Author: Ellen Bell

Dream upon dream, layer upon of vivid imagery of escalators, an old employer who’d become a college lecturer and for whom I was to work for, a hotel, who’s outside was made of glass and a couple of grey-haired men talking, one of whom was wearing green suede boots (rather like mine, actually). I was also sewing in one part of dream, trying to resolve a waking problem that has given me a tight knot in my left shoulder blade.

I walked regardless of the prediction of strong winds and lashing rain. The wind wasn’t strong and the rain didn’t lash. It was OK. I always feel better for braving it. And now the sky is clearing and I feel ready to take on the design problem I left unresolved yesterday. That is, with the help of tea….

I told him of Timothy Gedge over breakfast, one of Trevor’s Children of Dynmouth – an amoral, always smiling fifteen year-old who wreaks havoc with his spying on people of the town. Utterly devoid of empathy or compassion he bargains by promising to keep their secrets in return for help with his costume for a Spot the Talent Competition. I’m severely troubled by him. That’s what psychopaths are like, he says, but it’s only fiction. But is it?

The plastic bag I saw yesterday had moved. It was lying, at rest, on a bank of grass between the Little Angels Nursery and the gated house with the wind chimes. Puddles of rain, no doubt from the biblical downpour we had yesterday, filled its crevices. I noticed that La Taberna Tapas Bar and Spanish Restaurant has finally sold and that Jack’s Pie Shop, closed after the first lockdown is soon to be metamorphosed into a Bulgarian Restaurant. ‘OPENING SOON’ reads a sign in the window, felt-tipped in the what I can only suppose are the Bulgarian flag’s colours.

I forgotten so much of the detail of Jane Eyre, though I’ve read it several times. It’s lovely to have it read to me practically in full. She has left Gateshead for Lowood School. It takes me back to my own boarding school days. She was ten I was eleven. ‘The present was vague and strange…’ I remember that same feeling of powerlessness of having no choice but to yield to an institution’s unfamiliar ways and rites. I recall that same giving over of my body to be taken here and there by strange girls and teachers and house mistresses. I was wretched, though like her I didn’t really want to return home, I just wanted to have some autonomy, some right to make my own decisions and to be alone. I was never alone, nor was she. Sleeping, eating, dressing, washing, working was all done in the company of others. There was no escaping company. There was no space of my own. And eating too. Other people decided your appetite, what you must eat. You had no say. If you didn’t eat what you were given there was nothing else in its stead. I remember the echoey sounds of large dining rooms, of assembly halls and the dreaded swimming pool. And crying, and crying. There was also the new and strange tastes. I ate Alpen for the first time there, aping one of the teachers who swore by it and I’d watch her chew and chew. And English mustard, the only way to make the ropey ham we had for Sunday breakfast edible. And tapioca and shaving cream pie and spotted dick and the skin off the rice pudding. It was a surreal time for me, at least initially. I was cast adrift from all that I’d known and nothing was ever the same. It made me anxious, wary, watchful, diffident. I didn’t have Jane Eyre’s ‘passionate nature’, not then.

It was at the far end of the road before it began coming towards me. The wind was carrying it. No, not exactly carrying it but rolling it. It was rolling towards me, the reflections of the streetlights above causing it to shimmer like liquid. It was a large, clear plastic bag, that had been formed into a sausage shape by its ingestion of air. Carried by the wind’s gusty currents it rolled and tumbled its way along the road, sometimes being lifted up into the air before dropping down with a bounce. It was quite beautiful. Leaves followed in its wake, tossing and tumbling and scattering.

On my return journey I saw it again, still now it had become waterlogged, trapped into statis in a puddle and covered over with leaves, it’s adventure spent.

Sometimes it all gets too much – the news bulletins and the stories from Our Own Correspondent – and I need to escape. Sometimes it’s Austen or Eliot, the unabridged versions read to me through the BBC Sounds app, more recently it’s been childrens’ stories. I listen to them when I’m sewing the gift samplers. You have to adapt a little. They were written for younger ears than mine but when you do it is rather magical, especially if they were known from childhood, such as Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows. I started listening to that yesterday after the final chapter of The Railway Children. Yes, they are a little dated but the escapism is complete as they relay that sense of having nothing very much to do, the stretch that one felt as a child at the beginning of the school holidays when the sun shone and there were fields to play in and dens to make. At the end of a morning’s sewing I can feel a little guilty, something wicked has been done, like going to the cinema on a weekday afternoon. He says, rubbish, enjoy yourself. Do I? Do I do that? Yes, if escaping onto the river with Mole and Ratty or laying the table for tea in Three Chimneys cottage is enjoying myself – I do. Ah, literature, what would I do without it?

The wind and rain was and continues to be furious. It lashes at the windows. I went out in it anyway. I don’t like to be defeated, to be kept indoors. And it so often isn’t as bad once you are in it. I wore two layers of waterproofs, there being no chance of using an umbrella in these winds. There were a few students about, and even they were wearing anoraks. A couple were walking down Terrace Street, past Andy’s Records and the smaller one, who was wearing an outsize coat, was saying No, No, to every question her companion asked her, before letting out an Aaah! sound as a gust of wind smacked at her face.

My dreams were deep and complex, at one point I held a severed thumb tip in my hand, only to then realise that it was mine.

Trevor’s stories continue to delight, enchant and unsettle me. This morning I read about a little boy recalling how he was told of his mother’s death at boarding school and his remembering of the details – the tray of hot chocolate, the sherbet lemons he was offered, and his washbag, then looking strange having taken on the horror of it all. It is stunning storytelling and I cannot help but want to tell my own but am in awe. If I just try might it come good?

