Some books give me such joy. Lucy Worsley’s Jane Austen at Home is one such book. It’s the detail, the minutiae of Austen’s day-to-day life that captivates. Worsley is thorough, painting a real life, a nuts-and-bolts life of a woman not the literary genius that she has now become. I love it. Truly. And it is worth going into work to engage with it. I’m currently in Bath with her, just before she is to leave. (When he was looking for a flat for me, all those years ago now, he looked at the one that the Austen family almost took in Sydney Place, for it seems that it was too expensive in the end. He thought it shabby, so we didn’t go for it. It was a gentle connection nevertheless.) Biographers’ opinions vary but it does appear that Bath wasn’t a happy place for her. I get it. I loved it but sometimes, just sometimes it brought me down – though whether that was a fault of place, I cannot say. She did write Northanger Abbey there (she initially called it Susan) though it was years till it was published, posthumously, I believe but mostly it was an unproductive time. Too topsy-turvy, the death of her father, the constant moving and being at the beck and call of wealthy relatives – I suspect. In a letter from that time she writes: ‘I do not know what is the matter with me to day but I cannot write…..fortunately I have nothing very particular to say.’
I get myself in a tizz over nothing it seems. My body is rigid with it. The rain lashes outside, though it was dry, thankfully, when I walked earlier. Some mornings the most that I can do is go out and do the food shopping and come home. I do my best to rise to the occasion, for we must greet the people we have come to know there. The managers, the under managers, the shelf-stackers, the other shoppers, who like us are out at 6 am, and the staff working the tills. Morning, campers, called out one man whom we see most mornings there. He looks like an ageing Roy Orbison, for he always wears dark glasses and his hair, long and dyed black has that same distinctive fluffy, brittle quality. His over-cheerfulness gives him away. Is this hard for him too? I want to run. He stands his ground and chats with him. We talk to S on the till. It is expected. It passes the time of day, he would say. He is singing when we get to his till. He talks about the job he had before. Too much responsibility, he said. I’d get home and I’d be worrying. No, this is better, he says, it’s just beep, beep and then go home. Perfect. His Liverpudlian accent makes the word like treacle and ends it with a k. I ask whether he will make pancakes. No, he says, my sixteen year old daughter makes them. He chooses a mixed pack of mini cereals for the food bank and it takes me back to staying with J and how we’d fight over who got the Coco Pops. I loved those little packets. Anything in miniature captivated me. And to be able to have something entirely to myself. I could give way over the Coco Pops, as I often did, Frosties were fine, I even secretly preferred them, not liking the way the Coco Pops turned the milk brown. J wasn’t a natural host, or indeed grandparent but to stay away from home was nevertheless a treat, and I loved the sparse, neatness of her house.
I want to spend another day working on the alphabet piece – I think that is the struggle, not feeling I can justify it to myself. And yet, I’m trying to find something, a way of working, a path and it needs that time, that dedication to unfold. Let it be. Allow yourself the time.
We’ve met a few times now, that is, when I can fit it in in my oh so rigid routine. I like her. She is fresh-faced, open, young but 23 and fearless. Or so she seems to me. We meet ostensibly to talk Norwegian. My mother’s tongue. I persist in trying to get a hold of it. I know little. I struggle with the pronunciation and feel tongue-tied and stupid. But she still chatters on to me. Mostly in Norwegian, though sometimes, when it is clear that I haven’t the foggiest what she is saying, in English. We meet in a cafe, an unpretentious place where hoi polloi go for egg and chips and sit on the banquettes in the window overlooking the street below. I feel comfortable in there. He knows the owner from years back. I buy the girl a drink. She never offers to pay, why should she? She, after all is helping me, letting me stumble through the foreign tongue so patiently. Yesterday she brought me another book. They are always childrens’ books. I struggle through those too but they are good practice in seeing the words in print. This particular book was written by a dentist to try and encourage children to take care of their teeth. They are so practical the Norwegians. She shows me another side of the culture. I am used to city dwellers, at least those from the suburbs of Oslo, wealthy, intelligent, cosmopolitan. She is a farmer’s daughter. Both her parents are farmers. And yet, she is brave, and her English is amazing. She has big plans. After her degree her she wants to go to Edinburgh. She never asks any questions about me. I am of no interest to her. I wonder why she meets me. She is kind I think. But not curious. Is that a feature of the young, this lack of curiosity?
I had many dreams last night. In one I was in the sea, it was deep and I was frightened of drowning and what was underneath me. I felt something. Was it a shark? No, it was two dolphins, they rose smiling in an arc in front of me. And yet, it was all very illusory and the sea, rather than being cold, wet and dark was white, like sheets, and billowy as a duvet. My fears were groundless. I was safe, not drowning.
