Author: Ellen Bell

I have a little orange moleskine that I use to scribble down my dreams when I wake. I often write my notes in the dark when the need for a pee wakes me from a dream. Reading them in the morning is virtually impossible. My scrawl is uncharacteristically large and sloping. Last night there were two descriptions. One was of my showing the footballer Lionel Messi to his room (I thought it was Oliver Massinet – he soon put me right, what do I know of footballers?). Did we have a hotel? He’d certainly stayed with us before – he was familiar and chatty. I asked if the room was OK. I didn’t recognise it. It was a huge suite. He went to try the shower and ran it over the carpet. There was a girl there too. Heavily made-up with bright pink lipstick she flirted with him openly. I asked if he’d worked that day. He was sharp. I work everyday, very hard. Surely you didn’t play a match today, I said. No, but I trained very hard. I woke then with my painful head and went into him for comfort. Dosed up with Ibuprofen and Paracetamol I slept dreaming of trying to find our acquaintances’ hotel (they are in administration, bless them) and coming upon a host of homeless people sleeping on the steps of what was a large indoor market hall. One shouted at me when I wished him good morning saying something about having been in the army. I was intimidated and sorry that I had nothing to give him. I walked up the steps – it was like an airport departure hall but darker, more intimate. There were ethnic clothes stalls and coffee shops and then down some steps and I came to a reception with several women in smart uniforms. I was in London. Whereabouts? I asked one of them. She went in search of a map. I know it’s the South East I said, recognising some of the names on the map, like Kensal (is that South East?), though I prefer the North. Why did I say that? I thought on waking, or was it in my dream. For I don’t. Not particularly.

A fine misty rain fell during the whole of my walk. The harbour was a car park again. A pair of feet stuck out of a lit white van. I didn’t look in. They might have been asleep. Our neighbours have grown some sweet peas. How I long, like Rapunzel’s mother to steal out and clip some. The smell is divine. Next year. Next year.

I’ve been avoiding her. No, not her exactly but I’ve been avoiding the street on which she’s been living. It’s too much. And in the morning I just want to clean myself out, in my head, that is. And she weighs heavy. I feel bad. I should face it, all of it. All of the misery that others have to bear. But sometimes I want to take another street. She wasn’t there. I went along that street without thinking this morning and she wasn’t there. No bags, no dying plants in pots, nothing. It had rained quite heavily. Was she sheltering somewhere? I felt a pang. Had someone come to her rescue? Could she be rescued?

I dreamt that he was trying to push me up a very steep escalator. I think I was in a wheelchair. I felt unsteady, scared. I might fall. He didn’t seem able to contain me. I saw several men behind him trying to help, to keep me upright and climbing.

Still grumpy this morning. I can’t shake it off. Will work help?

I baked him shortbread and made the house and my clothes smell of it. They smelt of butter and brown sugar. It pleases him. I like to please him. A poet comes on at the end of a programme about Josie Long and talks about stealing things. He meant words and the sound of people talking, like John Humphrys reading poetry. When he gets depressed, he says he needs to keep his world small, to shrink it so he listens to the same thing over and over again till the words lose their meaning.

My night was full of dreams. I tried to write the first one down in the dark. I can hardly read my scrawl. It is something about a policeman being jumped by a terrorist with photographs and pills and he has a bomb. I cannot remember it. The images don’t come. Then I wrote a sentence that came at the end: ‘Besides after being plain magisterial is simply a bonus.’ The second dream is clearer. I’m with my friend and her. We are in a house I don’t recognise preparing for a journey. She has found me a job one day a week in Huddersfield, teaching. Prior to that she and her partner have sold me some of their clothes. Then we are at her workplace, in the office with her secretarial staff and colleagues. She looks unwell and they are poo poohing it. I grab her face in my hands. Look at her skin, I am saying, it’s going green. I shout at them. Turn away from your computer I say to one of them, and look at her.

