Author: Ellen Bell

If she’d been a boy we were going to call her Jake, after him, Jake Thackeray.

He introduced me to his work. He had a few LPs of his performances and songs. He’d been put onto him by his bohemian friends. I loved his voice from the start. Matthew Parris on Great Lives described him as beautiful. Did he really say that? Why not? He was. He was like a more beautiful Ted Hughes, just as brooding but less cruel and sardonic looking. Some have said that his songs were misogynistic. Perhaps, a little, but no less so than Les Dawson’s and everyone took his jests in good part. Parris said he was a chansonnier. Yes, good word. A troubadour. He was modest, describing himself as a mediocre teacher and a mediocre singer (I paraphrase). It all went a little bleak at the end, for him. Sad. He was on the edges, the margins, something precious, I think.

The night before last I woke from a dream where he and I were standing by the bar just in front of Alexandra Hall and there was a fight going on in one of the student rooms on the top floor and suddenly we were being rained down on by great shards of glass. I hid in his chest, his coat to protect myself. It felt terrifying. Huge pieces of furniture were flying out of the window and crashing down onto the prom. And now Storm Dennis is predicted for this weekend. More mayhem. There is already sand and stones littering the prom and the road. A wildness.

My laptop is semi mended. A new hard drive but still the screen fizzes and flickers. A new LED cable is needed, apparently, but it is coming from ‘abroad’. He has put some tape around the tear and advises that I keep the screen upright. I shall get a cricked neck. So be it. Yesterday was a waiting game. He was marvellous. Today the stress lingers but I have work to do. Much work. That is good.

It was a word in my dream. Does it actually mean anything? Who knows?

I’m a dark place that I can’t get out of. His inquest was the day before yesterday. He told me about it after he’d read news of it in the local paper. He had committed suicide. Most people had suspected that it was the case. He was too strong a swimmer. There is suggestion of something prurient, lewd, nasty. I am sorry for him, for her, for all his family. To feel that there was no way other than that is so sad, so desperate. My heart aches for him, for her, for all of them. I send her message. She responds. It is such a little thing but I wanted to say something, to communicate something like love. I hope people are being kind, I said. And I do.

I think of him often. His body was bruised and bashed and buffeted by the rocks. They covered his coffin in pictures of the town he loved so much. The town he photographed endlessly. I asked them at work if they’d covered the inquest. They had to, they said. It is public information, public property. It makes me feel grey. We all have skeletons in cupboards, things for which we are ashamed. We all fail. We all flounder.

The rains rolls down my studio window. So many loose ends. I am ragged today. Let the light come. And the sun. Shine on us. Clean us through.

It’s mostly in my hands and feet, though sometimes it invades my whole body. It’s like a fizzing, as if under my skin is a kind of bubbling effervescence that will not cease. He calls it pins and needles. But it isn’t really like that, this is more like the sensation you get with cramp. No this is a tingling, an alive feeling that is too much. As I said, unceasing. He googled it and came into to say goodnight with that familiar worried look on his face and quoted it as symptomatic of horrors like MS. This morning he looked calmer. I think it is linked to anxiety, he said. It makes sense. Though why I would have the symptoms while I sleep, god knows.

I’ve always worried. And I know that I worry more now than ever. Life frightens me, it is true, though I can see I have no real reason for the fear. It is existential, beyond me, beyond the material. It is the chaos of not knowing, of feeling vulnerable, of being at the mercy of things I do not understand. And there is so much I do not understand. I try to just love, I do, but my mind takes over, fretting, poking, unsettling, haranguing and bullying. I try to introduce a more sensible voice, particularly when I walk. All is well, this is what has been decided, look how beloved I am, I’m doing the best I can, this is my life and I live it as openly as I can. On and on, I talk to myself, intoning internally with my steps. It helps a little but the nagging mind soon takes over. I have no template for self-acceptance, you see, I cannot see, feel, experience my worthiness.

I haven’t seen the two Chinese families who live round the corner of our block for a while now. One has removed their entire ‘garden’ of plants. I use the term garden loosely as it mostly comprised a series of plastic containers, including a washing-up bowl, in which they were growing flowers and vegetables. (The blue washing-up bowl had huge onion tops sprouting from it). Do you think they’ve left? I asked him this morning as we made our way to the car to do our first shop of the week. No, he said, see there is still some of their things in the window. And there were, including an empty plant pot and some flower food and the wrapping paper that they have stuck to one of the windows in lieu of a curtain is also still there. I think of them and wonder if they have family members in fear of catching the virus or who have contracted it. But then I feel foolish, China is so huge and the death toll, though terrible for those concerned is minor by comparison.

