Author: Ellen Bell

In the middle of my life I am walking through a dark wood. So said Dante while writing the Divine Comedy, according to David Whyte the poet, who I listened to as I walked this morning. I don’t walk the dark woods but the dark streets and the dark Prom. Though in June, now, in the blueness of now, it grows lighter faster. I woke from a dream in which I was working for the royal family and living in the Palace. I wasn’t doing to well, there was still so much I didn’t know. I forgot to change Prince Harry’s lunchtime menu. He was going to end up with Roast Beef two days running and there was nothing I could do about it, save make up for it with an irresistible sweet dish. Then I was working in a shop in the palace, a canteen with a shop. Someone was teaching me the ropes. There was so much to learn and I couldn’t remember it all. There was something to do with a bonus payment but the procedure was so complicated. And yet I was left to my own devices, trusted with it all. I was scared but not scared. But I do remember looking at my watch and realising I had a whole day ahead of me to get through in this state of not knowing.

I caught the tail end of the TED talks and heard an author and ex-Olympiad swimmer talking about failure and how the fairy-tale myth perpetuated by story and mass media is that failure is also followed by some meteoric success. There is not always a rise, she said, not everyone rises. Sometimes this (this ‘failure’ for want of a better word) is your life. I found her words profoundly restful. I fell into them like an eiderdown. The pursuit of success if so tiring. I’m not sure I want it. Not anymore.

I’ve decided to begin writing. A curtain, thick and black comes down before my eyes at the thought of it. It is timely. I need to reduce my fear of it.

I’ve always been afraid, I thought as I walked, for as long as I can remember. Mostly unnamed, unimagined fears – sometimes it was her, or school, or just being alive. And yet, physically I had enough, was fed, watered, kept warm. It was just in me. Was it hers, a hand-me-down dread? Or was it of my own making? I will live with it. Working with it even if fear is a counterpoint to creativity able to sabotage, strangle the joy and courage out of it.

So, coffee on and write.

I looked up list poets but none were listed. But there is such a thing as a list poem. I wanted to write a happy list. Not as a poem but as a reference point that I could return to when bleak. Things I could do. I always like to have  things I can do. Small things. Sometimes miniscule things. Like  walking near the bakery so that I can catch the smell of freshly baking bread so as to alleviate the dreariness of walking in the dark and the pissing rain. Or the breathing in the scent of the dog roses, sharpened in the wet, just beyond the Castle. So often happiness, or is it bliss, or merely pleasure comes to me via my sense of smell, such as the perfume of night-scented stocks on a warm evening, or the warm sweet-buttery-ness of a Danish pastry straight from the oven or that of ground coffee beans in Covent Garden’s Monmouth Street’s Coffee House. One has to be specific. That specific. Smells can disappoint. For the moment I think of sun. Of sitting in the sun. Of sitting in the sun on a balcony. Just sitting. Doing nothing but sitting. Warming my bones in the sun. The sun empties me out. It roots out the mouldy darkness, the dread, those corners of impossible-to-articulate dread and washes it white. A white-out. How I want that. A white-out. Clean white sheets. Never patterned. Have I ever said how much I prefer not to sleep in patterned sheets? Sleep, bed has taken on a holy state. I need its warm, then cool white emptiness. So that I can empty out. But not before sending out love, good thoughts, healing whatever you want to call it. To her in that prison. They call it languishing. The word seems wrong, inappropriate like  Lydia Languish of The Rivals. Languishing implies a prone body, stretched out bored on a chaise longue. Not so in the case. I thought of her today, this morning. I thought of her as walked in the relentless rain, shopped in the supermarket and as I put away the food. Don’t let her be forgotten. Somebody do something now, soon, please. I want to feel for others. Sometimes it is all I can do. To stand beside. To sit beside. To be in their story. To listen. It seems such a small thing. What am I for? Perhaps it is not about happiness, a sometime scary thing, a wildness, but more about peace. Is that it? Is that what I have to offer? My peace? A lifetime’s work. To be at peace with oneself as a gift to the world. Here. When I have it it is yours.