He has gone for his walk. And the plumber has taped up the loo, it should do for a bit. A misty rain is coming. Work now. First tea. Then get down to it. It is fine. It is.

Seeing it first through my studio window and then high over the sea always makes me feel better. There is a certainty about that I cannot claim for myself or my life. The virus has upturned my sense of a continuum. An illusion, I know. Or at least my awareness of it was. Something does continue but not in the way I can know or even guess at. The moon shines regardless. As the sea ebbs and flows. These steadfasts should give us heart.

The sky has turned murky. He won’t walk. The plumber is due soon. So much stuff to do before I can sit down, head cleared to work. So many of the letters mentioned God. We speak the same language but we are not the same. I want to keep the piece simple and yet please her. Each decision is a weighty one. But they can also be light. Can’t it?

I just took a short walk this morning. Monday mornings are cleaning days and I rush to get back so that I can get on. But I wanted to see the sea. Just a breath of it. The moon was out, whether it was full or new I can never tell. Whatever it was it was stunning. Though I couldn’t see it from the Prom. But I did see the boat. It was afire with light. Over abundant with light. A fishing boat lit up like a fairground attraction. It took my breath even though it was quite a way away. Such joy. Small things. Like the radio I’ve seen in the window of the junk shop on Northgate Terrace. Will she take twenty?

I often dream I’m living in or occupying other people’s houses. Their stuff is all around me. I manage, I cope but there is no room, no space and it can feel claustrophobic. Last night I was, we were, possibly, renting a house or flat (there only seemed to be one floor) from this young couple. All their things were still there, though some had been put in a cupboard, such as linen. They had two pillows there were very thin and light. They had a young girl who kept running into what was now our space though they had left. In one room he had a huge audio desk, like you find in a recording studio. She was an artist/performer, a tiny-framed woman, rather anxious. Their plans had fallen through and they had nowhere to live. They hung around, perhaps hoping we’d let them back in. I felt uncomfortable, should we leave? It was unresolved. I either woke from my neck stiffness or from the high-pitched laughter from the woman in one of the flats across the way. On warm evenings their windows are left open. I slept in between the cackling.

She sent me a letter. It was lovely to receive. There is a warmth to letters that emails cannot offer. I intend to write to all those I love, at least those who I believe would want it. To others I will make things. I like the idea of art as a giving thing. A gift. A thought-through gift to others. A gift exchange.

I dreamt in layers last night, one leading into another. One was about the Queen and then a long journey and then several about hair. In one I was looking down on a town or large road and hundreds of people, all foreign to me, were lying on grass verges and roundabouts, splayed out sleeping. They wore ethnic dress with large headdresses and ornate hair decorations. Then they were in a queue trying to get through, to enter something – a border perhaps. They were given tickets. They didn’t talk, they seemed resigned but their dress was fabulous. In another my sister was angry with me, though it wasn’t expressed, because I didn’t want to buy an unnecessary present for someone. We were in a trinkets shop selling fake pearls. She was going to pay for it. I didn’t want it and I was embarrassed because some people were looking on. I wanted to make something for them instead. I climbed some stairs to get away from her displeasure. I walked into a hair salon, it was old-fashioned in the 50s style with those huge hair dryers women sat under. There was a seating area with heavily padded, leather banquettes. It was familiar to me. I walked back down and she was smiling, all forgiving. There are rarely conclusive endings to dreams. As with life, I suppose.

I didn’t want to walk past her. Sometimes I want to be free of the weight of other people’s despair. And yet is she despairing? Her 10,000 things are reduced. She has opted out of that. She has more pressing, life-stuff to deal with. She sleeps outside the food bank. Smart move, I suppose. I did walk down her street in the end. She was sleeping. There is a new little tree beside her belongings and a pile of empty coffee cartons. She is making her own garden. What will she do when winter comes? Two lads came towards me from the station, I turned right. One of them called out – Where can we buy some alcohol? I told them of the 24 hour SPAR. He was derisory at breakfast. Visitors, he says. Several fires were smouldering on the beach. I love the smell. I wait to catch it. With the wind coming from the south it took a few seconds. Ah, there it is. It catches in my eyes.

