Author: Ellen Bell

I love walking early at this time of year. It’s the dark merging into light, mostly. That black into blue coming from the east. It is so hopeful, you begin to believe that everything is going to be alright. The ten thousand things still dog my brain. And my back still tenses like hard steel but there are moments of ease, of lightness. I track them on my walk. Turn this corner and it will get better. Reach the Perygyl and stop, lean against the rail and breathe. The moon is full, the sea just laps and what a sound. It is holidays, rest, thoughtlessness, the encapsulation of the joy, of just being. Thank you. Thank you for this. And then I stop and stand by the hydrangeas in the Castle, just for a moment feeling my feet on the earth. Are the lights on in St Michael’s? No, not today. A couple walk along the Prom, she in what looks like pyjama bottoms. They are walking a three-legged dog. It seems perky enough, a shiny black little thing that hoppitys along. A remember another and the couple that pushed it in a pram.

I called him. Why do I always struggle when talking to him? Are you well? I ask. Of course he is not, he is dying. A quasi-father. He is not my father. Yet, I have the same need to please, to be good enough. I never really interested him. Did any of us? He is concerned with himself, undoubtedly. A very self-centred person, but good. I wanted to talk to her, to see how she was. But I felt love when he answered. He is so reduced, scared. In fear and angry, I think. No, comfortable resignation like him. He became a bigger man as he was dying. I loved him most then. I remember them together, vying. He looking askance at him and then at me. Could you really have come from him? I believe he thought. Is money the only thing he thinks about? I do love them. I love them both, all three, all four. We are the same.

Ah, my brain…ugh, my brain. A long-haired girl walks down Great Darkgate Street with her boyfriend. Another with a girlfriend, she is walking with crutches. A bearded man outside The Angel is on the phone. See you in sec, he murmurs.

Trips, he calls them. We’re off on a trip to see the Kathe Kollwitz show at the Glyn Vivian. It will be nice to be on the road. To be on the move. I keep dreaming about airports. The birds are giving it the gun out there.

It will be good to see her, and them and them. I send emails reaching out. Saying I care, I think of you. I want to see you. I miss you.

In my dreams she points upwards, see, he is there waving at me.

It was a beautiful morning as I walked. The sea was lapping gently. People were about, the clubs, post-Sunday-bank holiday, were still open, booming music throbbing from their doors. Couples meandered along the Prom, girls walking barefoot with their shoes in the hands. A group of students encircled a bonfire that was still blazing on North Beach. I drew in the smell – charcoal, wood smoke and a faint miasma of barbecues. Being on the Perygyl was gorgeous, just standing there looking at the yellow moon, almost full, I felt at peace for all the jangling in my mind. I can separate myself. My back is tight from fear, but I can still smell the warm air and appreciate the stillness. As I walked back along the wooden slats (how I love the feel of my footsteps on the soft boards) I wondered why the yellow moon doesn’t give off the same light as a white one. It is fine. It was fine. I take what is given. It is light.

Too much to do – cleaning then work then shopping – and I do want to make a start on the quilt. It is a gift. I don’t know yet how to make it but if I start the fear of failure will lessen. Be easy on yourself. One step at a time.

He is nice, a gentleman. We talk about what he is to discuss. The Irish Referendum. About slavery. About the way men have oppressed women’s bodies. A pause for thought ending with a 17^th century Welsh hymn. He translates it for me. Lovely, thoughtful, a good man, I think.

She’s trying to lose weight. A stone and a half so far. I hadn’t noticed, he had. He was kind about it. I’m not eating bread, she said. Oh, do you miss the smell? Absolutely.

I dreamt of him. I’d had such a longing for him and thought I wouldn’t see him all day as I had to work. And then he just came through the door looking stunning, beautiful. It’s only 5.45 am, I said, delighted but surprised. Then I woke. It made me think. See what I have. Such love. Such kindness, such cherishing. I am blessed.

