My ipod went weird. When I tried to turn it on to listen to as I walked the music sounded all speeded up. I left it on the stairs and went without it. I’m glad I did. I thought about the power of acceptance as I made my way to the beginning of St David’s Road. And then I heard it. The wind had suddenly got up and it caught the fresh fall of leaves on the road. They began to tumble and roll down the slight hill. A great rustling followed. I would’ve missed it with my headphones on. I felt present. And for that moment I knew I wasn’t meant to be anywhere else.
We watched him trying to get up. A corpulent man, he was struggling to raise himself from the seat he was occupying with his wife. We were sitting in the garden of our favourite hotel. It isn’t a particularly grand or elegant establishment. The food is ordinary and the decor dated. But it is quiet and the clientele for the most part well-behaved. We go there to sit, inside in the adult’s lounge if its wet and in the garden if it’s dry. Yesterday the sun shone. His wife was counting out loud the attempts he made to stand up. One, two, three. Anno Domini, he said to us as he finally succeeded. It’s my knees and my feet, he said by way of further explanation. He couldn’t sit still, despite his difficulty. First it was the sun cream, then the umbrella. He’d stop and chat to people on his way back to his room. A cultured man, I think. He told us he’d come here as a child, to a small village along the bay. His aunt had had a caravan with paraffin stoves. Very dangerous, he said. His father had come too after the war. 1949 I think he said.
It was a lovely day.
She sent a book of poems. Perfect pockets of wisdom.
I could see lights down by the harbour when I walked towards it. A strong white glare was coming from a collection of torches and what looked like car headlamps. Cones had been placed by the side of the Lifeboat shed. The misly mist made it all seem a little other-wordly. Voices could be heard but they were muted. I turned round and took the steps up to the higher path. Walking along the Pergyl I twisted my head to see the Lifeboat lit up in the shed entrance. It had returned. Had it been an exercise? Men in high vis jackets hung around it chatting, some on the pavement above, their arms hanging over the railing. Cars began to drive away. It changed the atmosphere, my usual reverie of walk interrupted by action, energy, male-adventure. None of those snug in the mass of mobile homes parked up seemed to have been disturbed. My walk felt different after that, less pensive. Cars kept passing by me as I walked the Prom, their headlights spilling into the fog.
The students are returning. Most of the shared kitchen lights had been left on in Alexandra Hall. I saw a huge santa’s elf toy in one of them, splayed out on a chair.
I’m fifty-eight today.
Do you feel it? he asked, when I went in to wake him.
We are off on a trip. A small one to our favourite sleepy hotel to drink tea in silver teapots in their garden. Will the sun come out?
I thought they were forget-me-nots but now I’m not so sure. They look more like tiny violets close up. I know nothing of these things. I have lived in the countryside but have never learnt the names of things. I wish I had, though I listen to others’ knowledge and it sounds like poetry to me.
He writes of her waiting. Waiting for their return. Are we all not waiting? And is it such a bad state to be in? I am. In my rest and repose I am waiting for something more, though what I have now is enough. The more will come. It is inevitable, for all of us. Meanwhile, I concentrate on the small things – the tiny wildflowers, the bits of ceramic I find in the gravel, my stitches and the words I write that are akin to those stitches.
They were walking up from the beach when I approached the Prom. There were four of them, two out in front and the others lagging behind. Towels were draped around their shoulders, their hair was wet and they walked carefully on bare feet along the pavement. They looked like students. They didn’t shout but called out in a whisper, saying goodbye as each one went off to their separate streets. Had they been fulfilling some kind of yearly pact that they would swim on their return to this seaside town? I thought perhaps that was the case, for it can’t have been a whim, could it? They’d come prepared with costumes and towels and besides the early morning, with its clear star-filled sky was a cold one. It calmed me to watch them. A change from the usual drunken rowdiness I witnessed last Saturday morning, up by the clock tower.
The flat is cleaned. I like the order, I need it. And, I think so does he. I believe that was it was about that family, the one that weighs heavy on me, there was no order, no regularity. Bread was stuffed in drawers, beds were left unmade, meals haphazard and washing-up neglected. I’m not saying it is wrong to live that way. It’s just I couldn’t flourish within it. That’s all. And I’m sorry for that. I wanted to. Truly.
The story continues to write itself in my head. Just sentences. Nothing more. It is a start.
It was a complicated dream with many strands. There was a theatre production that I’d been brought in to either direct or design or even produce, it wasn’t clear. I remember a series of to-scale theatre boxes they were showing me and when I asked if I could see the costume designs they had laughed. There were lots of doors I had to pass through to get to the office, doors that involved electronic buzzers and keypads. The end of dream involved a race I was supposed to participate in. It was for charity and with not many competitors. I’d written the time down in my diary and arrived early only to see the runners meet the organiser at the finish line. Had I got the time wrong? I walked up to the organiser and, deeply mortified, expressed my apologies and explained that I couldn’t understand what had gone wrong. I always thought you were a bit of a daydreamer, she said. She looked world-weary. There had been so few competitors. I tried to make it better, to placate, cajole, promise to do more, to make amends. She began to soften. Then I woke a couple of minutes before my alarm.