I took her a small bag of things. She was asleep when I got to her so I placed the bag quietly amongst her store of carrier bags underneath her umbrella. Four seagulls were squawking around her. I chased them away. One of her bags was full of groceries. I could see a pack of four green apples and a tin of something. Is she selling them or are they handouts from the food bank she sleeps in front of. If so, why a tin? Where can she cook? I fretted about what to take for her. What does she need? Am I being generous enough? Would she think me silly? I tried to do what felt best – some biscuits, a home-made flapjack, some tangerines, a pack of tissues, some hand gel, a face cloth, a sachet of shampoo (where does she go to clean up?) and some creams. Oh and a hair band. I wanted to give her something nice. What would I want if I were her? And then I fretted that she wouldn’t be there. But she was. It makes sense, being there. She is near civilisation, for what it’s worth. Keep her safe.

They are going into administration. My heart bleeds for them. They are a nice couple. Nice people. I am fond of them both. I have stayed there many times and was always looked after so well. It was their dream. And it’s broken. What will they do? What can we do?

She is selling smoothies on the street, he said. They can’t open their upstairs restaurant just yet, I think next week they can. But meanwhile she is being entrepreneurial. Good for her. I like her. She never knows my name but we chat. There is recognition.

So much change. So much fear and loss. A clear sky. Not brilliant blue like the Continent but it will do. It will.

I sent it. No word yet. Fingers crossed it will be alright. I did my best. Don’t we all?

I spoke to her today. She wasn’t asleep but sitting up in the middle of the pavement with her bags of stuff around her. There was a opened umbrella too and some sunflowers poking out of the top of one of the bags. She’s a tiny thing, as I’d surmised from her sleeping form. She’s white and British. Her face is freckled brown by the sun. She wears a wooly beret. I asked her what brought her here, there, to that pavement. She struggled to find words. I waited. It’s quite random really, she said. I didn’t press her. It isn’t my business if she doesn’t want it to be. I asked her if she felt safe, had enough food. There was a little pile of silver coins by her feet. He said he’d seen her. Yes, I’ve seen loads of people talking to her, he said. I saw one bloke give her a fiver. It still doesn’t make it OK. No, he said. I will take her something tomorrow.

The sun is supposed to come out today. He’s just off for his walk, his postman-like bag across his shoulder.

I wrote it. I did the required word count. I will do re-writes this morning. There is always a sense of anti-climax and indeed loss. It was so much in my head and has been for the last three days.

I’ve finished John Berger’s book. The Afterword made me cry. He said he loved him and that he shot himself but that that doesn’t make it dark. He said that he lived as much as he could endure. Yes. That is fair enough. It is.

I don’t know what to call it. Dreamspeak? Possibly. But really it’s the stuff that comes into my head after dreams, just before I come to the surface of this living reality. Often the sentences are gone. If I try to hard to catch them they allude me. I need to detach myself and watch them and then get hold. If we talk so much we can talk too hard, was the sentence from this morning. I didn’t sleep well. I’m edgy about this article I have to write. I didn’t do as much as I’d hoped yesterday, I hadn’t cracked it. So I lay there mulling it over, trying out sentences. Hopeless. I did sleep eventually but my head is muggy as a consequence. A part of me knows it will be alright, that I have it in me to solve it, but this is eclipsed by my habit of fear.

There is no silence when I walk. The gulls caw and scream, the sea rolls and lashes, the wind chimes in the house next door to the nursery tinkle and clang and the generators down by the harbour hum. I don’t mind. I like the sounds as much as I like the smells, particularly of those of the smouldering embers of beach fires. There is an aliveness that I welcome, and need.

I’m ready. I’m ready to begin. He has just gone out for his walk. He will be back in half an hour or so. Begin. Now.