I must go. Just a short one today. Breathe. All will get done. Now and always. x

Was it compelling enough? I go over my application in my head, as I walk, as I brush my teeth, as I write and as I sew. I just don’t know. How can I know? I needed to contain it, give it a certain amount of time and no more. I did it. I sent it. Isn’t that enough? No, never. It is a pattern, a pattern of behaviour. I just don’t know how to celebrate my achievements. Not big. They are not big achievements, but I get them done any way. A small life. I do have a small life but inside it is cavernous. My inner world is limitless. My dream world too. The end of a dream I had yesterday afternoon had a bird pecking at me. It was biting, not pecking, biting my hand, my thigh, my bum. It was eerie, scary. And I knew it was biting because it was scared. I wanted to let it out. There were too many people in the house. (We’d gathered for a party.) People where everywhere in this huge house, kitchen, living room, dining room and hallway. I called to him to help me, to help wrench the attacking bird from me and put it out. I tried to pull it off myself but it was jagged and thorny and it fought me. This morning’s dream had me anticipating a journey. I had to find somewhere to stay before my flight the next morning. I was with someone, a woman, and discussing where to go. I knew she didn’t want me to stay with her, though it would’ve been feasible. Could I stay in the school? I wanted to ask. Instead I began to write down possible places on a piece of piece. El Candil was one of them. This is a restaurant in Nerja. I knew this in my dream, and thought it would be fine to stay somewhere in Spain even though I would be flying from London. I was hurt she didn’t want me, and couldn’t work out why, but wanted to be practical, to resolve it for myself. Then I woke.

Did I do enough? Was it enough? Was it good enough? Let’s unravel it. The idea is a good one. And you know that you have the determination to see it through. The issue, as always, is the funding. It’s a lonely course to always be doing the inventing alone. It takes so much energy and these days I am depleted.

No more challenges, he said. Just sew. Just sew. I need the simplicity of it. I wanted to write about the clinging to routine. The lines that one has to follow. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t come, make a pledge to do it anyway. But it’s not just the funding is it? It’s the acknowledgement that winning brings. The acknowledgement that it is worthy work. You are worthy, it says. You have been chosen, it says. The chosen one.

The sky clears, the grey thundery clouds pass. I saw a flash of lightning across the sea as I walked. The railings had been moved but the tour trucks were still there. Drunk students ambled along the Prom in the drizzle. No swimmers today. I slept for an hour and half yesterday afternoon. I was dog-tired.

A gentle day. Coffee, sewing and The Archers. Grounded. Held by smells – coffee, elderflower and lavender. She writes promising gooseberries. Yes, please, I say. And blackcurrants? Will she send some? Wouldn’t that be marvellous? I miss her. But I feel so small this days.

He sat on my bed. I feel chastened by it, I said to him. He’d come to tuck me in, as he always does. I’d asked him if he ever got a bit low at night. Oh, yes, he said, often. It’s melancholy, I said. Yes, he said. Of course, that why people use alcohol, I said. Absolutely, he said. It takes the edge of it. Yes. It’s made me feel grey, that’s all, I said. I know, he said, taking the hot water bottle out of the bed. You did nothing wrong. It was an experiment. And you can always write about it. Yes, yes, I can.

She’d emailed me the following day cancelling it. It’s that hoary issue over photography, and possibly more. It was a tricky day on Thursday, I felt unwelcome, not by the residents but by the staff. They know me, must’ve recognised me but didn’t acknowledge this. I understand, they have their work to do. People like me must be a hindrance, a nuisance. It’s just the way it was done, the rug pulled out from under me. Did they give her a hard time? He holds her responsible. But she was just doing her best. I’m sorry for her, she wanted some credit for its novelty. So be it. I cannot do anything about it. I must just accept it, for all the heaviness it brings. It will pass, other plans will take over. I always recover. Always.

I missed her, then she called back via 1471 which I then missed. I knew it must be her, so I did the same. Her voice sounded shaky. The dog had died. Died in its sleep after collapsing while out walking. Poor love. She was her companion, her walking companion. She died in her sleep in daylight while they were with her. Her handyman buried her in the garden. He’s a friend, she says. He talks to her about his failing marriage. If you don’t talk you burst, she said. Would it hurt her to know I write about her? I hope not. It is a loving thing. I want to record what we talk of, her sayings and idiosyncrasies. To cherish her.

