Author: Ellen Bell

The sun came out unexpectedly yesterday late afternoon so we went to sit out after supper. A man was there striding off into the wilderness with a tupperware bowl in his hand. He was there the whole time we were there ferreting among the bushes for blackberries. He got cross. Why doesn’t he just f*** off? he said. I was edgy too. Not sure why. Perhaps I was envious and wanted to collect some too. Will there be any left after he is finished? I love the idea of foraging. Nature giving freely. He seemed to know where to go. Had he been doing the same thing for years? We said hello when he passed us on his way home. He lives in the big house we stare at when we sit. We chatted for a bit. He seems a nice man, he said after he’d gone.

Another night of rich dreaming. You don’t need to bring your own pyjamas, the man who was to be my lover in my dream told me. I liked him. He made me laugh.

So much of it is. And I suppose the secret of contentment is navigating it with something like acceptance. I like the order of it, the routinous doing of the usual, the habitual though aware all the time of a part of me that wants to rebel, to run, to throw it all in. I walk the same streets, the same promenade, I do the washing and the cleaning on the same days each week. Routine holds me in place but it also imprisons me. Don’t you feel that? Work is the same. I need order. I need to know what I am to do each day. I need to know that I can solve it. Which I don’t always. Know, that is. I solve each one, each challenge, at least to the best of my ability but even in that, even in that thrill of the solving there is the humdrum waiting in the wings. That, is that all there is? So be it.

I didn’t know depression could be like that. He writes about it so powerfully. I couldn’t listen to it all, it was too much in one sitting. Funny how what I listen to colours the work that I am doing. And when I return to the work I remember the sounds, the voices, the words.

Time to work. Gentle work today. I want to write about what sewing means to me. Like he did. Delving. There is more to unravel, I think.

He’s never liked it on me. He said it drowned me. It was a little big, I admit. But she bought it for me as a birthday present. Nevertheless, I gave it away a few days ago. And then last night, in my dream, there was a man who walked passed me in a cafe wearing it. He had it over his jeans. He smiled at me as he passed. I knew his face. He was small, grey-haired, quite handsome. Who was he? I wanted to tell him that I’d seen my dress. He would’ve laughed then, as he did when I told him this morning.

Her cat has had another litter of kittens. Five this time. She told me how her daughter sat with her during it, rubbing her tummy. I asked about her tomatoes. One has ripened. Only one. And she told me how the collie had been frightened of the thunder. I love to hear her tales. Am I doing wrong in sharing them with you? I keep her name safe. She is safe. It’s another life to me and one that I cherish being a part of however small.

Another project to start. It always makes me a little nervous even if it is just for myself. I worry so much about failing. Being clumsy, foolish. I feel so small. A little jot on the earth. So be it. Can’t that be OK?

I want to write to them all. All those people that for the moment I cannot go and see. I find emails so unsatisfactory. They are fast, certainly but there is no beauty to them, no personal touch. So I’ve begun writing letters. I cannot say how they are received. Perhaps they are seen as weighty, and coming with an expectation of a return. I hope not. There is no obligation. I do it for myself mostly. I want to be with them to hold them in my thoughts for a while and to send a gift of a letter seems a nice act. Is it not? The letters reflect the people I write them to. Some are short others long and thoughtful. I feel love for those people, those warm beings who have both peppered and affected my life. I hope they feel it.

Now I must get to work. There is much to do and solve. And it is to be rice for a week so no oat-milky tea, alas.

He’s gone to Ireland leaving his mother to his brother’s care. He won’t need to do much, for at 101 she is still very self-sufficient. We heard his voice through the kitchen window as we walked past. The next one is an anagram, he shouted. He needs to shout or at least talk loudly for she is profoundly deaf. It begins N O, he continued. They do crosswords together too. Like us. Though often I get a little cross, my mind doesn’t function too well until I have some food, then, apparently I get rather blase.

I went out yesterday. It gave me some anxiety even though it was to do not unpleasant things. And to see women that I like and admire. Hair has been removed and hair has been cut. I am neater. I asked about their business. They are working to half capacity. And they have to wear those dreadful shields. It makes one feel impure. I wore my mask. Few people around town did.

I managed to walk before the rain came. Thank you for that. Today I shall solve it. I um and ah. Let it be light. And kind. And joyful.

I’m re-reading Jane Austen. It takes me over. I know the books inside out, that is, except for Sanditon and Love and Friendship and her juvenalia. I love their restraint, their details and mores. It is an escape, clearly but a joyous one nevertheless.

I’m to go out into the world today and it makes me edgy. Things need to be done to the body. But my work routine is unsettled and there are also these infernal admin things to do. But I need to clear the deck, always.

A misty morning. A thick fog of it. Autumn is coming.

