Author: Ellen Bell

They invade my dreams, those words that we ruminate over during our daily crossword-doing. Last night it was effluvia which became a flood of faeces outside a cafe. Then someone was handing me some pills and another woman was talking about her stash of hard drugs in a caravan in her garden. Should I report her to the police, I thought before convincing myself that I shouldn’t because she was a nice, good woman. The rest was lost on waking. A gloomy morning all and all. And then he tells me of the new restrictions in place here. So be it. What will be must be. Can I go and do my review? Probably not. Or get my hair cut, finally? Probably not.

The man who we think is a lecturer on account of the ‘seminars’ he held in car park over the summer has a huge cardboard cut out of christmas tree in his window. I was surprised, it seems out of character, or at least the one we’ve invented for him. He is thin as a rake, a smoker and rather grungy in appearance. But he has a young son who visits at weekends, so perhaps it is for him.

I see many lit windows as I walk between 3 and 4 am. A lad came out of one of the houses along Llanbadarn Road. He had a small knapsack over his shoulder. Where was he going? The Chinese student at no 1 had her light on as did the guy who works in Summit Cycles who is going out with the nurse. And the lights were on in the American’s flat. He’s called Eric, I forget her’s. Insomniacs all?

The council had left a string of lights on by mistake over Terrace Road. It was nice – a surprise whiteness in the black, black dark.

I’m just about to put some up but to be honest my heart isn’t really in it. I used to love it all that. But now I can’t seem to muster the energy. He is sanguine about it. He doesn’t like this time of the year and would rather it passed him by. I, however, do like the lights and the carols and once I’ve put some up I will be more in the spirit. I miss so much of what it used to be and can’t be. Heigh ho. Many are alone or in pain or grieving as yesterday so poignantly showed me.

There’s a pink dolls’ house in the window of the second-hand shop Terrace Avenue. It has been given pride of place and raised on a little plinth above all the other stuff that lies beneath it such as the battered four-stringed banjo, the various model railway engines and Portmeirion crockery. I longed for one as a child but my desires were for a beautiful one full of exquisitely-made perfectly scaled down antique furniture and effects just like that one we visited all those years ago in Windsor Castle. This pink one would’ve disappointed me. It is clunky, the furniture is clunky. And it is too pink. For £25 someone is bound to snap it up for some little girl or other. I hope it gives pleasure.

The widow of the electrician who died in Spain has hung some lights from the eaves of her house. They are splendid. The house across the way owned by the jovial ex-butcher and some-time jailbird has hung some in a tree and he leaves his inside Christmas tree lights one too. I fantasised, as I walked, about making some thank you cards and popping them in their letter boxes to say how much I appreciated the lights as I walked through the dark. But I talked myself out of it. They leave the lights on for themselves not for we solitary ramblers.

A friend of his has died. He told me of it when I came in to wake him for breakfast. I sat on the side of the bed and held his hand. He was a kind a man, a little opinionated, I believe, but kind. He witnessed our second marriage. He wore a sports jacket, I think. Rest in peace. The town will feel his loss. As does he.

I threw it out in the end. It isn’t easy, I grew attached to things. I’ve mended it before even resorting to sewing on a little hook when the velcro packed-in. But it was time to go. He is to buy me a new one today. However, it rained this morning so I had to borrow his. A huge thing and rather cumbersome to walk with. But I needed it. See I can fill up space with nonsense just like Jane Austen’s Miss Bates. It’s that details thing again. The big picture is too much to bear so keep it small. Anyway his umbrella withstood the wind better than my old one. I only saw two people as I walked and both wore masks. Good. Another lockdown to come in Wales. It has to be and we must acquiesce. Roll on next year.

He came to look at the washing machine. He did it all while I stayed out of the way in the studio. He is good like that, better with strangers than I. He does the Welsh thing – Where you from? Where’d you go to school? Do you know so and so and so on. I heard them above me. And the machine whirring and spinning. All is well. It was a ‘load issue’ apparently. I feel responsible. Will I be told off? But I’m glad it isn’t broken. I try to take care of things, even machines that frighten me.

My umbrella is broken. I’d like to mend it if I could but I think it is beyond me. The wind did it blowing it about and inside out over and over again. I swore.

The rain lashes still. He is staying in.

No sign of daylight yet.

