Literature sustains me. No, it does more than that it nourishes me. I like to take it nice and slow like my food, chewing over it so that every burst of sensation, of taste is acknowledged and felt. I listen and read. They are different but the ingestion, in the end, is the same. Yesterday, while working, it was George Eliot’s Silas Marner – read to me rather than adapted and acted out. Sean Baker read it. He has a marvellous voice, rich, throaty, real. At breakfast it was William Trevor’s Last Stories. How exquisitely he writes. So succinct. So much left out and yet you think afterwards that he has told you. He hasn’t. They are full of compassion, of sadness. The sadness of lonely rooms with too little light. I read to learn but I also read to live.
There is a small accumulation of mould on some of his bathroom tiles. It has been there since we moved in over 5 years ago. I spray it with a de-moulder and leave it soak in. The spray smells of swimming pools. It doesn’t work. I scrub away at it with a toothbrush, bought specifically for the purpose. It won’t shift. So be it. It will have to be another one of those flaws I must learn to accept and live with.
I made him toast for breakfast. I sometimes spread it with honey but he prefers jam. I love the smell of toasted bread. It lingers up there long after the grill has been turned off. I think I love it more that I no longer eat bread. Brown bread toasted is the best. It has a deeper aroma when grilled, the caramelising of the grains and sugars are more honey-ed more nutty. It smells of comfort, of home, of safety and familiarity. When he has gone from me I will no long smell it.
Yet another phrase that entered my head as I woke. I never know to what they refer but I like that for that. Gift? Possibly. It is written. It is done. Afterwards other ways of tackling it come forward. It is enough. I did my best. Last night I dreamt of a friend, amongst other things. Not a close friend but there is an attachment. We were talking of one of her children. They have all been given biblical names but the one I called him, as did she (did I take the cue from her or vice versa) was wrong. I knew it was wrong in my dream but it was only on waking that I realised what his real name is. I cannot remember the rest, not like the dream from the night before when it all came forward, the immense richness of it – blackened hands, costumes, foreign lands, newly-acquired brothers’ in-law, old-fashioned sweet shops (was it a sweet shop?).
A colder morning than of late with a strong gusting northerly wind. I hear him outside the door preparing to go for his walk. The sky has opened up to blue and even some soon. It’s one of those immense Titian skies.
The wasps are beginning to come into the house. One came in early while we were at breakfast. It was clearly disorientated, bless it, diving about everywhere and eventually flying down behind the radiator. Are they dying? That is the impression my mother always used to give – that come September they would start acting weirdly because of their approaching demise. She didn’t say it like that of course. The spiders are in too. At least one was, in bath yesterday. One of those spindly-legged ones. Why they go into baths when they can’t get out again, who knows? I helped it or him or her out and she, he or it clambered across the floor and then up the wall to take rest under my mirror. I want to learn to love them. I can accept them but they still make me a little uncomfortable. We all have our part to play. Don’t we?
Edgy with the writing work I have to complete today. It’s still very rough and clunky. It is never easy for me. I fret so much about making it right. Let it go smoothly. Help me to be clear, unpretentious and honest. It is enough, that.
We aren’t alone in using the small piece of wasteland that is due to be built upon for our garden. The other day the ‘house-husband’ who I’d always thought of as Dutch, on account of his tallness and amiability, but is in fact Eastern European, was sitting on the edges of it with his little daughter having a tea party. He’d wanted to go somewhere on the bike with her but she’d insisted in placing her red plastic table and chairs there. Does she always get what she wants? I asked him. Mostly, he said with a rueful smile. At least that is what I took it as. One has to be so careful about other people’s children. It wasn’t a criticism but could so easily be taken as one. She clearly is a tour de force. A beauty, with her cloud of blonde hair, but a handful. And then a day or so later our 101 year old neighbour turned up. Are you sitting in the sun? she asked. Yes, we replied. I usually sit here for a bit each day, she said and promptly turned her back on us and perched down on the edge of a pile of metal fencing. She sat there for about ten minutes staring back over the estate. We continued with our crossword though I felt distinctly uncomfortable sitting on a chair when she had to sit on some bent fencing. But she seemed happy enough, till she eventually raised herself up and shuffled off. Why shouldn’t they use it? It’s everyone’s but it unsettled me and him I think.
She was lovely. And I wish that nerves didn’t assail me so. The writing will happen if I just sit with it and let it unfold, open out. All will be well, is well.
I walked in the rain. The air smelt nice, clean and wet. Can’t you just knock it on the head for one day? he’d asked. No, I need some fresh air, I replied. And I do. I did.
To work. 1,000 words to do today. First draft. Get it down. On that white.
It was warmer this morning than yesterday. I soon got hot. But oh the moonlight. What a joy. It lifts my spirits to walk in such light, especially on the Pergyl, for that end of the harbour can be bleak in the dark. I walked with energy bathed in the white. I even forgave all the campervans.
