Author: Ellen Bell

It must be May Ball time. Though there is only one here. And that has become a much reduced affair. They used to have it out in the sticks somewhere, didn’t they? he said at breakfast. Yes, they used to bus people out there, I said, sounding like I knew what I was talking about. They lost interest, or it was too expensive, I said. It must be May Ball time (even though it is June, an Oxbridge thing, don’t ask) because there were some couples walking down the hill and the men were wearing black ties. Not bow ties and dinner jackets, just black ties and white shirts. I used to love dressing-up. It marked the occasion as out of the ordinary. There clearly isn’t the will here. The girls wear short, tight dresses or shorts, anything that reveals legs and cleavage. Though when I see them in the morning they are passed their best. As I walked towards The Angel this morning there was one that sparkled in the lamplight. A shimmering. It was beautiful. From afar. Up close it was just another sequinned dress with a swirly pattern of lines embossed with glitter. She clearly felt wonderful in it, though and pranced about as they called out her name. Another girl was standing in the pub’s doorway, singing. You don’t like my singing, you don’t like my singing. The boys wore their shirts out of their trousers, which were tight and black. Some looked awkward, unsure how to behave. Lip Lickin’ was open.

I saw one yesterday. An ant crawling along a flex in the kitchen. Is it just one? Or is there a nest? Bide your time. I didn’t kill it. I don’t like to kill anything. I remember getting the insect man in when we lived in Cambridge. He’d come with his spray, its container strapped to his body, and spray inside and outside. We had to leave it till the next day. I hated it. All those nasty chemicals. A taciturn man, who took real pride in his job. It just seemed a little over the top. There were only a few. Give ’em and inch. Its just a balance. The world, the universe teems with insects. I saw another one this morning. Or was it the same one? It’s the food, he said, they come for the food. But I don’t leave food out and I’m always wiping down the surfaces, I said. I found it later and put it out of the window.

The plaster came off in the night, he said, calling from the bathroom, still bleary from sleep and peeing. It’s gone all over the sheets. And it had. God, I said. One tiny blister making all that mess. It gets to me. I try not to let it. I can’t contain it all, him, the bits that come off us, the chaos, the grime. I just want order. Its unreal, impossible. Like putting all the insects we find outside. The house, the world, even we, teem with them. It is gestural. He will age, as indeed, will I. I just need to accept the mess of it and not make him feel uncomfortable about it.

I think about our trip to London. All those muggings in the papers. I want to be safe. At least I want my work to be safe. To be able to do my work. It’s all about the writing. I want to write about it, fathom it out. I think about a ‘stuck’ diary. A journal about Artist’s Block. Can I do it? Is there enough in it? Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans, wrote John Lennon. I’m interested in the work we do when we are not working. Not able to work. Blocked. What happens in those spaces? The negative spaces.

The washing machine has finished. I need to go and unload it. Sometimes writing this doesn’t give me the relief I hope for. Sometimes it is just too pedestrian. A light spotting of rain on the window. Murky white clouds. An inside day. Much to do. Much to do.

There was one in the middle of the road. Another dead blackbird. Are they fledglings, do you think? I asked him as we walked to our seat, our bench, on North Road. Yes, perhaps. It had been driven over several times but even so one of its wings was bolt up right, half-opened as it arrested in mid-flight. Poor love.

The commission has come through finally. Not a large one but it is money. It is money. It is money, says Victoria Wood’s character Brenda in Dinnerladies, the stress being on the is, as she puts her hand in a black bin bag of her mother’s remains. I don’t fight the work. It isn’t soulful. It isn’t necessarily satisfying but it is money and I am grateful. As I was for the phone call that woke me last night. A booking for this morning, so I have to rush. It is money. And I need that safety. I need to see that it is still flowing to me. This time he sends a picture. This is what he wants. I will do my best by him and by myself. I collect images that thrill knowing all the while that they will play safe. They know what is needed better than I. Never mind. It is work and I am grateful.

We sat in the sun. No one was playing bowls. It was quiet. A few people with dogs strolled by. Another sunny day is promised, the sky is already blue.

Off, I must be off. Adieu.

They are shadows. A boy and a girl. I see them at the entrance to the Castle grounds. The light is still too dim to make out their faces. I see their forms. He is stocky, big-shouldered, she is small, with long hair. Are they fighting, wrestling with each other? They move together. Are they dancing? She is talking. But I did, she says, her voice a whine. But I can hear the smile, the teasing, the testing. This time, she says, I said hello. More kids sprawl along the mini walk street by The Angel and leading up to the town clock opposite the Why Not? club. Two girls sit on the steps of The Academy. One of them is talking, her voice a screechy one with a South American twang. My problem ees….