I can’t always catch what she is saying down the phone. Her voice is quiet, apologetic. A cancelling out of noise, rather than a making of it. I thought she said Denmark. And then when I questioned her I realised she had. It’s at Denmark, she said again. Denmark? I asked, thinking surely not, she never travels, hasn’t even been in a plane. Denmark Farm, she said. It’s like a shorthand, a restricted code. She has always lived in that place, that small community, she knows it as she knows the back of her hand and offers it up with her quiet voice as a cipher, not intentionally, but that is how I hear it. She talked of wanting to do a craft class over Easter. Again, I had to struggle to hear it, to make sense of what she was saying. Something to do with woolen animals. Then it came, felting. Felted animals. It is brave of her. All these forays into a bigger world are brave steps for her. I want to hear them described and hand them back to her as prizes. See what you have achieved. And the two of them so open to all viruses – so easily assailed. I want to wrap them up and make them safe. She was as grey as I was yesterday. I didn’t lift her. I was sorry for that.
I cook things sometimes just for the warm, rich smells that give the flat. Sometimes it is coffee in that wonderful authentic Italian coffee pot, other times like this morning it is almonds toasted in a frying pan. No fat just the heat turning them brown. Nutty, honeyed, toasty sort of smell. Gorgeous.
It’s the small things, she said, or implied, I forget which. Do what you can to instil joy. He tries to convince me. It is getting lighter, he says. It is. Promise.
I’ve listened to the whole series of Geoffrey Wheeler’s forays into the UK’s Grand Theatres on the radio. Yesterday I listened back to one on the Grand in Swansea and another on the one in Ayr. In the Swansea one he interviewed the ex-Theatre Chaplain, a woman, I forget her name. She talked about going to that theatre as a child and her feelings at seeing the red velvet curtains hiding the stage before the play opened. ‘They shared an enchantment with you’, she said. I followed those with a programme hosted by Roger Law (of Fluck and Law) on breeding English Rabbits, a special spotted variety based on a painting that a wealth of breeders are trying to emulate. Fascinating. It ended, perhaps inevitably with Law eating rabbit pie.
A good day yesterday, even work was fun with some guests for Ifan show bringing in Poppy the Jack Russell and two ferrets.
I send you love, and you and you my love. Nothing is as bad as we think it is. Even in my worst bleakness I know this. Trust it. You are loved. All of you.
They’d promised rain and wind and yet there they were in what are ostensibly summer clothes pouring out of the nightclubs and bars. I watched as a particularly pneumatic girl with long, blond, peroxided tresses skipped across the road, her hand firmly clasped in that of black lad, with a huge grin on his face. I’ve got the cherry on top, his smile seemed to say. Look at me. Look at her. And I did. She with that bottom, and those voluptuous thighs barely contained in a pair of pale-blue hot pants.
I love the radio. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I love it. The things that one just comes across. What a richness, what a joy. Yesterday there was a programme about collecting. Stamp collecting in particular. The British Guyanese Magenta. It sold for 9 million. What craziness. It’s all about order. Establishing an order, neatness, control on a chaotic world, apparently. There used to be two until one of the collectors way back set fire to one. ‘There’s only one now,’ he said, after he’d put his lighter to it.
My laptop is still struggling. I must try to not get frustrated. It will be resolved, sooner or later. Be patient, my love.
I dreamt of her again the other night. She was a baby and then a woman. I changed her nappy then she was bemoaning the state of her thighs. I like having her close. It is enough.
My back is rigid from the battle I’ve been doing with myself all morning. Well, since 1.45 am when I woke. I have no path to follow, it is entirely of my own making and that should be a freedom and yet all I do is harangue myself for the choices I make.
We’d talked, he and I, and he’d suggested that I look through my plan chest drawers of begun projects and see what I could find. I told him of my yearning to make ‘something beautiful’. Anyway I did, in between going back and forth to work. And I did find some cheer in it. There is much work there, and endeavour but each needs time to be completed, and more importantly faith. I need to believe in what I do. As I need to believe in myself. It is a pattern. I finish an intense piece of work, usually some writing, and then I panic. How to fill the gap? What should I be doing? And then my mind is off, shouting, declaiming, digging in.
I want to keep open. I want to accept what is but also keep open. There are many different strands to my practice. It may not always have been the case, though I remember even when I was deep in the production line I still hankered after more conceptual projects. And actively sought them. Perhaps the kindest, calmest thing to do is accept that that is who I am. I need to do lots of different things. Though each, in my fastidious way, needs to be done equally well. I need to write, I need to design bigger projects to get me out of the house, my head and my comfort zone (they are rich things, though scary to me) and I need to make, to be involved in something that evolves, grows, uses my hands and allows my mind free-rein. To do just one of these things won’t suffice. I’ve tried but it won’t. And yet, they are all work, all have creative significance, even if they don’t, as in most cases, have much currency in the outside world. My reasons for work are manifold. It’s as needful to me as breathing. And yet, I am wobbly, am still wobbled by a path that is no longer clear.
He rings up after reading yesterday’s piece to tell me of spelling mistakes. I snap a little. Once a teacher always a teacher. He is trying to help. But it isn’t always welcome. I should ring back and apologise. I will.
My laptop is failing still. The part has yet to arrive. Meanwhile I write this at an angle, else the screen goes like fizzing mist. I give in. Other work time.
