Author: Ellen Bell

I walked with my music in my ears this morning. I’d woken with that familiar tightness in my back and thought it would distract me. Words fix themselves in my head. James Taylor’s song New Hymn, a gentle acapella piece that speaks of a private havoc and ends with a plea to be here, be now. And then his name as a crossword clue last night. Here is comfort, here is relief. And here. And here.

They drowned in their own house. Their home, their safety, deluged by water. And then the seemingly inconsequential as part of the news bulletin. Two were saved because they went for some sweets. All the rest gone, a one-year-old baby, the grandparents. A river bursting its banks. What an image. You can hear the roaring, see that ugly brown swirling mass of water taking over, breaking, flooding, taking over. All gone. Sicily that land of heat, white sun, lazy joy. Drowned.

And then his voice. I haven’t really heard it before, talking of barbed wire being beautiful. Chilled. Chilled to the bone.

It’s his birthday today. We don’t do much. He opens his cards. A smile. Then gone. How old do you think he is? I ask her at the till. Sixty-four, she says. What? he says, what about fifty-two? He looks well. He is well. Stay a while, my love. Please. x

It is 3.00 am and I see four lads coming towards me along North Road. I don’t have my music with me so I can hear that they are talking about watching people. As I pass them, one of them, (he walks under a streetlight and I see he is blonde) catches my eye and calls out: What are you fucking wearing! I walk by. Was it to me? Was he talking to me or just continuing the conversation that they were having? The violence of his shout and the import of his insult rolls off me. It doesn’t touch, doesn’t penetrate. And I must look faintly ridiculous, after all. It had rained in the night so I thought it best to wear my new coat. A cheaper version of a Barbour it is long, virtually touching my ankles with a funny little cape thing that flaps around my shoulders. I don’t care, it is waterproof and I feel cocooned in it. Then passing the paddling pool which has now been turned into a sandpit, there are three boys hunched up together sitting on one of the giant deckchairs. One of them also calls out to me. Alright mate? I don’t reply, just keep on walking. You look like a pop star, he shouts. Then in unison, they all shout: And you sound like one!

What? he says when I tell him. I don’t like it when they abuse my baby, he says. Later he laughs as he recounts it from the shower….Alright, mate? I’m not really a ‘mate’ kind of person, I reply. No, he says. It doesn’t matter, any of it. I am not unsettled by them, at least not often. They are in another place to me, drunk mostly and showing off. I am an easy target.

A simple day yesterday, though I got a lot done. Top-to-toe cleaning of flat, followed by meditation, yoga, cutting out patchwork squares for his quilt, then baking shortbread and scones, making lunch and then a nap before supper and the ‘big one’ crossword. Other lives taunt me with their seeming bigness, but this is enough for me. I have my dark walks, my writing, my making, my radio and my love and this continual trying for peace. It is enough. And soon I will be away, for now I am happy to be still.

More than happy.

The starlings are here. I’ve seen them do their murmuration several times now. I hear them too, a humming chattering under the pier. And even this morning with all the din of the night club music pounding, they could still be heard. And smelt. That salty brackish smell of guano that gets into my nostrils, so much so that I try to hold the shut as I walk. It is too much. And yet it is life. Life in its richness. Don’t judge, neither pleasant or unpleasant. It just is. People put it on their gardens as manure. What a thing. How do they collect it?

They have put a red light on the war memorial. I’ve noticed it over the years, made red during the month of November. That’s nice, he said at breakfast. Yes, it’s a subtle tribute. A hundred years. How could they bear it, such hell. And me consumed with my little troubles. Ah, me.

I heard a boy retching as I walked down Great Darkgate Street. Another lay on the ground resting his head on his friend’s shoulder, his face covered in green lines. At first I thought it was blood. Had he been in a fight? No, it was make-up, the residue of yet another Halloween party. I heard fireworks last night. Did they keep you awake? he asked when I went in to rouse him. Briefly, I said. But I slept anyway, eventually. Nothing can stop the falling.

I saw my first lit Christmas tree on North Road as I headed towards the Prom, though there is one in a flat above the road that leads up to the back of Alexandra Hall. It does give me a fillip, those sparkles. The flat is clean. I shall sew and bake for the rest of the day. It’s all about trying to stand still, to pay attention, slowly.

The writing was hard yesterday, I was assailed with such feelings of stupidity. He is so kind, so generous. He bids me onward. Yes. Just finish it, he says. Yes. That is all I need to do. Write it. Write it out. Then wait and see what it becomes.

I walked with you this morning, holding your hand. You are a fiction, a memory. And then I was inside you. Me, my five-year-old self. I would’ve mothered you not better but kinder. It wasn’t her fault. It was all she knew. Rest in peace.

