Author: Ellen Bell

The bedroom clock just fell off the wall. Though a plastic thing, it still made a terrific clattering. Is it an omen?

I saw it on my bathroom wall when I first woke. By the time I’d returned in there to have my bath, it was in the water, drowning. I couldn’t save it.

My body is without. I am heavy with a tired, drained-ness. I cannot do what I normally do. I walked but wanted to return to bed. I should’ve done, but there is fear in letting things slide, of yielding to unwellness. He says that it will prolong it. He is probably right.

I’ve begun reading Alain de Botton’s book of the same title and he is right, architecture can make little real difference to our state of mind, but it can help. I think. I spend so much of my time yearning for other homes that I forget to look about me. Am I dry, warm, safe, held, do I have enough food, clothes, meaningful work, and if the answer is yes, then why the lack of happiness, or even contentment? These are not outer feelings but inner ones. The outer stuff of our lives only touch the surface. I need to stop and consider this…daily.

The likelihood that he will go before me is high, after all there is fifteen years between us. And I think of it daily. How can I not? It will be thirty years in July since we met. A lifetime. After him, another one will begin.

So wrote Alain de Botton in the concluding paragraph to his book ‘A Week at the Airport’, his implication being that is what we think when we book a holiday. It isn’t. I know this. And my fantasies of escape shame me. The escape I require is really from myself, and this, sadly, cannot be achieved, no matter how far away I fly. This is where I have been planted, and for now must make the best of it. He says it’s the cold, and that it is bringing me down. Possibly, this is so. Possibly.

I think that is what he said, though with dreams it is often hard to tell exactly what words are uttered. I was disembarking from the top deck of bus, following in the wake of a group of American tourists. We had all be journeying to see an exhibition that was on in a gallery outside of the West End. Having got off, I sat down on a street bench to get dressed and a man came down a flight of stairs leading down from a front door of a terraced house. He looked morose, wore a white t-shirt and said, while not really looking at me: “It’s worse here”.

I fuss him. I fuss over dirt, disorder, chaos. The need for order, for control gets stronger as the years pass. He is a martyr to it.

It’s the same term she used to describe the workings of her mind after her hip operation a few years ago. He used it this morning to try and put into words the affect of this cold’s residue. He certainly is more irascible. Frustration, I suppose, at being slower and a trifle forgetful. The other day he fell asleep in the cafe. And came home cross and disorientated. It has to be borne. And I am not much better. But I have work to anchor me.

I have been equally floored by this cold as he was. I didn’t walk this morning. I have no strength. I will work, though he says that I shouldn’t. I need to feel normal, eventhough I don’t. The morning outside promises well.

I dreamt of Branwell Bronte over and over last night.

We’ve begun watching the film ‘To Walk Invisible’ again. I am always struck by the cinematography, the colours and the beauty of the language – not old but not modern either. It shines. And the actress playing Emily always takes my breath – so tall, so feral and so fierce in her displays of family hate and love. They are inextricable. So fine.