Someone has left a lawn mower outside one of the houses along Llanbadarn Road. It’s an old kind, short and solid with a grass collecting jaw-like structure at the front. My father used to have one before he got a flymo. They’ve wrapped it up like a present in a black bin bag, so well that it’s shape is still distinct. They left it for the bin men to collect. They didn’t. So it still sits there. All wrapped up and nowhere to go. It’s been there for over a week now. A stalemate. An impasse.
A pair of reading glasses lay abandoned or dropped on the Prom just beneath the castle this morning. Their frames were pink.
I have a job to do this morning, an article to write. Onward.
We’re both feeling a little under the weather. Biliousness. A lovely word.
I dreamt of Count Fosco most of the night, or at least that is how it seemed. That is, I dreamt of the Count Fosco as portrayed in the adaptation we have been watching. He was mesmerising. I didn’t want him to die and in my dream he didn’t. He just had a small red spot on his neck instead of the gash from the sword that sliced his throat. Both of them were there. I had to find some paper for Fosco to write something down. Anything will do, said Pesca with some urgency. I was in a crit in an Art School desperately wanting some advice as to how to lay out some letters. On and on the dream went. I woke worn through and have now raced through my cleaning chores ready for the interview. I always get nervous. Will it work out? Will I get enough to write 12,000 words. Will I relax him? Will we find a rapport? I have to trust. To be still and let it unfold.
The sky glowers over the sea. He isn’t walking this morning.
Time for some tea and then some quiet before I begin.
I woke from dreams about making lists and various characters from The Woman in White. I’m surprised I’ve not yet dreamt of Laura’s time in the asylum. It was harrowing, as was her mostly mute endurance of it.
I’ve begun reading John Berger’s book A Fortunate Man about the rural doctor John Sassall. I listened to the radio adaptation of it a few weeks ago and was so moved by its beauty and compassion that he bought me the book. I savour it, slowly. Do you know that John Berger is 94? I said to him. No, he’s not, he said, he’s dead. Is he? Perhaps I remember reading of his death. I am sorry for that. I want to read all that he wrote.
I trod on a snail the other morning. The crunch of its shell under my walking shoes went right through me. I am sorry, I whisper, I am so sorry. I can’t see them in the dark as they make their long voyage across pavements. I try to avoid them. I do not want to take a life, any life.
There was water under my loo last night. There is a leak. I think it is the cistern. I dreamt that our new dehumidifier was leaking water and I couldn’t staunch the flow. Then I dreamt of my cousin. He looked tired and world-weary and he offered me some money. I’m alright, I said. I’m alright.
I saw something white in a window at Alexandra Hall. A tiny thing. It was jangling. I thought it was a butterfly caught in a cobweb, and trying to pull free. But it was a white feather, caught yes, but being blown by the breeze. Another white feather floated down before me yesterday as I walked. Some people think they are angels.
A nice day yesterday. I was more peaceful with my work. And I listened well. Mark Bonar was in another radio play, this time about a young, gay man longing for Hawaii. ‘I’m scared,’ he says to himself, ‘is admitting to being scared the beginning of courage? I’m frightened of everything, particularly my work. I am fearful of writing of making of being. Will I ever be good enough? I try. I know this. I try. And sometimes there is peace in the sitting quietly, the trying, the being with the work. The sewn words are small, but there is grace in them. I think about art as gift, gifts to others, can I do it? Can I make it happen? Where I bear witness and make as part of the process?
I read at breakfast, as does he. It is naughty, we weren’t allowed as children. He reads the papers online and I read books. I’ve just finished this last one, Trent’s Last Case by E.C. Bentley (as least I think that is his name). The radio adaptation was better. Not sure about novels from the 30s, though the last two pages gave me a jolt. Anyway there were two words from it that I asked him to look up. He likes it and so do I, though remembering them afterwards is always tricky. Cupidity and fan-tods. Cupidity is a kind of avarice, and fan-tods is about getting yourself into a lather. Nice.
When I walk home through the estate and round the back the new couple, I think they are Indian, always have the light on in their kitchen. Are they afraid of something?