It’s almost 7 am and the dark is beginning to lift. All is still, all is quiet. The student population of this town seem to have tired of Halloween parties. The fairy lights adorning the fake hedge outside the Why Not? club were still lit and Lip Lickin’ was open but other than that all was hushed and still.

I feel lack lustre. What is it? We talk about the possibles. Fear of what is coming. Yes, I want to do all these things but whether it is the fear of failing at them or just plain anxiety of being out of my comfort zone and all that is familiar, I just don’t know. I struggle to make decisions, doubting the ones I opt for. Is it right? Am I foolish? I have to decide what parts to give them to read. And deep down all I want to do is sleep, implode, disappear. Ciaran Hinds, he of the lovely voice I mentioned yesterday (unforgettable as Captain Wentworth in the BBC adaption of Austen’s Persuasion) has been reading Sebastian Barry’s A Temporary Gentleman on the radio. I have to keep the sound low so I miss bits, but as far as I understand it it is a tale of solider in the 50s and his marriage to Mai who drinks. He goes home on leave to find her beating the children and the house a tip. There is such love in his compassion for her, especially as she lies dying of cancer. Tell the children I am sorry, she says. I understand her wish to blot it out, as I understand her, my mother. It is ugly to watch from the outside, a denial of order, of life, of what life brings. A refusal to take it on, to face it. Sometimes you just can’t  and the bottle is as good as any salve, I suppose. I dreamt two powerful dreams the last few days. The last, last night, involved waving off an old man and his young female career. They were going to live out his last days abroad. She was giving up her youth to look after him. She will have to clean up his shit, I thought to myself in my dream. And I looked at her, a winsome, beautiful girl, more than happy with her sacrifice. They were going somewhere exotic, a little wild. Was I envious of their departure. I had been there, I spoke to him of it. Yes, he said, that’s it. And the other dream, the earlier one? I cried, I wept in front of them, so hurt, and expressing that hurt that they don’t communicate with me. So much silence. She was moved, oh, love, she said encircling me. They had no idea how important it was to me.

An empty tumbler stood on the Prom on the mound that leads up to the bandstand.

I smelt fried onions from under our neighbour’s door.

He is so kind to me. If it is any compensation, he said, you are loved.

Bryan Ferry’s voice is singing in my head. A soft chocolatey voice. Do do that voodoo you do so well, he is singing, over and over again. You do something to me. That’s the title. He sings to me as I walk. Voices in my head. Voices of actors – Ciaran Hinds, Anton Lesser, Miriam Margolyes. Lovely rich voices that fill my waking day courtesy of the radio. Stories, telling me their stories. And words, and sentences peppering my consciousness. ‘She sat in that great house. That’s what killed her – cancer of the soul’. Thoughts, ideas, peppering, filling, emptying, making me whole. Too agitated yesterday, a raging fearfulness, it still dogs me today. A text in the night, should I wake and attend to it, no, it will unsettle me and won’t sleep afterwards. No, leave it. Then this morning it is too late. It wasn’t for me then. Can I let it go?

One of the rough sleepers is back in the Prom shelter. It is less cold. Where do they go when it is freezing?

I shall leave them shortbread when I make it at the weekend.

Work now.

I sent her some healing. Poor love, I hope she isn’t scared. x

I asked for an upper room and she’s offered me the attic. The attic, fantastic, I wrote. Yes. Yes, please. He told me of it. To be up high when I am this scared feels good. It will be good. Just let go of the fear. Let it fall of me like rain.

I wake up to it. Where does it come from? Is it the thick, black dark, the cold or the still night that starts it off? It is almost beyond thought, though I know it is my mind that feeds it through the day. Drip-feeding, that drip, drip of fear. Of what? The winter? Do the animals fear it? Are they scared of being cold, of not being able to feed themselves, of being chilled to the bone? And yet, for me at least it isn’t real. I am safe, I am made warm, I have food, I have enough and the love that surrounds me is deep. I want to shake it off, I know that it is life-killing. Joy-killing.

Outside the morning is trying to come. The clouds hang, blanket-like over the sky. The moon was a half. Just a half.

In town earlier girls wandered around half-dressed sporting devils horns. Through the window at Pizza Lush I saw a girl dancing at the counter. It’s Halloween and the parties have been raging all weekend and into this week.

We were snappy again. It’s the leaving, the going away. It unsettles him and it unsettles me. Why do I do it? I need to open myself to what is possible, to give my work a chance. I need to get away and yet I long to be still, to stand still.