I didn’t want to see the blackbird again. The dead one that lies on North Road decomposing. Someone had moved it onto the road on Monday. Is it still there? Had a cat got it? Or had it flown into the telegraph wires? There was a seagull chick on the sill outside the bathroom of the beauty salon. I told her. I know, she said, there’s two. They come back every year. It seemed perfectly content, fluffing out its downy plummage. They’d better watch out, he said when I told him later, the parents will dive bomb them. She told me they were friendly, I said. Hmm, he said.

They all greet him when he arrives. All hail fellow. One calls him by his Christian name but with a Mr at the front. His name is a shortened. Like Great Expectations, one of the women said, adding, Oh, I love that film. Poor Dickens, he said to me.

I let her talk. I don’t usually but I just let it happen. It was nice actually. I like her. She is strong, such calves. And her manner is just a little cool, that’s all. A cultural thing. We talked of families, work and Sweden. My cousin is an artist too, she said. Though it turns out she is more like an architect. An urban designer she called her. How I love the way Scandinavians do things. She told me of a mining town that the State is planning to move further up North, lock stock and barrel so that the community , after the closure of the original mine, can keep going. Wonderful, eh? Then she told me about what she called ‘Home Language’. Children from ethnic communities are taught their mother tongue by a special teacher at school. I wanted one, she said. I wanted to be taken out of normal class and given my own teacher. They will do whatever they need, Hungarian, Dutch, Serbian, whatever, she said. They want these children to know and keep their culture, she said. I am so impressed. She is good. My body feels battered, pumelled. I am so tight. Tight as a drum. She is non-plussed, just gets on with it. One day I did seventeen massages, she said, I was knackered. She is a doer, so capable. Last night I was putting up a greenhouse, she said.

A milky sky. The birds tra-la-la. Much to do. A rook caws from the roof opposite before taking flight. Time to work. Adieu.

They’ve been working on the house for the last year. Renovating it completely. The new inhabitants moved in last month and in the front room, just by the window they’ve placed a doll’s house. I can only see the side of it. A wooden structure, crisp, unpainted, shaker-style. It looks like its standing on a table, but even so it is of an impressive height. How lovely to have a doll’s house. I always yearned for one as a child, but not one of those plastic ones that became all the rage in the 80s and 90s, my desire was for an antique, wooden one. Classy with all the correct furniture, beautifully made and absolutely to scale. Lauren Childs is hosting a programme about dolls houses on Radio 4 Extra on Friday. I’ve heard it before. It is a repeat and they keep playing the trailer for it. The curator at The V&A’s Museum of Childhood is one of the talking heads. I’ve met her several times when I went in to draw the houses there and various games. I even when on a behind the scenes tour. It was delicious, all those boxes and drawers of precious things wrapped in tissue. I love the care, the reverence they have for things that were often considered trivial at the time of their production. The past in tissue. Wrapped in tissue and unpacked with white gloves.

I missed something out. Half a pound of tuppenny rice, half a pound of treacle, and it should have followed, that’s the way the money goes…then pop goes the weasel. That’s the way the money goes. Yes. I walk asking for help. Help me find, open, release my abundance. Don’t we all have it? That potential for success, for wealth and abundance. Just by being authentic. I thought it would happen. If I can be brave. It will come. If I give up my teaching job and become a full-time artist it will come. And it didn’t. I was profoundly disappointed. I still am. I thought it was right. I wasn’t avoiding, I was going towards, open to my fate. Where is it? Where is my metier? Don’t we all have it? Don’t we all have something that we can do that will support us? It saps my energy this fear, this fearing. Is there enough? Do I work hard enough? Do I earn enough? Is there anything more you can do? he asks. No. Well, then, he says, be patient.

Town was quieter this morning, just a few kids spilling out of The Angel. One, a girl, lent over to spit something out of her mouth, she looked up and saw me watching, a trail of spittle hanging from her lips. Later, along Llanbadarn Road, three boys walking towards me, one was holding up a bottle to the glare of the street light. I think I’ve killed it, he said.

I want to learn acquiescence. To do all I can then leave it be. Work is coming. It is slow. But so be it. I have much do, though nothing that brings in much money. I am busy, busier than I’ve been for a long time and yet… Perhaps my wealth manifests in other ways. I need to see this. A seagull suddenly takes flight from behind a car. A flurry of white. They’re hosting Board game Nights in the Crimson Rhino Café, from 6.30pm on every other Wednesday. I’d love to go. Too late. Way past my bedtime. And he wouldn’t go. At least I don’t think so. A home bird, as indeed am I. We sat yesterday afternoon and then walked to the library. Two books. Two gorgeous books. There is richness there, undoubtedly. A mine. A gold mine. Let it be. Enough.