We heard a clattering on one of the velux windows yesterday at breakfast. I thought it was rain coming. I walked over to look and saw a rook on the window bashing something against the pane. It startled me, it was so raw, so wild that I clapped my hands and it flew off. It left the thing it was bashing behind. It is still there, I think it is an animal bone.
The form that was huddled in the doorway of the florists was lying on the road this morning. I almost fell over it. It must have been a girl, it was so small. I wanted to wrap her up. To re-find the sleeping bag I gave away eight years ago and zip her up in it. She was folded up in blanket and a pizza box lay next to her. So she has some food, that is something. I thought of her when it began to rain, did she take shelter or did she wake soaked through? Why is there nowhere she can go?
Our 101 year old neighbour was sitting on a wall when I walked past to go and sit out in the sometime sun yesterday afternoon. She was taking a rest during her walk around the grounds. The other day her son took her to get a haircut. She and her hairdresser share the same Christian name. I wondered who her clients were. I saw her afterwards. It doesn’t look so different.
I put my notebook by my bed last night so that I could write down my dreams. I don’t like losing them. My writing in the dark and in my sleepy state leaves much to be desired. There were notes about a boxing match, and my sister’s car being smashed to bits by a tank for illegal parking (a car that was like our old one) and my feeling responsible, and about my long walking journey to find him and a job and turning up at a roadside cafe which was shut and making toast for myself, she was in another dream talking about her children looking so much like her and her saying a pet name she has for her and finally in another I was at a housing meeting and talking about my teaching and someone was saying how she didn’t like children. A mish mash, most of which makes sense to me. Fears and stuff. You know the kind. Then just before waking I heard another of those sentences. I wrote that down too, though this time it was more like a question and it was: Do you think naked is just made up?
It’s affecting both of us. And it creeps into my dreams. The other night it was Countess Fosco, with her smoothed hair, pulled hard into a bun at the nape of her neck. Last night was more a blurring of them all. It is addictive. Thrillers are. You want to be taken to the conclusion even if it may not, and ultimately won’t be, a joyful one. This adaptation is beautiful. The costumes and settings are exquisite. It is luscious to watch. I itch to tell him the ending but resist it. His entrancement is mine.
It looked like a bundle of blankets but it was a person. So tiny. My heart goes out to him, to them or perhaps it was a her. I want them to be safe. He or she had chosen the doorway to the florists on Chalybeate Street. A quiet street, mostly, I would’ve done the same. Only the seagulls squawk down it on bin day. There was no one else about this morning. It was good. Good to be alone.
Are you cross? he asked at breakfast. No, though I had been sharp when he’d asked me to repeat something. I am impatience with his deafness. I know I am. But it is wearying to say things twice. But I should and will try harder. No, I am not cross, just a little stressed. The ten thousand things that never get resolved get to me sometimes, often times. I want to escape, to fly away. But there is no where to go, not any more.
Just breathe and take it all one thing at a time. It is enough, sometimes, just to breathe.
They weren’t there this morning though I’d seen them the two mornings before. There were at least two of them. That is at least two occupied the deckchairs, there could have been one more sitting on the sand but it was too dark to tell. Were they the same people I’d seen a week or so ago, both with sticks, hobbling their way onto the beach? The deckchairs were always placed in the same way, facing Aberdovey rather than the sea. Well, why would you? he said at breakfast, you can’t see the sea in the dark. Fair point but then why sit there? The beach slopes and it’s stony and cold first thing. But I like such eccentricity. After all look at my habits. Two lads were sitting on a bench on the Perygl as I walked along it today. I couldn’t make them out very distinctly. I saw the white of their trainers first. They talked quietly, as if respecting the stillness of the morning, heavy with cloud.
I watch her life from afar and remain a little entranced. I don’t want it for myself but I am made curious by her continued hopefulness and the way she sets out on each new adventure washed clean of her past. Good luck to her I say. Isn’t any kind of joy worth celebrating? Don’t we all feel some of its glow?
I love the taste, the slight crunch of them, on salads and mixed in with brown rice but it is mainly the smell of them toasting (in our tiny frying pan – no fat, just dry) that I adore. It smells like butter. He can’t be doing with nuts, I can’t get enough of them, except for peanuts (though I miss peanut butter, along with so many things…..)