Maybe I just don’t know how to be happy. How to be happy. I think it is an art. Perhaps we have it as babies, newborns, who knows. And perhaps some of us un-learn it. Or just cannot allow it. I think about dark things more than light. That is for certain. I thought of her and her last night. One in a prison refusing food and another still ill, not herself. Does this happiness thing really matter? Is that our only reason to be here, to get happy? He advocates medication, believes in it, swears by it. I am sceptical, scared of handing myself, my mind and my body over. I want to find my own way to the other side, if there is one.

The dead blackbird was still there on the side of the road on the approach to the little hill. It is still in one piece. A perfect form but lifeless.

The moon was almost full as I walked. And the morning just breaking. Two girls were wrestling in the sand pit, another sat on the giant deckchair egging them on. Pier Pressure was busy. A line of white taxi-cabs waited outside. The salty stink of fried chicken hung in the air. There was no wind.

I brought him down, I could see that. He wants to help, to make it better.

He didn’t give her the job. He said it was because she wore too much green eyeshadow. Times have changed. Might she have lived now? I understand his obsession, I am somewhat the same.  I think about them all, all my grandparents, parents and ever further back. They’ve all had their part to play in this life of mine. She came down so low from all those prospects. And she did, and she. One can only feel sorry. Always.

She was out walking when I phoned her. Her voice was a little breathless and I could hear the wind. Is the dog with you? I asked. Yes, she said. She’d woken late she told me. And I had to get out, she said, to shake off my stupid dreams. I wondered why they were stupid. I didn’t ask. She was chatty. It is nice to hear. She is so different, so much more open. I like out chats, she says. I do too. I do too.

More on-waking chattering in my head. This morning it was someone saying, ‘You could quickly get into the psychiatrist’s chair.’ And just before going to sleep I saw an image of glass that had just been shattered on a tarmac path. The glass was like little tiny cubes of ice. It had smashed right in front of me. Had I thrown it? I read somewhere that Thomas Edison was so fascinated by human subconscious activity just before waking that he rigged up a systems of alarms so that he would wake sharply in time to note down his visions and hearings.

I heard the crunch under my walking boot. Oh, no, I’ve stepped on a snail. I recoil from that tender destruction, feeling the fragility of the shell. They spend the night making their way across paths and roads and cannot be seen in the dark. I didn’t meant to. I am so sorry. The glare of headlights makes me avert my eyes. I take the shortcut towards the station and the same car is coming round the corner. It’s a police car and the officer inside cranes his neck to stare at me. Am I suspicious-looking in my waterproofs, hoodie and boots?  The scent of the dog roses in the Castle park are gorgeous. The night time seems to heighten their sweetness. Three lads in Hawaiian shirts loiter outside The Angel, playfighting. There is another next-door in Pizza Lush ordering from the counter. Three girls sit on the steps of The Academy smoking. I sniff the air just beyond the Pelican Bakery. Any smell of bread? A hint. Buttery notes, a trace of salt and a warm blast of yeast. A few days ago the odour of baking bread filled the town from the station to the top of Llanbadarn Road. It must’ve been the direction of the wind. The two bakers from Slater’s used to hang around outside the shop smoking, their floury footsteps marking a route from the Barclay’s’ ATM to the 24 hour SPAR. I don’t see them anymore.

A man is ahead of me. A large man, shaven head broad shoulders. Should I cut off down the next road? He has the word SECURITY emblazoned on the back of his bomber jacket. I join Llanbadarn Road from down the little hill. He is across the road on the other pavement. He looks up at me but continues walking. An owl whoo woos in the distance. I am safe. I always have been.

A new word came to me. A derivation of ‘twatting’ or ‘twatting-around’. He does a lot of that. ‘Twattling’. Don’t do too much twattling, I said getting out of the car.

I was going to work on his quilt but my legs are heavy and tired, I need to sit with them up. So I will put it off till Monday. I yielded to her advice. More blood tests and new medication. How have I got to this place?

A note to myself. Read Harriet Martineau’s letters and those of Vanessa Bell  and her part in the Omega workshops and the aesthetic indivisibility between home space and workspace.

The sun is out.

I woke with a sentence in my head. Things make sense in dreams that don’t when one tries to bring them into this reality. They don’t translate. I knew what it meant then but now I’m not so sure. ‘Very up to talk.’ That’s what it said. Was it about a particular person? Who knows. Leave it be. Let it float around as sound, sound heard but not verbalised.