And I forgot to tell you of them. The alphabets I found. Cross stitch designs from the 1900s, German I think, of alphabets. And I can download them for free. Marvellous. They are so beautiful. I want to make them. Why or for what, as yet I cannot say but the joy I felt at finding them was so strong I have to act on it. And yet, my tension comes from the uncertainty of it. Can I allow myself this seeming indulgence? I just want to try. To see what comes from it. I’ve begun drawing them out. I’m terrible at following patterns. It is a discipline. I want it, I need it. Let me.
My dreams take me to dark places. I wake in a fug, my head woozy and bleak. Such complexity – the colours, the people, the confusion of relationships. And that strange capacity of dreams that takes the dreamer from one situation to another without explanation – one is just there. She was in my dream and she was living with her father in a flat above us. She filled the small rooms, Amazon that she is. Then we were all in a restaurant together. And he kept trying to touch me when I didn’t want him to. We talked of the travelling we were going to do. To Eastern Europe, I think. I asked what she’d like to do (I get a sense we were in London). She said she liked ‘what they did with the Anthill Mob’. Where did that come from? As far as I can remember the Anthill Mob were one of the perennial contestants on in The Wacky Races along with Dick Dastardly and Mutley (or was it Muttley?). Where did my subconscious find that? I dream of her so often. So much yet to do, to repair. To love.
Adamantine. It was a word in a novel I’ve borrowed from the library. I’ve read it before but wanted to re-read it. A gentle book with a beautiful reproduction of a painting by Bonnard on the front. I looked up its meaning. Unbroken. It cannot be broken. Yes. I get it now.
I showed him my tweet. He’d told me off the day before for not making it clear to the recipient who I was, for not ‘networking’ properly. I wanted to show him that he knew me after all. Thanking me. And then he pointed out my mis-spelling. I feel so small. They’ve all seen it. I’ve made a public fool of myself. I never realised it was spelt like that. I’ve never had recourse to spell it before. Nothing I can do but live with my ignorance. I know now. Don’t I?
She sends a round robin. It comes from a place of good, I think. She wants to share but on her terms. Don’t we all. But it feels distant, it is not intimate. I cannot rise to it. It is not directed at me but a mass, a group, something indistinct. I send her best wishes, love even. But something has been lost. Or perhaps it never was.
He comes every year to do a check-up on our boiler. The rental agent sends him. He always comes with an apprentice in tow. Some young lad, fresh faced, a little diffident but biddable. This one had a shock of dark hair, almost a topknot, a tonsure of hair. He was warmer than before. He used to suffer from back pain, perhaps that’s what made him sharp. He asked him about his parents. His Dad’s OK but his Mum has had to go into a home. She kept wandering about. One time he had to go and search for her at midnight. Yeh, said the lad, you found her on the towpath. Yeh, said the Boiler Man, she was in her nightie. What yer, doing Mum? I asked. And she called me a ‘fucking townie’. It’s sad, so sad, but Dad wasn’t coping, see. I ache for him but I’m also conscious that I need to get on and sense myself hurrying them. You can’t rush it, he says to me afterwards, it’s Aber talk.
I don’t feel so good today. I wrote the first draft. It needs work but it is nearly there. I am relieved, the fear got too much.
The wind is wild. Poor loves with all that flooding. My heart goes out to you all. All of you in hardship. I stand in your shoes. I would. If I could.
He passes on a lovely review of MF’s poetry. It is a joy. I catch his enthusiasm. How lucky I was to be taught by him. What did she say? ‘His gifts are quiet’. He said I’d make a good journalist. He liked that, and often quotes it. Do I? Am I? The pieces of From Our Home Correspondent that I heard yesterday were so good, particularly about the school in Brum. She wrote with real compassion and humanity. You see sometimes they do good, good work.
Do you want a valium? he asked. In fact, he offered me one twice. It will take it away, he said. And it probably would. But I am stubborn, cussid some might say and I’m scared of tranquillisers – the whole idea of them. Yes, I’ve been stressed, still am and it has all sorts of physical and emotional consequences. Yes, I’m snappy, agitated, tense, tight but and yet for all that discomfort I don’t want to be taken to a place where I don’t feel. There is something to be learnt in it. In that whole rigmarole of experiencing fear. I want to own it and then move through it. One my own, unaided, and un-tranquillised.
I dreamt I was going to have an operation, it felt like it was going to be an abortion. I was lying on a hospital bed with my legs open and the nurse was offering me painkillers. No thanks, I said. She was surprised. You will be in a lot of pain afterwards, particularly through the night, she said. Are you sure? I hesitated. I want to try, I said. OK, she said. Before that scene I’d been trying to put together this precious object that I thought was ceramic but turned out to be papier mache. It was my friend’s. William Cowper the poet had made it. He was an amateur, I heard myself telling someone I was showing it too. It was a complicated thing that had to be put together. It kept changing as I worked on it. And it’s fragility scared me. People milled around me, strangers and people I knew.
There was a tiny moth by the front door as I made to go out for my walk. It was whirling about on the floor. I tried to pick it up with my gloves. It took sometime. I wanted to set it free but I must have been too rough for its tiny body and when I placed it on the soil of the geranium pot it lay there motionless. I’m sorry. I was trying to help and failed. Forgive me, little one.
I’m scared about writing this morning. Ugh, it floors me sometimes. I just need to start, begin and make it mine.