There’s a scene in the film Heartburn where Meryl Streep’s character and her husband, played by Jack Nicholson are at a restaurant dining with a group of friends. They are playing a game in which you have to describe yourself in three words. I think I’ve seen the same game played as a device in more than one of Woody Allen’s films. Anyway, Streep says, and I think I’ve got it right, Wife, Mother, Writer (or journalist – I think she writes a cookery column). Then it’s Nicholson’s turn. And he says, if I remember it correctly, Writer, Father and In love. He doesn’t say lover but ‘in love’. She goes all gooey, grinning from ear to ear at what she sees as a public pronouncement of his feelings for her. I think they all clap, or go ah!. Later Streep discovers that he is having an affair and the full import of what he said then returns to her. I thought of this game as I walked this morning. I was trying to make sense of the dream I had a few days ago about the closed door and not wanting to go through it because I didn’t know this woman’s name. I was trying to fathom it, wondering if it was a dream about identity. I could easily have opened the door but I was scared, scared that I would be found wanting. That I didn’t have the key, the name, the knowledge – the identity. Perhaps the name I’d forgotten was mine. And the older woman, my landlady was me, the wiser, the more-in-charge me. Who knows? And who cares, he would say, adding, it’s only a dream. And yet, they mean much to me, as much as this waking semblance of reality does.

Is that why walking in the early morning has such power for me? The world is half-dream, half-reality then. I could see the horizon this morning, a dark blue line. The sea was like oil, heavy and sleepy.

Half a pound of tuppenny rice, half a pound of treacle, pop goes the weasel. Sometimes I just find songs singing themselves in my head. I don’t know why. Had I heard it somewhere? An odd song, was that one about the plague too? I thought rice was a relatively new phenomena in the West, perhaps, not. Did they import it? When is that song from, the sixteenth century? I know so little.

I finished Tulip Fever yesterday at work. It was sumptuous, glorious. I’ve been writing about being in Amsterdam too. I miss it. So much colour, richness. It is a luscious novel. I love the short chapter’s, her attention to detail, the viscera, the sensation. The horse pissing, the de-headed sprats – the way the detail gave meat to the action. I could see the silks.

I took up my tapestry when I finished the book and it seemed to imbue it with deeper, richer colour. I am still just following the lines. The tapestry, for the moment, satisfies me more. It is even simpler. What am I doing? Am I reduced? I don’t know. Something will come. I think about doing tiny sewn still lifes. I want the richness, I want the colour, the shininess of silk. Not painted but sewn, bejewelled. I want to write of the detail too. Do the two at the same time. I too master place, sense place through the stuff of detail. This morning the heat coming off the parked Gregg’s lorry as I walked past. The screeching pipping of the oystercatchers, the stink of the lobster pots and that trail of fish gut from the trailer by the harbour, the way I have to try to close my nose because it is too much. The group of what looked like West Indian youngsters encircling a bonfire on North Beach, their emptied supermarket bags strewn in a circle around them. I saw glimpses of fire-lit faces, patterns, smiles and heard their laughter. I want to write the memory of such things. I want to write of Norway, of Amsterdam, and how I lived there, felt there, made home there.

Cleaning done. Writing done. Yoga, then tea, then more following the lines. It is enough. Then later we’ll sit looking down on the Bowling Green. Me and him holding hands.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night, wrote Paul McCartney. It wasn’t and it doesn’t. The blackbird I listened to when I went to bed was singing while it was still light. It’s odd going to sleep then. It’s no different to shift-workers, he said. You can do what you like. But do I like? I don’t know. I don’t like being singular, well not when I’m edgy and so uncertain of myself. Other days when everything shines inside, I’m OK with it. And this morning the Perygyl and the sky and the clouds breaking up to reveal the dawn were so beautiful. I want to experience them and early is the only way I can. The blackbird made me smile. He was really going for it. And then, listening to a programme about Nature, I can’t recall it’s name, an old programme, with Cyril Fletcher, who I don’t know, and yet he’s been on twice in the last two days. Sounds Natural, that’s the title. Sound’s Natural. Well, he was being interviewed and he talked about the wildlife in his garden, the rooks, a cuckoo and they played the sound of nightingale. Perhaps that is what I heard last night, well, afternoon, not a blackbird. Do we have nightingales here? I need to find out. Or do I? I could just enjoy the song.