He reads the obituaries just before he leaves the breakfast table to go downstairs to dress. He wasn’t a notable personage. An actor with an unusual name. He never knew his father. He’d left and the actor had never sought him out. His most famous role was as a Darlek. ‘I needed the money,’ he said, ‘and nobody cared.’

The rain was relentless when I walked. But it is always better than one expects. And there is pleasure in it. The patter of drops on the umbrella. The smell of the damp earth, the lack of people, and looking in on lit drawing rooms.

It gave me a fillip. I remembered her name and ordered two of her books. Both are about the eighteenth-century. And it’s interiors. I want to read about women sewing, why they did it and what they thought of while they did it. She writes from the standpoint of the individual. She goes inside their homes, reads their letters and diaries. I want to discover what they say about needlework marking time, filling time, taking time.

I keep falling asleep at my keyboard. Just a second, a moment. And the voices continue, chattery chattery. Time for coffee, then work. Then the Surgery. She’s doing her best, he said before he left. I know. And I will be polite. I will keep open, I promise him.

I listen to words all day, well, at least all the time I am working, preparing food and doing yoga. They roll around in my head. Is roll the correct word? Not sure. It is more sinuous than that. They weave around inside my head. Is that better? Sometimes I am so hamstrung and tongue-tied. Nothing will come out but turgidity. I was inarticulate yesterday when I tried to describe the sensation of stress in my upper back and shoulders and now I am the same over other people’s words. Such as the playwright Anna Maria Murphy in her play Nine Lives, aired yesterday on Radio 4 Extra. I was doing some yoga and had to stop mid stretch to note down this quote: ‘There’s a gasp in the air and I’m not sure if I’ve made it.’ I think that is right. And later, in the same play, she describes an elderly female neighbour who ‘has the hope of visitors in her eyes’. Isn’t that beautiful? Sometimes I want to burst with it all. Can I, will I, ever get my voice down? Will my book be made? It hovers. I think about it all the time, as I ingest others’ words and try to learn learn learn and learn how to write.  Perhaps it is also about how to listen. Another excellent play is being aired all week, 15 minutes a day. It’s called Amicable, and is about a couple on the verge of a divorce and it’s constructed from real life conversations from couples probably visiting Relate. They don’t listen to each other. They are walled off, equally intractable. I am learning to listen.

It is enough he tells me, so kindly, so softly. It is enough. What I do day to day in caring for him is enough. The rest is for me. Do what you want. He gives me permission. Why is it that Wednesdays always seem to be tricky? Or do I just apply some kind of doleful superstition to everything these gloomy days? Did I read somewhere that Wednesdays are a dip for me in particular? Based on birthdate? Yes, you can poo poo it. Why not? Or was it that I thought I was born on a Wednesday? Wednesday’s child is full of woe?

I’ve just checked. I was a Sunday’s child and consequently ‘bonny, blithe and gay’ – so there you are. Better buck up then.

Have I told you lately how much I love you?  x

I cannot let the story solidify, said the poet Lemn Sissay on a radio programme yesterday, I don’t want to trot it out. He was talking about his life story, his childhood in care, and, in particular, his finding his mother. He wanted the story, his truth, and his encounter with (and by association ours) to remain alive, fresh and new. It can so easily become off pat, if one retells and retells an experience. How can it be made to resonate with each telling? I learnt much from listening yesterday. A powerful act of attention. There was Sissay and two excellent plays about losing a child, one through being an addict and the other a kind of what if loss in a supermarket.

I want to write about my tautness, my tightness. Mainly in my back. It dominates my day. Can I learn to love it? To know it in an intimate way – so that I can welcome it in – a la Billie Holiday, Good Morning Heartache. So what does it feel like? A rigidity, a hardness of my shoulder and back muscles. My upper back. Thoughts trigger it. Mostly those about my worthlessness, or indecision, or fear. Sometimes the hardness is so strong that I am made breathless by it. By the end of the day I am weary of it. The rigidity had tightened my whole back right down to the lumbar region and my arms are aching. And often there is nausea. It is my battle, my test. Should I approach it differently? All I can do is sit in here each day and work. Work the cloth. See what happens. And wait. Wait for clarity. I think about women sewing. The seeming peace of it. What seethes underneath such self-containment?