I avoided the wind mostly, walking along side roads and missing out the prom. The World at One reported from here yesterday. 70 mile an hour winds the reporter said. Gosh. It is wild but alive, I think.

Work now. I must reconnect. I’ve had a coffee. Now for tea.

It rages. I walked in it anyway. I needed to. I needed to make it less frightening. For it does frighten me. That wind, that howling. I feel vulnerable, at the mercy of elements that could destroy me. It isn’t personal the wind is just doing what it does. The rain lashed, whipping across my face, and still I walked. It rages still, what three hours later. I think of those without shelter, how must that be to be out in this wind storm. Is that man still sleeping in the Prom shelter and the other one, is he still sleeping in the doorway of Coffee#?

I do my stuff, all that domestic stuff that is required to keep things in place, to instill a semblance of order but the bleakness of this dark, this winter, this outer raging still lingers.

Some days it is just about keeping going. One more washing load to finish and hang out and then? A pot of tea. And sewing. Not a day to ask much of myself. Just the breathing, the in and the out and being kind. Yes.

I find it hard to shake off. It’s inbred in me, where from exactly I am not sure. My father didn’t have it. He worked hard when he had to but not otherwise. He enjoyed leisure, and didn’t appear to feel any guilt at doing so. My mother worked hard, sometimes willingly, sometimes not, but she also yielded uncomplainingly to the times, later on in her life, when little was asked of her. I feel better about myself when I am working hard. I like to feel used up, useful and worthy. Yes, work makes me feel worthy, worth my salt. Though that too has stresses when you start to investigate whether the work you do is worthwhile, useful and most importantly good enough. He is more sanguine than I. He too doesn’t fight leisure. He believes he has earnt it. It is his. Work doesn’t define him, as I think it defines me. I do battle with myself over this. Always. Always have. I know that there is a better way of living. That is, to do the work when it is there and to rest and observe the gentle continuum of life when it isn’t. I woke at odds with myself, a residue from yesterday’s inner fighting. I work all the time, though the work is most often domestic work. He would say that is work all the same, and it is, but it doesn’t give me (or at least I don’t allow it to give me) a good sense of self. I think of others working harder than me, all the time knowing how pernicious such a way of thinking can be. I do not know how others live their lives, not truly, and if I did that is their life, their choices, as this life and these choices are mine. We must follow different paths. Why can’t you just be? he asks. A good question. Because, I want to say, and sometimes do, I don’t know how to be without doing. And what am I if I am not doing? A nothing? A space, a vacancy, of no use. Try just being loving, a voice told me this morning. Just try loving. That’s all. Let that be the motivation behind everything you do, not an ego-boost, or money-spinner, or even a domestic imperative. Just make every action a loving one. Let that be the reason and you will feel differently. I promise.

I shall give it a try.

A few couples canoodled in the dark as I walked past. They stood in doorways and under street lamps. I stepped out into the road so as not to disturb them. One man leant against a wall talking to a girl, his right leg was bent and raised up behind him. Along Llanbadarn Road I watched as a girl got out of a taxi. She was large with immense thighs that were revealed in their full glory beneath an extremely short, figure-hugging dress. She walked the path to her door unsteadily and I observed as she first tapped on a window then struggled to get her key in the door. The taxi driver waited too. Why? Perhaps she didn’t have enough cash in her purse, or maybe he was being paternal and checking to see she got in safe. Their experience of the night is so different to mine.

It woke me. It wasn’t late in most people’s terms, about 7.20 pm, but for me going to bed as early as I do it was. She woke me. A voice. A sharp, cultured voice. I tried to listen to what she was telling me as I pulled myself from sleep. She wanted to book me. For when? I asked. Tonight, she said, at about 9 o’clock. My heart sank and that old familiar bleakness that comes from the prospect of having to engage with the late night dark began to threaten. Hang on, I said, as I struggled out of bed, I just need to get a pen. Just a minute, she said, her tone becoming sharper. Someone was talking to her in the background. I could hear him. I’m so dreadfully sorry to have disturbed you, she said, conciliatory now, but it seems we’ve already booked someone. That’s OK, I said. But it wasn’t. Sleep took so long to come after that. It doesn’t feel right – such a rude awakening. Is the fault mine, or the job’s. I hate it. I hate that pulling from rest. And I’d laid down determined to be at peace, to accept the calm, the unusual uncluttered-ness of my brain. He was kind, coming back in to tuck me in. But oh, the lost sleep. Do I need to make a change? I cannot say. Opportunities seem few.