You, a daydreamer, he said, laughing, when I told him after breakfast. She’d looked a little like me, and like my Norwegian friend.
I long for some. He went to see if he could he get me some, just like Rapunzel’s mother and her hankering for lettuce, or spinach or whatever the particular storyteller chooses. The butcher said he was expecting some from a man in Oswestry. The man came but there were no damsons. He brought me home some Victoria Plums instead. Give me a call, tomorrow, Deri the butcher told him, I might have some in then.
I do get too hung up on completing things. It’s a need for order, I know. To wrap things up, to get things done. To feel satisfied, at peace with myself. And yet, I so often don’t, not till long after. I always remember the character Edith Hope in Anita Brookner’s Hotel du Lac bathing and changing her clothes after spending a day writing, made grubby by the work. I usually feel the same when I put away my work for the day, that same slight sordidness of not quite doing it well enough. The feelings of childhood linger. Never being good enough. Yes. Always. And with each piece of work I long to feel that. Perhaps I don’t know how to. Order helps. It is on the surface only, how can it be otherwise? The world is disorder. We do our best in our small ways. And mine is even smaller. I don’t mind. I have much to do. To try to solve. And there are wonderful compensations. Though they too seem small, though they are not.
Trevor’s short stories captivate me. I watch my own life as I read. It’s the detail he captures that enthralls.
Much to do today. All those little pieces to pull together. More anon.
It came into my mind just before I woke. I think it was the question rather than the name. Or was the question mine? Sleep and dreams confound me. Not in an uncomfortable way. No, I love their unreasonableness, their serendipity and flights of fancy. Last night I returned to a dream I’d been having before I went for a pee. I rarely do that, though I’ve sometimes wanted to. I’d gone to Australia. I think it was an escape, a holiday. I’d gone on a whim, not telling anyone. I was full of expectation of adventure. But the details of what I’d left behind and how I was going to manage still niggled at me. I remember snippets. My suddenly realising that I wouldn’t be able to call him and then his being there in Aus with me and telling him. He seemed unbothered. Will you email? I asked. I suppose so, he said. I remember a long road and walking down in it a half-light filled with such sensations of freedom and hope. Then being concerned that I’d lost him by wandering off and that he didn’t know where I was. I asked a woman in deshabille where the airport was. She told me it was in the direction I was going up some narrow, rickety stairs with rope banisters. It wasn’t the route I’d recognised. I kept going back and forth with time. Once I was on the plane and my sister was telling me that she always travelled in her dressing gown. Then I was in Aus staying in a University Halls of some sort. My room was a tiny cabin and it was daylight and several lecturers were in corridors marking essays, one was talking to a cat. I had a meeting with a principal who was talking to a very luxurious dark-haired woman who had a wadge of notes. They were for me but the principal wanted some change from me. I told her I’d go back to my room to check whether I had any. I recall the notes were huge and dark blue. I cannot remember what the denomination was called. It doesn’t make sense, of course it doesn’t but I recognise some of the imagery and from where it has come. I hang onto the sensations though. They were nice.
A piece of music playing on Radio 3 as I went downstairs to wake him for breakfast. A choral piece by a German choir. It’s title was ‘Bird Tempting’. Caterwauling, my mother would’ve called it.
I watched her as she walked around the wasteland. She had her stick but her legs were still a little stilted, and unsteady. For 101 years old she is remarkable. Her gender is less and less defined. The roundness has been eroded. Her elasticated-waist trousers hang from her, flapping loosely at the ankles. There is no bottom. She walks there everyday, she tells us. (It has taken several attempts to attract her attention, for she is profoundly deaf.) She asks if we sit there for long. Is she worried about us getting too much sun? Don’t let me disturb you, she says and walks away to sit for awhile on a pile of bent railings. She seems to accept the gracelessness of this open ground as we do. Making the best of what is available until it won’t be. There’s a digger there now, so it won’t be. Our garden. And hers.
It smelt of autumn this morning. The wind was blustery and too much for my puny umbrella. And it didn’t feel like the 19 degrees that they’d promised. I walked but longed to return home. I’m not quite right. A bladder infection, I think. Everything aches. The aching makes me acutely aware of my skeleton, the bones of me. And I’ve a touch of sciatica too. Age. Age hurts. Or at least if not hurts it reminds one of infirmity. The approach of it. I’ve much to do, else I’d go back to bed and sleep it off.
A pot of tea soon and then get down to it. The piece is still clumsy in its rawness. I’ve much to do.