The town has been overtaken by camper vans and lorries for the great downhill cycle race. There are diversions and barriers laid all along the Prom. It unsettles me, I feel hemmed in. It is not ours anymore but usurped. Meanwhile the students play out their leaving routines. I heard three lads shouting from the other end of the Prom. They were perched, apparently naked, on the edge of the steps ready to jump into the sea. One did. Fuckin’ hell it’s freezing, he shouted. Is that a good idea? I want to say, but don’t. They are young, careless and exuberant. Let it be.

Application writing day today and I am weary of challenges. Breathe through it and write. It is my space, my words, I am in control. The winning isn’t what it is about but the making sense of an idea, carving it out, fleshing it out. Just let it be, breath into the fear of it.

The moon is almost full but hidden, just a tiny crescent peeping out behind a cloud.

I was walking down Llanbadarn Road when I saw it. It was too fast and it was too dark to make it out. Was it a cat or a fox? It sped across the road, low, low to the ground. It caught my attention, I was taken dream-like to the time I saw a fox in our garden in Cambridge, it’s eyes holding mine in a long stare. I must’ve heard a noise, or perhaps caught the flash of flame, I turned to glance down a small side alley to the right of me. Two balls of orange flame dancing in the black. A man bare to the waist juggling fire. I gasped, openly. It was such a shock, how, why? I continued walking, not stopping. I think I’d seen him on the beach years ago. Two, maybe three.

A restless night. It was muggy. Dream after dream. Only the last remembered. I was in the company of two others, he was one. The other was a woman. An older woman. We were watching a film on TV. It ended. I missed the beginning, I said to them. It was the beginning that made me want to write, said the woman. I felt a longing then. Could I find the beginning, could I watch it too? I felt suddenly claustrophobic, trapped. Shall we go for a walk? I said and then woke.

Two dark shapes were perched on a bench as I walked down the Perygyl. I saw the red circle of a cigarette and then heard the voices, muted, Eastern-European, I think. I kept silent, not wanting to interrupt their intimacy or mine.

I feel edgy today, my skin thin.

The update has fucked-up all my settings.

And then she writes to end the residency. It’s the photography thing. I knew it was getting close. Let it be. Let it go. It has been rich. It is enough.

When I walked home past the little alley the fire-juggler had vanished.

She called. It was late. Well, late for me. I recognised that voice. Querulous, tentative, it must’ve taken some courage. Bless her. I want to say, bless you my love. I’m much older than you are, she says. And what courage there is in that aging. Almost 29 years between us. She could be my mother but isn’t. We are similar. Do you feel that too? she asks. I’m glad she called. My hands fizzed with a desire to make it alright for her. To heal her. I quoted a song by Billie Holiday. It made no sense to her. Did she even know of her? Why should she? She quoted a hymn. Different experiences. She has her garden, I have my work, my walking, my man.

Voices as I walk. A girl sitting on the steps of the old Registry Office. You should be so lucky, she is saying to a boy, her eyes heavy with kohl. And then another girl sitting on the steps down to the beach. A girl with a Polish accent. You only have one life, she is saying, in this life, you know. And then another, walking with a friend down the Prom towards the harbour. She in a large Hawaiian shirt. I was ninety seconds, she is saying, and then the audience…..

I couldn’t write the computer, my computer was updating. An hour, more. Stymied and nothing from EMI. Is he unwell?

Soon. Perhaps I should call. Wait. And see.

I see a shape, a form. It gives me a start. It is a man sleeping on a low wall, the sort that are erected in front of terraced houses. He was curled up, foetus-like. Fast asleep, balancing.

He looked different, more substantial somehow, filled out. He is satisfied with himself, or at least that is how he appears. He is chatty, open, confident that we all know who he is and what he does. A celebrity in a small town, a small world. And he was brown. He’d been sitting in the sun, clearly. An unexpected thing, for I see him as a night creature, a burrowing, underground sort of animal. A mole, a fox, a badger, a earth smelling being. And dark. An denizen of dark places. And one who’s skin remained pale. I like him though, there is an openness to him amongst the guardedness. And were you controversial? I asked him after his interview. I’m always controversial, he replied.