I’ve hung her painting. It is a wonder. She prepared it for me. What a nice thing that is. She thought of me as she did so. For that period of time I was in her head. The colours are muddy, and her finger traces clear. She cried when I took it away. But she was poorly, her cheeks pink with fever. But it is here. I have a small piece of them. And I am glad.

Home again. The flat is freezing but sleeping in my own bed last night was a dream. Didn’t wake once. And the moon was a giant this morning as I walked. Gosh, it dislodges me going away. But was a joy. And there were joys. Thank you for making it OK. As you always do. x

It was on the front of the local paper. There was a picture of her too. She was knitting. An old lady in an outsized jumper knitting pouches for marsupials hurt by the bushfires in Australia. I shall keep on knitting them until they tell me to stop, she told the reporter, a big smile on her face.

I think about my work all the time. I do battle with it, with myself, most of the time. This battling between soulful work and pay-the-rent work. It has always been thus. I’m a dyed-in-the-wool bourgeoisie, I need to earn money to feel worthy, useful. And yet. And yet, these ideas keep coming, esoteric mostly, flickers of something like wonder. I want, no need to chase them too. Even though they often cost money to produce and see through. I thought about making for an object, for a reason, for a person. And that makes sense too. The sewing I am doing for her and for him. And the piece that I have begun to dream up on my head for her. It gives the time spent on it meaning. There is a point. A focus. I want to do these things. They are gifts. A gift exchange. She thanked me. It’s lovely to have a piece of you, she said. Yes. And it makes me want to do more. That gentle, demure, diffident being is my model, and look what she produced.

We are off tomorrow to that light, that openness and what else. I cannot say. It steals into my sleep and invades my dreams. I am unsettled by her, though it isn’t her fault. Let me be at peace with what is and what is to come.

I love the snatches of conversation on the radio that I catch when I’m doing other things. Yesterday it was from a history podcast in which they were talking about the Stasi and how they collected archives of stuff on people they suspected including a whole series of pants that they stored in jars. The idea was that the worn underwear would contain a remnant of the suspect’s smell, for sniffer dogs to refer to I suppose. I was doing my yoga at the time and my mind began imagining pieces of work I could make about it. I love the flow of it, the sadness is that so many of such ideas never materialise. Considerations of time, money, opportunity and places to show it often kill them before they’ve had a chance to flower. Sometimes I fantasise about going back into education just to allow me the chance to make again. I imagine him raising his eyes to the ceiling. The perennial student, eh? As I walked I thought about the pain of not letting ideas come to fruition. I’ve so many waiting in the wings, in drawers, in my laptop, in my sketchbooks, and in my head and heart. I am a walking vessel of them.

That image still plays in mind. Did you see it? The one on the front of The Times of the old man, the ex-inmate of Auschwitz, crying, with that distinctive blue and white striped cap on his head. I wanted to ask why did you keep it? That hat with so many terrible associations, but then I thought, of course, of course you would, it is too important to discard, it is a symbol of the memory, the only thing left of that time. And it still fitted him. Nothing has changed, he is still that boy grieving the loss of his family, his friends, his community, his race. We can never forget. Forgive, I hope, but forget, never.

At times it is all over, though mostly on my back. There is no rash, no evidence of disturbance. I try not to respond, to itch. I practice detachment, a separating from my physical self. It works when I concentrate. He tries to help and reads out a long list of possible causes, some frightening, others not so. None of them ring true. It’s the M word, I’m sure of it. That gradual dying of the young self, the physically vital self. So be it. Let it come. I will bear it, millions have done so before me. It saddens me sometimes, there is much lost, and yet what is gained? A promise of death, of departure. Yes. That is OK by me. I shall miss much but I already have one foot outside the door.

Our last days as Europeans. Now that is sad. But I still claim allegiance and always will. I am not one thing. I am a child of many cultures, as are all of us. Do your worst. We will defy you internally, holding true our notions of communuality, brotherhood, sisterhood and belonging to a bigger world, border-free.