I remember a lecturer accusing me once of paying more attention to the details than the bigger picture. I didn’t have the wit or balls to reply. I just took it on the chin. And he was right, to some extent. I see small. I like small. Small is all I can handle, mostly. Up close. You know. Details see me through, or at least noticing and paying attention to them. I notice the small things as I walk, the domestic Christmas trees, the lights, those small attempts at cheer. It sees me through. I celebrate the endeavour. The morning comes now and I’m almost done with the fiddly bits I need to deal with each morning, clearing the decks for the work day.

The library pack up the books for me with a rubber band. A nice touch. What whoppers. There’s my Christmas taken care of, eh?

We talked about ‘naughty corners’ at breakfast and how J used to send her to stand by the fridge when she misbehaved. Then he remembered what I said about taking her to Comet when she was really bad. We laughed. It was nice to remember, though the memories are not strictly mine. I can still see her with her plaits, her back to us and her head desperate to turn round and be forgiven.

I get so easily wobbled. It has always been so. I wish it weren’t. He steadies me. Always. It began with the washing machine. We were sitting quietly at breakfast bemoaning Catriona’s usual eclectic choice of music on Radio 3 when it started. A kind of rumbling then a wild clanking. Something had obviously dislodged inside. Do they keep bricks in there? The dryer seems to work but the spin cycle is clearly f****d. We’ll have to get a man in. I’ll sort it, he says, giving me a hug. And I am grateful not be alone with it.

It is still pitch out there. He ums and ahs about whether to go out on not. Best not, eh?

More lights for my delectation as I walked. I take the Buarth route on a Sunday as there is no bakery with its smells to enjoy. One of the terraced houses opposite St Trinity had a wonderful garland of lights draped all around its hedge at the front and another house had a lit tree behind a net curtain. I can’t tell you how it lifts me, albeit only for a moment. But it is something. It is something.

I need to love her. To know her. That little one inside. She was a gentle being, still is. A worrier, Nanny called her. And I loved her too. Didn’t I? I felt safe in that flat of hers with its stone steps, huge bath (or so it seemed to me) with a tray across it and the blue and white striped biscuit tin. So neat, so clean, so steady. My love. My loves. So many of you have gone.

He comes in to say he’s going out anyway.

There is a note sellotaped to the door of the now empty salon on Chalybeate Street telling the reader that Sharon is now at Rachel’s and that that she is sorry for any inconvenience caused (inconvenience is misspelt). Rachel is also a hairdresser and her shop is next door. The inconvenience one would imagine is small. I love handwritten notes on doors, there is something so intimate about them – the detail of a life is revealed, if only for a moment. Tui’s shop has been closed ever since the beginning of the pandemic. A pile of post lies uncollected on the floor. The sea was raging this morning. And what I took for balloons in the back garden of that house on South Marine are buoys.

A tidying day in my studio. Help, I don’t know where to start.

She is three today. I remember her calling me. I’ve some news, she said.

I smelt his cigarette before I saw him. He was outside one of the tall terrace houses adjoining the Little Italy Italian Restaurant sitting on a step with his feet on a railing. He was smoking. I only caught a quick glance. He seemed to wearing a fake fur short dressing gown, rather like a baby’s romper suit with child-like motifs on it. His legs were bare. He was reading his phone screen as he smoked. It always gives me a shock to see people awake at that hour. I think I have the world to myself then.

Another fishing boat was mooring as I walked down into the harbour. And there was a new lit Christmas tree in a flat along South Marine, next door to Yr Hafod. Also at the back of one the houses on that same Terrace was a huge array of balloons hanging from a garden awning. Had someone been celebrating?

Barbara Windsor has died. She had lost it all, all gone, all forgotten. She is remembered now. Rest in peace. Such smiles.

I dreamt I was holding some sculptures. I was with my Norwegian family. I think they were theirs. One was made from cloth and was coming apart like a much loved toy. They were meant to be icons or representations of loved friends. And I had a doll, a Sindy that I’d been using in a piece of work. I wasn’t satisfied with it and started to scrape off all the make-up I’d put on her face.

I catch David Attenborough talking about bowerbirds, the complicated structures they build and the shiny things they steal and forage in order to attract a mate. Fascinating. If their plumage is blue they tend to collect blue gimcrack. How look us they are.

Too many little jobs fill my head. Quite exhausting. Oh, to be still.