I do what he does. I do it, I’m doing it now. I make words appear on the page. There is no mystery, no alchemy to it. I just do it, as he does. I make no bones for what I do. I’m serving my apprenticeship with it, as I do with all things creative, just learning. Don’t mind me I’m just learning.

I like his work. I like it’s intensity, it’s stubbornness. But it is always the same thing. The same darkness, the same taciturnity. That’s OK. Didn’t someone say we write the same book over and over again. And that’s OK. I suppose it takes a lifetime to get it right. And who’s to say what is right.

It’s a beautiful morning. Cloudless. There were many kids on the beach this morning as I walked. Kids as in young people, students, trippers all japing on the sand, shoes off. A young man sat on the wall facing South Beach on the phone. He was on the phone as I walked down to the Perygyl and still on it when I walked back. His voice was loud. Outside The Angel a lad was sitting on the pavement, his feet stretched out before him. A friend was holding his head as he cried. I wanted to kill myself but I didn’t have the strength, he shouted. A large girl in short white dress scuttled down Great Darkgate Street her arm linked through that of a boy on her left. She threw her head back to laugh. At the same time a seagull squawked. The two sounds became one. She laughing like a seagull.

She said yes, she’d do it. So kind. Now I have to begin making sense of it. A good process. My confidence ebbs and flows. So be it.

I thought of her last night. Why is she still there? Why can nothing be done to release her? I tried to imagine being in the cell with her and sitting with her, a companion, a witness. Would it help? I cannot begin to think what she is going through. Do something, please. Now.

And I thought of her. It’s so exciting, she said. And it is genuine, that excitement. Every new step to be cherished. She gives herself over to it, to her. And I am glad. Truly.

I know I dreamt. And I know that they were complex, rich experiences. But I cannot catch them. Not this morning. Though there was something. Something about perfume. I had a lover. I wanted to ready myself for him and reached for some perfume. It wasn’t my usual one. I recall delving into some luxurious, velvety material to find the bottle and thinking I can’t wear this, it isn’t my usual scent, he won’t recognise me by it. An image undoubtedly inspired by a scene from one of the Midwife series we have been watching where a man blinded by an accident on the docks calls out for his wife after recognising her fragrance. They had made a big thing about his sense of smell being heightened by his blindness, I can smell every tea leaf in this cup of tea, he says to the nurse, but it still didn’t ring true. It unsettled me. Would she, a baker’s assistant in the East End in the early 1960s have been able to afford perfume? It must’ve stuck with me. And then there was my beginning to read Deborah Maggoch’s Tulip Fever at work yesterday. An intense immersion in all that sumptuous sexiness. (Though to be honest, I know I was meant to find it so, but I didn’t, not really, though the writing is gorgeous.) That, no doubt provided my dream with the sensuousness of the material. Nothing comes from nothing they say.

The harbour stank of fish this morning. I’d seen a dark line the morning before, seemingly coming from underneath one of the sheds. I leaned in closer, even retraced my steps. Was it oil, or worse, blood? No, it was fish. It stank. To high heaven, as my mother would’ve said. And it wasn’t coming from one of the sheds but a trailer outside. Had they been gutting the fish there? And the sea too, on the Perygyl reeked. A brackish, salty, clammy, mouldy smell. Is it the warmer mornings that is increasing the potency of smells?

I walked out with music this morning. I hummed and haa-ed. Isn’t it better to be alive to all, to hear all? But I longed for music, to be distracted. A new tactic against anxiety. I don’t have it loud. I can still hear the outside, though I didn’t see the taxi turning and had to stop him, my hand raised in apology as I crossed in front of him. But I did still hear the oystercatchers peep-peeping across the beach. I walked out to Kate Bush’s Big Sky. Caterwauling, my mother used to call it. Turn off that caterwauling, she’d shout up the stairs. It was fantastic. I yelled silently along with her.

There’s a front garden along Llanbadarn Road that has a crop of enormous Mexican poppies. Bright red they are. More and more are opening out. The hard, almost prehistoric-looking hairy shells are falling off to reveal the silken petticoats of petals beneath. Their cores are inky black, blue-black.