Kids sprawled about benches on the Prom this morning. A girl stretched out on the pavement, her legs bare, a boy and girl sat on the seat above her. What do I know? said the girl, petulantly. Well, you were the one who’s so interested in if Greg got laid or not, replied the boy.

A sheet had been tied to the Prom railing by the Bandstand. Good luck Louise and Craig, it read.

I’m in a rush. Off to work for a paper review. I’m a worry-wart today about money mostly but underneath there’s this real appreciation of the richness of it all. A rich, rich life.

I am blessed.

An examined life, the blurb accompanying the exhibition called it. Her life, he said. They mean her life, he said. I know, I said. I know. She examined it through writing, diaries and letters and through her self-portraits. She kept looking, kept drawing. Trying to fathom it. Getting to know its detail, like that of a face. Those lines, her careworn etchings. I was in good company. The drawing is beyond belief, utterly breathtaking. The sure physicality of it. Did I do her justice? How can I? How could I?

I examine mine too. My life. Always. Always thinking, weighing it up. What more can I do? What am I supposed to do? Where am I supposed to be? Here, doing this? This is good enough. The world is misty. A fine rain coated me as I walked. No Perygyl again today. The kids were still out in force. An acquaintance passed me on her way home, with a male friend lagging behind. She was eating what looked like crisps. I didn’t say hello. It didn’t seem appropriate. She wouldn’t have recognised me with my wet weather gear on, hood tied close around my face. She comes in to review films. I like her. She is chatty, energetic, enthusiastic. This morning she looked a little cross. A boy in a gingham shirts was running towards me. He crossed Llanbadarn Road and ran towards town. It was an awkward, jerky kind of running, arms flailing.

Bits of dreams. One I had several nights ago where I was trying to get into this room. It was my landlady’s and she was having a party of some kind behind it. I wanted to go in but realised that I’d forgotten her name and that I’d be thrown out without it. Her name was a kind of key to being accepted. There were two doors and I was scared to go in either. It was the ignominy of being thrown out, I think, that troubled me the most. The doors were painted a kind of browny-red, like congealed blood. Then yesterday afternoon I dreamt that he and I were in Spain. We were staying in a lower ground floor flat and woman was renting the one above. She came down and it was my sister but decades older. She had a black eye, I asked about it and even lifted the eyelid up to see how bad it was. She was unconcerned and told me that they (she and her boyfriend Nigel) were travelling about doing storytelling. I remember thinking I must ask him if he thinks it is her too. Then this morning I woke from one in which a tiny, white, rather plump little poodle puppy had just turned up. You’re in the right place, I heard my self say to it (I think meaning that there was a vet on hand). Dogs usually mean friends. A new friend? Who knows?

I’m sleepy already and I haven’t begun work yet. A pot of coffee is required.

It’s all in the details when the whole is too much to cope with. The smell of earth brought on by the rain. The smell of the teacake I toast for his breakfast. The smell of the vanilla candles I light before I go down to wake him.

Time to sit, then coffee.

The council gardeners have planted petunias in the raised beds along South Marine. The beds have been empty for so long. It gave me a fillip this morning. Pink petunias and what looks like Marigolds. Marigolds were everywhere in my youth, that and nasturtiums. They put nasturtiums in the salad bags we buy from the health food shop on Calybeate Street. I like to see them there. Ah, the petunias, such a frippery kind of flower, unabashed femininity, lovely. A head poked out from beneath wall as I walked past. It gave me such a shock. Two lads sitting on the beach stones, just below the pavement. One head jerking up to see who was coming. Just me. A head with a moustache.

Earlier, a girl had come running towards me along North Road. She was running wildly, wearing tight black shorts, her hair flying behind her. Everything can appear super-real at that time in the morning. Speeded-up somehow, alarming even. I catch my breath. There is a man pursuing her. He is carrying a food carton. Are they together? Is she running from him or running with him? He runs out into the road, breathless. They pass me. A race? Hurrying to get home before the curfew? Who knows?

No walk on the Perygyl this morning, it was too wet. They’d promised thundershowers and lightning. No thunder, no lightning, just a flicker of the lights as I ironed. The air is close, muggy. I took an umbrella but didn’t need it. He was concerned. You will be careful, won’t you? he begged. No umbrellas. Promise? I defied him. I will be fine. What a way to go, eh? There’s something biblical about being taken by lightning.

Still loads of kids outside the Why Not? Most of the girls in shorts or tight mini shirts. I saw a group of students along the Prom wet from swimming. A dare, a forfeit? Cold.