A slow day yesterday. I am still not hundred percent, as people say. And yet the ideas for work come and badger to be made manifest.

No walk for him today.

The studio was lit by the moon’s eerie light when I woke. It lifts my heart when I see it and I’m loathe to switch on the overhead bulb. It shone as I walked, that white light that I struggle to describe. No torch was needed on the Perygyl. I stood for a short while on far reaches of the jetty. It was quiet, will barely a wind. I’m under the weather, not quite myself, a little off colour, all those things. It is nothing but something that takes away a little of my motivation. It will pass, it always does. I worry about her. Her daughter was taken into hospital and she so hates to be alone in the house. But neighbours and friends have rallied, it seems. One of the wives electing to stay overnight. I glad she is taken care of, watched out for. Life has been hard for her, and I wonder sometimes about her daughter carrying the weight of her. Keep them as well as can be.

He slept better. I hear him putting on his waterproofs. The rain has just come, not heavy yet. And the sky is opening to the day, finally. Winter begins to close in.

Signs have been attached to the railings at the harbour end of the Prom. Well, I say signs, they are actually laminated pieces of paper that have been tied to the railing uprights. They have been somewhat battered by the wind, and have curled into each other becoming virtually unreadable and consequently easy to ignore. THIS IS NOT A CAMPSITE, they state, but a car park. And there then follows a long list of dos and don’ts – such as the imperative to get rid of what they call ‘grey water’ elsewhere. He was pleased when I told him, having developed what he admits is an irrational hatred towards mobile homes. I secretly think that they look rather cosy and harbour fantasies about hiring one with him (he’d have to drive) and just driving off somewhere, our home carried with us, like a snail. Though I think America would be more fun, our island being rather limited in size and freedom and open road.

He’s just gone for his walk. The moon was still gracing me with its glorious presence this morning, though a hazier one, caught behind cloud.

I’m to write today. I hope it will come. I want that encompassing.

I always listen to hear if he is in his living room with the radio or TV on. I don’t want to talk to anyone when I set out on my walk. I’ve been awake for an hour or so by then and am not in a talking mood. Besides, small talk has never been my thing. Or his, I suspect. In fact, we probably both feel the same way about this, though he possibly wouldn’t think about it as I do. I saw that his window was open when I opened the door to the outside. I couldn’t see him but his light, shining yellow in the blackness, was on. When I walked past his head appeared and then his hand, cigarette ready to be lit. Or was it already lit? How does he light it? A lighter or a match? We wished each other good morning, or at least I think that is what we said. No, I think, I said hello and his name. Then there was a pause. Who would break it? I did. Have a nice smoke, I said. And you too, he said, moving into auto pilot, you too, he said again, you have a good stroll. Stroll? I thought as I walked. Stroll? Conventions, eh? It is hard to dispense with them, they offer a kind of order amid the chaos. It is easy enough, I suppose. And he, like most people is well-meaning and kind. I interrupt his reverie as he interrupts mine, but no one is to blame. It is the social order. A small thing. See how long I have taken to write of such a small thing.

They are beginning to mend the Prom. It’s been months now since the sea raised its stones.

The moon was full. A wonderful sight and it lit my way for most of my walk. How I love that white light. And the harbour was empty of cars for once, for now. And he is feeling a little better and has just set out for his walk.

I walked past the large student halls of residence known as the Alexandria this morning expecting to see taped up doors and windows. Nothing. A lone security van drove up and down the Prom but all was quiet. No pleas for HELP plastered on the windows, just one sign reading FOR ? which I could make head nor tail of. Is it in quarantine or is it a halls nearer the campus? I find myself giving people who look like students a wide berth and feel bad about it. Will it ever pass?

We sat in the car by the harbour in Aberaeron. It was a beautiful morning. A woman walked past in a tight-fitting see-through waterproof jacket and black leggings. She wore a pink baseball cap which her ponytail swung from the back of as she walked. A man passed her. She’d waved at someone and it must’ve been him. Very snazzy, he said, clearly referring to the top. Do you think so? she said, I just threw it on. If you did, he said, you’ve nailed it.

He was in his stockinged feet when we came into his driveway five minutes late. There was a hole in his socks. I do like him. Such a gentle man. And so obliging. His dyslexia goes unmentioned. Yesterday he wrote about social distasting. Most apt, I think. Thank you for bringing such kind people into my midst.

I am blessed, I said, as I returned to the car after walking over the rocks to look at the sea.

An Autumn morning. I walked through a heavy, damp mist which fuzzed the beam from my small torch. I smelt woodsmoke and wet leaves. There were few people about. I heard voices in the distance but couldn’t make out their direction, and the click of someone’s heels. A security man in a red t-shirt stood outside the 24 hour SPAR smoking, I thought about nodding my head in greeting but didn’t. This semi-lockdown makes one close in, strangers are now a potential threat. Nothing seems real and the usual niceties are forgotten.

Initially I only half listened to her, allowing myself instead to become fixated on straightening some pictures. I felt bad about that. And stopped fiddling and listened. There is a quavering in her voice. She is trying to be brave. She spoke of Christmas how she won’t be able to spend it with her son and his family as is her custom. It’s only two days, after all, she said. I shall just make it like any other. I probably won’t even put my little tree up. I fantasised about driving over with him to see her on Christmas Day. A surprise, bringing presents and a cake. But it would unsettle her and him and indeed, me. But the thought was there, my love. What a dear woman you are, so full of unshed tears.

I wrote. I began. I made a start and for a while was engrossed. That was nice. I was brave. And only he knows how much.