I have much to do. To send out seeds of questions, requests and favours. I don’t know what will come back. Maybe nothing. It brought me down yesterday. I could…I thought, why not? Then tiredness saps me, and the doubts weigh down my shoulders and my precious optimism. I can but try. And try I must. I will ask. I will send out my requests. All they can say is no.

Be, and be not afraid, sings Tracy Chapman.

I make plans. I do it all the time. I impress order on the chaos. To no avail, life, work, fate, and other people send them awry. So be it. I need to learn to be less rigid, less set in my ways. To step back, to detach from the detail, my obsession with time. Am I obsessed with it? It feels like it. It is the nature of my job, I suppose, timing is all. And yet, I watch others and they seem so much more fluid. They appear to laugh at it, not watching the clock at all. It’s to do with wanting to fit so much in. And what I do do to do well, to the optimum. You do not have to be good, whispers Mary Oliver. Don’t I?

I tried to catch it as I walked this morning. There got it, like a eiderdown feather in my fist. That was it. I was comparing. I was climbing the little hill up North Road and I caught my mind comparing. Or was it more about other people’s judgement. No, that was it. I was talking to one of my dear friends. A beautiful girl, sometime woman, skin as white as snow and hair as black as coal. My lovely girl. I know she cares for me, celebrates me even, and yet, I found myself in conversation with her trying to explain why I was no longer ‘out there’. She always approaches discussions about my work with such enthusiasm. A way of encountering what she sees as my passion, I am sure, but it is genuine too. I believe she values me and, in turn, values what I do. So, she was asking, during this imaginary conversation, what are you up to? Nothing, I wanted to reply, I’m lost, stuck, floundering, reduced. I felt the awkwardness, it was as real as if she were there in front of me. My body felt heavy with it, my back tight as the skin of a drum. Do I tell the truth? Will she think less of me? Is my status of friend bound up with my identity as artist, creator, writer? I didn’t resolve it, I was just made heavy with the weight of it. That was then the comparing started. She, such a star in my eyes, with her important work. So clever, so able, so shining. And then another friend. Again, so able, so resourceful, so brave and talented. I was shrinking under the weight of them as I walked. Breathe, I said to myself. Concentrate on your breathing. In and out. In and out. I passed the honeysuckle bush. Is there a scent yet? I think so, a sweetness was coming through. More to look forward as the warm nights come.Then the house with the clumps of lavender that I usually stroke with my gloves to capture their perfume. No, no flowers yet. Soon.

Why do I visit these imagined judgements? Both of these friends care, have supported and responded to my work. What is it about? Just be it. Be that person. Be stuck, be lost, be floundering. Life is about experiencing. Not about whether the experience is good or bad but just living it. Feeling it completely. Noticing. Who is to say what is the right way to live? I am trying to unravel, to discover something. I think about a book that is beginning to form itself in my head. Though perhaps I shouldn’t see it in that way – for it intimidates the hell out of me. Perhaps I should merely call it research, something more flowing, open-ended. I want to research artists and writers ‘talking’ about being blocked. Not as a kind of self-help thing but more as an exploration of how it feels and if it can, indeed, be a creative act in itself. There is so much baggage from education. I’m still not wholly convinced it is a good thing to do. I’ve over-qualified myself as a way of giving form to my need to make, either as a writer or artist. I belonged to those institutions, though never happily, they gave me structure, guidance but they also stymied me. Or at least, I let them do so. Yet I long to be back in one, someone responding to what I do, giving me a place and forum for my ideas. The world is too big. I cannot make a ripple. Do I need to? Cannot it be work for work’s sake? Going through the motions. Just being at my desk, my laptop, doing it for myself. And yet, it goes against all that I have learnt. It is this unlearning that is so painful, so unsettling.

Abe Lincoln was a quiet man, a melancholy man…Charles Dance’s voice was coming through the radio. It was a recording he made to accompany Aeron Copeland’s music and they played on Radio 3. Those words stuck with me. To be a quiet man with such a responsibility. How did he live it? With grace.

Will you ask if there are gooseberries?