I try to rein in my mind when my alarm wakes me, firstly to remember my dreams and secondly to lurch it into the present so that I don’t drift back to sleep. I sometimes only recall the tenure of dreams, the residue of sensation that they leave behind. I’m better at remembering the words that seem to drift unbidden through my head rather than into. They are not of my making it seems but appear like flotsam out of nowhere. This morning there were two phrases: ‘the china and the harmonium’ and ‘we have an epic before you’. Is it a kind of lunacy or just the playful side of my subconscious stringing together words in a dadaist manner? I like it. It, they come unbidden. And perhaps unlike most things in my life they should be left to be what they are, a delightful nonsense.
When we’ve sat outside these last few afternoons several wasps have taken to landing on my legs and resting there. They seem perfectly content. I try not to tense up. I am offering them a calm place to stay awhile. Why not? He offers to flick them off, no, please don’t, I say, scared that he will alarm them and that they will sting me. Just let them be, they will soon go. Though some linger a little too long.
He called it the velvet divorce. I like the phrase, most evocative. Something to do with Slovakia and Russia. All the music he played had a Slovakian influence, a little trying at times till Petroc Trelawny came on at 6.30 with Mozart.
Another quiet morning on the Prom. The sea lapped gently. A few more students can be seen and there was even some vomit on the ground the other day. I must go into town for an appointment this morning. I don’t want to do it. One gets used to being inside, safe at home. I have become fearful of interactions, even the most benign ones. I must rustle up my courage.
I worry that my work isn’t going anywhere. Do you want to do it? he asks. Yes, I reply. Does doing it make you happy? he asks. Yes, I love where it takes my mind. There you are, he says, that is reason enough. Yes. In my heart I know this. It’s the old tuggings, that need to be acknowledged, to be told that one is good. Good enough to pass.
There was no sound from the sea this morning, not even a lapping. How fickle the weather is. A clear sky spreads out before my window and the sea is a deep blue. The cleaning has been done. Now I’ve admin to do. I’d like to take the Bank Holiday as one but I’ve never been very good at that. That sitting still lark. Or even the sleeping in one. There is so much I want to do, to achieve, to learn and to become. I can still hear the pulsing in my ear. Was it always there but I didn’t hear it? He’s found another house. It’s in the sticks but the rent is much cheaper. Should I look? What an upheaval it would be but there is a garden and a vegetable patch. Shall I yield to what could be? But is it light? Like this home. I like it most when I’ve cleaned it from top to bottom, though it is sadly in need of painting. Heigh ho. Time to work. I think of you. I think of you all. x
I’m still deeply engrossed in Austen’s Mansfield Park.
Fanny is now with her real family in Portsmouth and she decries the want of order, rationality and peace that she’d been used to in Northamptonshire. I remember Jeanette Winterson wrote in a similar vein in one of her autobiographical pieces – saying that home should be a place of order. I need it in my home, certainly. And in my life, seemingly more than ever. It gives me a sense of calm. For that reason, and that reason alone, I shall be happy when this impasse over my job is settled. Let it be over, properly over so that I can focus on the work I really want to do at my pace without the unsettling-ness of phone calls and booking. I need time. I like to have time so that I can take time over things. Rushing has never been my way. I like to do all that I do properly. At least as well as I can. I cannot do this in a hurried way, too many things are left undone like that. The adaptation we are currently watching of MP is from 1983. It is slow, measured, more like a theatre production than a TV one. There are only a couple of cameras, so there are no close-ups of faces and there is little background music. The drama is in the language and the gestures. It takes a while to adjust but I like it. I like its understatedness, its gentleness. And the character of Fanny opens up before me. What shall I do with her?
It’s beginning to feel autumnal. The sky was clear when I walked, a bursting of stars. And now the sun is coming through the clouds that have built up since I returned home for breakfast. It’s nice to have some brightness, the week has felt a little gloomy first thing. I can hear him ablutin’ in his bathroom getting ready to go out for his walk. I thought about the eighteen-year-old I heard talking on The Podcast Radio Hour (was she really only eighteen?) and how she said she was in constant pain. How would I be in that situation? Would I be active as she is? I hope so. She was a gentle soul making podcasts about her condition and how our greatest achievement can be just surviving. We are all dealt such different cards, and some really make the most of what has been given to them. Like her. A brave girl. And then I thought of my nephews and nieces, though mostly my nieces and her. And how brave they are, each with their own challenges to manage. The sky looks glorious, a Titian Blue interspersed with huge tall white clouds. I like to look at it from my studio window. I juggle all my projects, trying in between proper paid work to give them all equal attention. It is the sampler book today and I have a huge turn-a-round of concept. It might work. We’ll see.