I am being followed by Scottish voices. Well, not followed but surrounded. On the radio, mostly. Can I admit to loving it? That rolling, warm, rich sound, and all the ‘hens’ and so on. I feel wrapped up by it, the sound. The last was a play about a whisky distillery on Ailsa. It sounded so beautiful. I crave that isolation. Well, a deep part of me does. Another part knows what it would do to me. But I have this longing to be up there, high, high above this island. But the dark, the cold, the wind would be a challenge. I know this and yet, I yearn. Crazy, isn’t it?

I’m just following the lines. That is all I’m doing. If you don’t know what to do just do that. It is enough. I sew, I write, I do all those bits, those ten thousand things kind of bits. Just following the lines till something feels right. Perhaps it never will. Perhaps this is the sum total, those lines. I notice the ageing of my face. I catch it in the wing mirror of the car, in the photos he takes of me. I am old. I am fifty-five. My head is young my face, my body, old. Do I mind? No, not at all. It is all vanity and I was never a beauty. I haven’t anything to lose, I never had. That’s good, isn’t it?

I shall write today. I try to give one day a week to it. My story, my book. Will it ever be concluded? Made into a whole? I like being in it, mostly. Am I getting better? What is that? Just tell it. Just tell it as it is.

I worked hard. I was trepidatious. Perhaps that was the problem. I brought so much fear to it. Why? I wanted to write it. I wanted her and her work in my head. It was a stunning show. Even he was engaged, and moved. I shouldn’t say, even, for he often engages. He is open to my life, to what fills me up, much more, really than I am with his. Though to be fair, that is usually sport, and he doesn’t ask me to. He is a solitary watcher. His tension is contained, he just goes quiet. No, he is more generous than me in all sorts of ways. So, back to the writing. I did it. I worked on it all day. In three stages, having to go to work mid-way. It is a struggle, that. I just want to make it alright. And having to break off before it is resolved is a wrench. And then there was lunch to get. And then back to it. Another two hours when I should’ve been resting. It was worth it but I feel it today. I am a little spaced, not quite here. Though I’ve been productive – shopping, walking, two loads of washing, admin, emails and now this.

He tells me there is to be torrential rain. It’s coming from the South, he says. From over there, he says, pointing. Are you pleased with yourself? he asks over breakfast. I don’t know, sort of. I am sort of. It’s an unfamiliar feeling, I know I worked hard but was it good enough?

Enough. That’s the word that rolls around inside my head as I walk. Am I good enough? Is there enough, money, food, ideas, work, time, love….What is enough? I have all I need. I am given all I need. All I need is here now. I waited for my back to tighten. It is automatic, like breathing these days. The kids made it worse. They jangle me with their noise and chaos. A mess of bodies, all legs and arms sprawling on the pavement on Great Darkgate St at 3.30 am waiting for taxis. They seemed younger this morning. Sixteen year-olds, possibly. Where are they from? Is it post-exams already? They shout and holler. It was shit, shouts a Chinese boy. It was shit. And a white boy, I have not! Others sit on steps and weep, a friend comforting them. Standard practice with booze, it seems. The gulls squawk and sail overhead. Taxis buzz around like flies. Pizza Lush was open and so was Finger Lickin’. My peace waits for me on the Perygyl where the sky and sea meld in the mist. No horizon line and the water laps against the rocks.

It is done. It is enough. Did do her justice? I cannot. She is too good. Was too good. I need a quiet day. So take it. Take it.

Five students were walking down along the Prom towards me. It was not yet 3.30 am. They were laughing and talking while one of them ran around them, encircling them like a sheepdog with it’s flock, his arms held hard against his sides. He was laughing as he did it. I’m a moon, he kept saying, I’m a moon. I saw another group around a lit fire on South Beach, it’s smoke mingling with the clouds overhead. When I walked back they had gone and the fire put out. There was just a trail of smoke lingering. They’d put it out with stones. The Beach is dotted with them. Little hillocks of stones, totemic cairns. Walking through the Castle Park I can see three figures in the gloom. One appears to be weeping, his head bent over, a girl in a sleeveless vest is comforting, her arm around his shoulders while another boy stands in front looking down. A tableau of grief. They are still, unmoving.

I thought about the review all night, in and out of hot, sticky sleep. I want to do it justice, her justice. My gut tightens with the fear of it. And yet, I have chosen to do it, isn’t there power in that?

Town was noisy. Both The Angel and the Why Not? were open. Kids spilling out onto the pavement, the road.

I’ve tow hours to make a start. A start, that’s all. There’s power in beginning, he wrote.