Was it the weather that made me so agitated yesterday? It was hot and muggy and then there was that deluge of rain. Torrents of water gushed from the downpipes and I rushed around shutting all the windows. People call such flooding biblical and the evidence of it was clear this morning as I walked into town. The pavements had dried but the drains were all filled with debris – twigs, leaves and scraps of litter hugger mugger-ed together all sodden. It was a small thing and I blew it out of all proportion (it’s been awhile since I’ve done that, I thought I was growing calmer, wiser). A broken egg, still in its box but spilling wet into the bag and soaking the other contents. We do things differently. And he does his best. And I don’t want to hurt him but I hear my voice beginning to criticise. Ah, me. He understands. He does. And I carry it into my dreams.

We were in South America in an airport I was travelling back to see Mum. I needed some sustenance to take with me. All the food courts were full of fresh produce – cabbages, lettuces, carrots – they looked like greengrocers. I saw some rhubarb. Lovely but how would I cook it? I watched a woman take a bite of some raw. I opted for a banana and went to pay for it. But then I forgot that it was in my bag and went to pass through the turnstile. Then I remembered and went to a till. The woman kept passing my banana back and forth on the conveyor trapping it in between where it feeds in and out till it was getting all mashed up. I didn’t know what to say and when I tried to find the coins to pay for it in my purse I couldn’t.

A nothing dream about irrelevant fears that sometimes take over my day. Monday’s are busy. Though the busy-ness is of my own construction.

A mist hangs heavy over us though the sun is trying to come out. Will there be another crop of blackberries?

Work now. I go in and out of confidence with my ideas. Keep me steady.

I love to hear her voice. Perhaps not initially for I sometimes expect that I am disturbing her. And it is hesitant at first, croaky. When she warms up so do I. Sometimes I even joke with her a little. A tender being. Sensitive. Like me. We talked of her tomatoes. Greenhouse grown they are still green. They need sun. Don’t we all. Don’t we all.

He told us he is off to Ireland today. These brave beings setting out. She is to go to Devon. I long to be off and yet I am wary. Things won’t, aren’t the same. He travels alone like I used to. Off in his car. Freedom. A show of it. Family will take care of his mother for him.

The Pelican Bakery was shut today. I missed the smell of bread. It is there even when they are not. Not today. Not today.

We sat in the not so sunny sun and talked about my working and the juggling of it. I have so much I want to do. Always have. He helps. He helps me find out what I’m trying to avoid. And I am. Because it is hard. And I don’t know what to do. Or what it is meant to be. And for whom. It’s all these infernal questions that derail me. And yet I know that really all I need do is start. Just start. There is power in the beginning of something, Goethe said. I listened to Andrew Rissik’s play A Man Alone yesterday with the excellent Ronald Pickup as Tremayne. Such beautiful writing. ‘I can’t seem to invent anything,’ says Moore, his childhood friend, admitting that he can’t write fiction, ‘or make something up.’ And then there was Tremayne himself musing about love as ‘a curios and rather crooked emotion.’ I filch words from it, scribbling them down in between stitches like ‘maladroit’.

Once I’ve finished the commission I shall get down to it. I shall. I shall. And she mentioned the wasp story too. That could be sent out there. Why not? Why not try?

My dreams were a muddle of events. In one we were travelling to China or at least I remember a border control of sorts. H. my travelling companion had forgotten his documents. They were very forgiving allowing him to go back for them and giving me, for safe-keeping, the plastic holders in which to put them. I remember feeling for them in my pocket. Yes, there they are, quite safe.

We sat in the late afternoon sun for half an hour after supper. Just perfect.

I’ve letters to write before I begin to sew. Chop chop.

There are strangers about. Visitors. The Marine is open, as is the Pier Nightclub. The harbour is jam-packed with cars and mobile homes. I heard distant shouts as I walked, and two kids were kicking something in the railway station. My hackles rise, I feel a little unsafe. I was just coming down South Road and turning into Bridge Street when I heard the sound of someone approaching. I stepped into the road. A light mizzling rain had been falling ever since I’d set out and I’d put up my umbrella against it. The man, for it was a man, was clearly shocked at seeing me. He was small but thickset and wearing a bold striped shirt and carrying what looked like a takeaway burger carton in each hand. Jesus Christ, he said (stressing heavily on the Jees), you bugger. I let it pass and walked on. A large seafood lorry waited in the harbour, it’s refrigeration generator still humming but driver asleep, the fishermen are clearly not yet due.

A day for my own work. Letters read, emails done and the sun begins to come out. I never thought it would.

I dreamt frequently last night. The influence of the moon still playing. He was to wait for me, I’d been away. I couldn’t see him in the gloom. I want to go away, he said, to India. For good, it seemed. He laughed when I told him of it at breakfast. Another dream had me in the food floor of a department store unable to choose what to eat. No explanations needed there.

I put her card up on my pin board. Some blue irises by Elizabeth Blackadder. It takes me back. How I loved her. Still do. But time and experience has separated us. I just want to kindle it a little. I will write soon. x