There are two of them lying in the gutter between the pavement and the road along Llanbadarn Road. Even after three days they are still mostly intact. One is folded up, its wings curled in, the other is splayed open, as if in flight. They still have their speckled fledgling plumage. They are young birds, killed no doubt by cars racing by. Killed by their unworldly-ness, their unawareness of danger, still calling for their parents. I hear them nightly, that keening call, why have you abandoned me?
Why don’t you tell her that’s not how you spell it? he asks. Always the teacher. I can’t and won’t. What we have is tender and I want to preserve it not crush it. It doesn’t matter, does it? Not really. Not in the whole scheme of things. My role in her life is so fragile. Or at least that is how it feels. I want to bring her joy. Always.
It took us both a while to remember her name. I found it eventually via Howards Way of all things. Kate O’Mara. That’s it, he said. That’s who she looks like.
The stuff I try to do first thing – such as emails and admin has taken too long so I’m rushing through this eager to get on with some work.
It was John Humphries on his Sunday afternoon Classic FM show that mentioned him. At least I think it was Brahms he was referring to. He talked about his lack of confidence and how he was overshadowed by Bach and other great composers and that he took 20 years to complete his first or was it a particular symphony? How I understand though I can claim none of his greatness.
Listening to a version of Raffles on the radio Bunny Manders mentioned a cab that he called a growler. Why?
Saw the man again this morning. I’ve mentioned him before. He has mental issues, bless him. He was sitting outside the block of flats again in his stocking feet. This his socks were holed. He just stared at me, his hair wild.
We often watch him with his little daughter. He and his partner are Dutch. He does the parenting. I think she is an academic at the University. He has a loping walk, she is often running ahead, turning to see if he is following. He is relaxed, I’ve only once heard him raise his voice to the little one. I like him. I like the Dutch. I have good memories of them. We say hello now and then when we pass by their flat with its mountains of washing drying outside. When it has been hot they’ve blown up a little paddling pool for the girl. Her shrieks of pleasure are carried up to our upper window. We saw him yesterday and said hello. He said something about a comet. I’ve been watching for it, he said. It is supposed to be visible at night and in the morning but the skies have been so cloudy. He laughed then. I wanted to be an astronomer, he said.
I am discombobulated. First I tried to figure out how to clean the filter in our new dehumidifier and couldn’t find it. Then I broke a glass object that I’ve had since we lived in Cambridge. And now a pillow case that I was washing has just disappeared. It isn’t in the machine or caught up in the duvet or sheet. A mystery. It unsettles me. I am distrait. But I know that peace is within my grasp. I just need to shrug it off. All will be solved. Eventually.
The mist has cleared outside. And now the sun is shining. I am grateful for that, the relentless rain of yesterday did begin to weigh heavy upon me.
The morning was heavy with mist when I walked. I put on the light of my torch to walk down St David’s Road, made dark by the heavy trees that line it. I saw a white figure (reminiscent of the ghostly one of Anne Catherick in The Woman in White which we are currently watching). It was the Indian man I sometimes see in the early mornings. He wears the full Indian dress, white tunic and trousers and a turban. His beard is long and white. Today he had on a Western padded coat. I heard his steps. He walked fast. I said Good Morning but he didn’t reply. Perhaps he doesn’t speak English, perhaps he was deep in a mediational kind of a walk, perhaps he is ghost, a figment of my imagination. Though the other day I did think he nodded at my nod. He took me by surprise emerging through the mist like that. As the car did yesterday. I walk in the road, not sensible I know but usually no one is about. He walked in the road too.
Several dreams last night. The one I remember, or forced myself to remember involved a coach trip (perhaps inspired by listening to Agatha Christie’s Nemesis on the radio) with a group of elderly ladies. One was Norwegian was it Tante A? Anyway she remarked that my Norwegian was improving and I spoke to her in Norwegian by way of a reply. I remember thinking in my dream that is quite fluent. Or was it in my head? The veils are thin between the two in dreamland. We had arrived at stop-off point and I had to sign some kind of a treaty or referendum, the others had already done so. I had to go into this gift shop to do so. A man stood behind the counter. There were several shops to choose from. I wanted to hurry so I could rejoin the women. We’re going to the beach, said one of them, it’s cooler there. The rest has gone from me.