A pile of foil throw-away barbecue trays was leaning against a bin along South Marine next to an empty bottle of wine that lay on the pavement disgorging its dregs. The remains of the day before. A sunny day. A Prom day. The house still remembered the warmth when I woke. I moved into the womb of it, not yet ready for the sharp cold of morning. Pockets of people still about when I walked at 3am. Mostly lads, in groups or alone, lurching, shouting or staring fixedly at their mobile phones. Embers of a bonfire glowed red on South beach. And girls, two girls, all alone coming home from the clubs in their summer clothes. That song by Bruce Springsteen singing out in my mind. The first was wearing a ruched cotton, floral top, falling off her shoulders. The other was in a striped wrap-a-around dress. Had they expected to walk home unaccompanied? Had they gone with friends? They looked sad, their shoulders hunching slightly, the one in the wrap-a-around carried her strappy sandals in her hand.

The lifeguard hut is up on the Prom. Summer has begun. And this morning bodes well. I’m dog-tired. I own it. I accept it. But I need this time, this morning time. I love its opening. The coo-cooing of the wood-pigeons, the smell of the dawn air, the blackbirds song.

How was the walk? he asks, when I go into wake him. It was OK. And how was your mind?

I tell him about it. He listens. He is so patient, tireless even in his willingness to listen to the same old, same old. Walking is good but it stirs up my thinking mind. The minute my boots are on it’s off. Trying to solve, to answer, to make good the fear, the lost-ness, the stuck-ness. I asked to remember my dreams last night. And on waking the last bit came to me. Just a flash of it, a brief memory of something bigger and far more complex. I was under a lorry. It was a big lorry loaded up with goods. I wasn’t in pain, wasn’t even fearful, I was just stuck. I couldn’t move for the weight that was on top of me. We were at some kind of a junction, the lorry and me. Did I see the white line? I heard the driver above me, shouting out to a colleague. I thought I heard mention of a school. He was obviously frustrated by the hold-up, the stagnation, the not-moving. And then suddenly, the boxes that were pushing me down, holding me trapped, began to be lifted out of the way. I could see light. And then I woke.

You’re jealous, he said. No, I’m not. Jealous isn’t the word, I said. Well, envious, then, he said. We were sitting on a bench on North Road in the sun. I’d taken off my top and trousers and was sitting there in my body. A man on a bench further down the road kept taking surreptitious glances at me. Am I jealous? I’d told him. I told him really as a way of unburdening, of getting something out so that I could look at it clearly. It’s just that she’s got it all sewn-up, I said, by marrying him she won’t have to worry about money, or what to do with herself. It’s all mapped out for her. You’d hate it, he said. I know, I said. It’s just when I’m feeling lost like this, stuck, it appears so appealing to have it all sorted out. Giving over responsibility, you mean, he said. They don’t have your freedom, he said later. I know, I know they don’t.

I could do anything. It is my choice. And the ideas come thick and fast – mostly about writing. What do I want to write? Well, I want, no need, to finish my Motherland book but I also want to write about au pairs, and this morning another title came into my head, that of The Housekeeper. I need, again, to write about my experience in Norway. And then there is a notion of something, a book, an essay about being blocked, writer’s and artist’s block. I want to write about where it takes people, what they do to stave it off, to placate it, to get through it and what happens if they never do. All this fertile stuff. Fertile seeds but with no garden to plant them in. Nothing. No place. Do I just write as I sew with no end in sight, no site in which to place them? Do I just do it because I need to and bugger it that it never sees daylight? My fear of not being good enough paralyses my every move. Truly. My arms ache with the tension of it.

Do I just wait? Acknowledge the discomfort, all that inner wrangling and wait and see? Or do I make a start, with all the awkward stumbling that that involves. It’s like the cross stitch. I’m not good at it. I make loads of errors. It brings me down, it did yesterday. Even the simplest thing….the voices say. And yet, I can see it differently. It is an experiment, the sewing is a prop for the performance. And today, it is a relief. Something mechanical, something with which I can go through the motions of working. What’s wrong with that? he says. Nothing. What? he says, I can’t hear you. Nothing is wrong with that, I say, it’s just not what I expected.

Wait. The load, as in the dream, will be lifted and it will become clear. Meanwhile, like Terry Waite in his cell listening to the World Service on that transistor radio, or Rauch in his San Quentin yard collecting his spiders, frogs and snails, just pay attention to the details. They are exquisite.