Walking along Northgate Terrace I smelt his cigarette. A trace of heat, it pleased me, a comfort, though the smoke stings my nose. Sensations, smells, they comfort. No bread smells this morning, the bakeries doors are closed against the cold. No frost though today.

I feel like I am holding my breath. These are big things for such a little person to do.

I listened to her adaptation and it was good. I am sorry I was mean. She is talented. Could I do that? All the time. Could I do that? Should I try that?

Let it be, I whisper. Let it be. Just as it is.

They’ve all been pulled from the water and now line the edge of the harbour. A row of them, their blue and white paint curling and chipped. Sewin, Sea Pearl and Blue Dolphin, I memorised their names as I walked home. All small fishing boats, the bobbing sort that Dylan Thomas wrote of. They need attending to. The sea has taken its toll. Out of the water, safe, dry. In dry dock. A wall of boats and lobster pots. Too cold to stink as they usually do. I couldn’t walk the Perygyl, didn’t dare it was too frosty and I might slip. Careful, you might slip. Take care. Beware. Danger. There was a play on the radio yesterday as I prepared lunch about an Antarctic expedition that Scott’s men took. Just three of them, a separate trek in search of penguins’ eggs. In such conditions. They cried out in pain. All ten fingers frostbitten in temperatures that exceeded minus 70. I cannot imagine such cold. I’ve been in minus 15 maybe minus 20 and that was enough. My skin hurt, my breath hurt. The body wants to finish, to stop. In the play, clearly taken from diaries, they struggled to bend. Iron burnt. There was no rest from it. Sleep was impossible. Teeth chattered incessantly. Why do it? Why pit oneself against such elements? We are not meant for it. Is that transcending?

He fretted and we snapped. Both of us. Best leave it to them. It was a mistake, anyone can make mistakes. Oh, I make a big noise at the beginning. I have to let it out but then, then I want to help, to make him easy with it all. The man professed to be fair. He isn’t. It is too much and it has made him careworn. Leave it to them. They will take care of it. Chalk it down to experience. The important thing is how did we deal with it. Were we kind?

How about if I ask people to read to me? Yes. That is it. Act of listening, of sharing, of intimacy. I can remain silent. Language is no problem. It is the sharing, the sounds, the giving over of something precious.

Read to Me. Talk to Me. Call Me.

Read it Mummy.

Read it.

I lay in bed last night and thought of them. The lost and the left behind. What do you do with all that grief? Can there be forgiveness? I wanted to hold, to make it peaceable, to ease the pain. I can do nothing but hold them in my thoughts. And in a place of worship too.

I was all of a dither yesterday, in bits. Somedays are like that, particularly on Sundays when I have to work away from home and my gentle flow. It’s OK. I will turn it to my advantage, think of ways of putting myself back together. There is nothing that will ever be finished. That shouldn’t be my goal. Just this going on till I go on no more. Let it be, I whisper to myself in the cold night air. Let it be and love. Just love. Nothing more.

A farmer’s wife and yet unmarried….

You see odd things in the dark, in the early morning, even here, in this benign little town. A man lurches ahead of me, no coat, does he know how to get home? Then a woman is coming up the road pushing a pram. She is on the opposite pavement and calls out to the man. I can’t hear what she says. He doesn’t respond. I pass her, she is on my side of the road now. Good morning, I call out. She is wary. Good morning, she says. She has on a high vis jacket, and another one has been draped over the front of the pram. She is tiny. A fake fur hat sits on top of her head like a red cockerel’s comb. She looks a little wild about the eyes. Is there a baby in the pram? Or is it a carrier for her belongings. The pram looks new, small, for an infant. Then she is gone.

A warm visit. I will write of it later, maybe. I opened drawers looking for matches in a kitchen in the early morning before the house was awake and found order, sweetness and saved bag ties. They drop me at the station I turn to wave and they’ve already forgotten me. The circle quickly closed. Then I turn again and he is lifting his hand in farewell. Then he is on the platform waiting for me. And things feel better. I am found.

There are roses on his windscreen. A bunch of different coloured roses. How many years is it now since his death? Is it one, or two or maybe even three? I cannot remember, time goes by so fast. They have been placed on his work’s van, long stemmed roses in pinks and yellows. They won’t be left until they fade and crumble. She is always so cheerful, or at least she seems so. A pretty woman, full of energy, and so tiny. So brave. Is it three children she has? All on her own. Many people have to. I feel for her. Such a public losing. He was so loved, so liked. He has told me of his father many times. A big man, he’d say, used to dress up in women’s clothes. Good for him, I say. A big family of boys. All rugby players, as indeed was he.

I trawl through my writing, reading each one. It is an embracing experience. I am enriched by it. Thank you.