. I heard laughter and looked around me, there was no one. Then I saw a lit window above. Students gathering for a late night Christmas party no doubt. I saw the moon as I walked along the Prom it was peeping out between layers of clouds, still yellow. It will be big soon.

It’s over, all that kerfuffle is done and dusted for another year. I enjoyed listening to the carol-countdown yesterday afternoon, though. What now, eh, Classic FM?

He didn’t know what the red lightning bolt signified either. He looked it up. It’s a feminist solidarity symbol from Poland. I’ve seen a few attached to windows.

No news from her. I hope that grief hasn’t floored her. Give her strength.

I was thinking of her and of the time when I asked too much and I slipped and fell. Good job our neighbour is very deaf for I fell just outside her window and swore like a trooper. My knees are a little bruised and cranky but nothing broken. Why is it the falling always makes me want to cry?

There is a sign in The Pelican Bakery’s window saying that they will be shut until January 8th. Two weeks of no bread smells as I walk, how will I manage? And not seeing the comforting sight of the girl with the ponytail in there busying herself about laying the loaves on the shelves. I need it in this bleakness. The moon was big, yellow and glowing when I first woke but had gone by the time I went out. It is too black. And cold. And there were too many people about, kids mostly returning home from Christmas Eve party, no doubt.

The stink of starling guano remains strong around the Prom. Why do they return to this cold, bleak place for the winter? Be off with you. I would. Like a shot. Ah, sun. Why have you forsaken us?

Happy Christmas.

I thought of her last night and on waking. How do you bear such a loss?

I saw her this morning but she was sans bag. She walks slower these days and the rolling gait has become more of an amble. She never wears a coat, even when it rains, just that sweat shirt top. Her hair is lank and greasy. Where does she live? When she senses me walking behind her she often takes a detour up a side road. I don’t take it personally. She is shy, private, inward. I wish her well.

There were lots of birds about as I walked. I could both hear and see them. They flitted about from tree to road, swooping just in front of me. I saw sparrows ( I think, hard to say in the gloom), robins and a single pied wagtail. They must be hungry, it is colder this morning. Should I bring seeds next time? And what is that song that I hear, that kind of clicking metallic sound, is it a blue tit?

I saw two cats too. One circled around me as I climbed the little hill to the castle. It meowed and chattered clearly trying to tell me something. I fussed over it a little then walked on. What can you do?

The smells from the Pelican Bakery were extra gorgeous this morning.

She died yesterday. Her mother sent an email telling me. I am so sorry. Sorry for them all, they were such a close family and she had been ill for so long, going in and out of hospital. She was younger than me. It is heartbreaking for them all. Gone, just like that. She’d had enough, clearly, enough of the pain of the indignity and the bodily intrusion. I wish her peace.

If there wasn’t such a fuss made about Christmas would being alone at this time be so acute? I don’t know. I know many who are and will be. People who are usually with at least one family member, for better or for worse. Some are choosing to remain solitary for safety reasons, others because they have no choice. I am sorry for the sociable ones, the ones for whom their own company has begun to pall. I am not alone, though I’ve had Christmases when I have been. It was strange and a little melancholy but it was certainly made worse by my memories of noisier times and of a sense that there was a perfect Christmas to be had somewhere.

Town is bleak these mornings, only a few lighted windows and with so many shops with signs in the door saying they are closed and will open again soon. It is a sorry time.

There is no certainty. Life is in constant flux but we/I kid myself that it is not. The plates beneath our feet are perpetually shifting, so surprises should not unsettle us but they do. I could look at it another way. I know more now than I did at this time yesterday. So be it. I shall do my best for him, be practical, steady, solid.

There are still nice things. What were they this morning? The blow-up Santa that was tied to a railing outside one of the terraced houses I walk past on the way to the harbour was one. I can’t think of anymore at the moment. It will do. Just that. Oh, there was something else. A parcel in a script I didn’t recognise. A warm gesture. I felt loved and remembered and part of something good. Thank you, sweet girl. I remember holding your head in my hands when you were still a schoolgirl. Tender. Bless you.

Life is a mess. I try so hard to order it but it won’t do. The mess is there. And it wobbles me so. I must learn to yield to it. So many people have it worse than I do. I just want to know what is expected of me and how to do it as well as I can. My other needs are taken care of. I have the time and the comfort that allows me to fret. I know this. And I try to be calm. Now I have a job to do. I’ve done my best to apply order, to ask what is required. Now I must sit still and await this conversation. I want it go well, to be of benefit to him and to me. Let it be so.