The municipal gardeners have planted marigolds and petunias in the raised beds along South Marine. I’ve never really liked marigolds. They were ubiquitous in the gardens of my childhood. They seem, rather like carnations, too tight a bloom. They don’t evolve into anything bigger or blousier. They are neat and orderly. And without much scent, ‘cept for a trace of something like honey. Petunias are different, they can run riot. They grow and appear to multiply. To a hesitant gardener like myself they are a joy. But I like the life they offer. This can be a grey town at times, particularly in the rain, so colour, any colour is gratefully received.

I’ve heard a helicopter over head these last two nights. Perhaps they are searching for some missing person, or maybe taking a hospital patient to specialised care elsewhere. It’s an insistent noise, a buzzing that interrupts my sleep. Last night there was a child voice too coming up from the path below my window. It had a Chinese lilt to it. We could have a picnic, it said.

The rain kept revellers indoors. Just a few were out.

I cried about it. I hadn’t realised I was so concerned. He tells me it is up to me that they can’t bully me into doing something I don’t want to do. We shall see. Meanwhile, I seek help elsewhere.

The last stragglers were filing out of The Angel when I walked by on my way home. One girl was trying to teach her male companion some dance steps in the middle of the walk street just before The Academy. She was laughing, linking her arm in his and swaying as she watched her feet making their moves. Another was singing. I’ve had my first kiss tonight, she sang, I’ve had my first kiss, over and over. I often think about the Pakistani family who run the newsagent on the corner. They must be woken continually from the noise outside the pubs, clubs and take aways on and near their street that stay open long in to the early hours. He always looked sour-faced and unhappy whenever I used to go in there.  (I stopped doing so, his misery was contagious. ) Was it the result of broken nights (though his wife was forever cheerful) or homesickness?

We were the only ones in the office and she asked me about the book I was reading. We conversed and she shared intimacies, as I did. She seems a sympathetic woman when she talks. It felt good to give her some time. Will she be warmer next time?

He found a cheque the other day. It was on the floor of the SPAR, I believe. He was bemused. He couldn’t remember the name of the Payee or the payer but he did remember that they shared the same surname. A relative then. But the puzzle was that the cheque was dated from the December last year. And it was for £250. Why hadn’t they cashed it? he asked when he returned home after taking it to the police station. He’d begun spinning stories about it, a student needing the money and forgetting that it was in their pocket. Would anyone do that? Let’s hope it finds its rightful home.

Virginia Woolf’s short story (one she wrote prior to or perhaps during the novel) Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street, was on the radio. I’ve heard it twice now. It is so beautifully written and so simple. A walk to the shops to buy gloves. Long gloves for her party with pearls button, the French way. But it’s the detail, the way her thoughts meander from the people she sees, the Baroness who’s lost her son in the Great War, to the shop assistant, still there after twenty years, and to her loss of faith in God. She is so happy to be there walking those London Streets that I am entranced. And I know that feeling, particularly in the morning when the sun is shining and its light bounces off the white stucco. Anything is possible and life is so alive.

Preoccupied with all these alarming bodily happenings I forget to feel alive. To take notice and pay attention to what is outside of me and all this tangle of anxiety. I forget all is as it should be. All is well.  

She told me about it in her email. Her daughter. Her daughter throwing a party and burning her wedding dress. I’ve only met her once. We stayed with her on my last night in Washington. A seemingly cheerful woman who appeared to make the best of things. I didn’t know then that her marriage was troubled. He was a little distracted, took himself off to watch the TV alone, but I just put that down to a wish for solitude. A bright man, I’d enjoyed talking to him. It was a freeing thing, obviously, that ritualistic burning. Neither of her sons were present. I believe she did it in front of members of her divorce support group. Did they clap and whoop? It feels out of character. But who am I to judge? She is clearly hurt. May it bring her catharsis.

Another bird of prey, this time a red kite. I was circling the sky above our flats and as before the residents birds, the rooks, seagulls and magpies were going berserk. It is nesting time and no doubt the kite was after the eggs. It resembled a WWII dog fight with spitfires. The seagulls cawed and dived at it chasing it from the sky. They are super-brave in their defence of their nests. They don’t have the kite’s vicious hooked beak or sharp talons but still they saw it off.

She wrote back to thank me for my understanding and the promise of new work. It’s OK. I am still wanted.