Author: Ellen Bell

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.

It made me smile. It had been wrapped around some wrought-iron railings outside one of the houses halfway along North Road. A row of plastic union-jack triangles, one of which was a picture Meghan Markle, flapping in the breeze. It was so gloriously tacky and so out of place in this very Welsh town. I thought of them celebrating in front of the TV. Would they drink champagne, eat canapés and wave flags throughout the ceremony? It’s such an odd thing, a kind of appropriation, this owning of the royals. I wish them well but the rest, the flurry, the fuss and bother I can do without, as I am sure could they. Is she scared? Is she nervous about what she might have taken on? We cannot know them. There was a writer on the radio the other day talking about a book she’s written about Harry. She only met him for twenty minutes and that was enough, apparently, for a book. We want to dig, to delve, to scratch at the surface of their privilege, wealth, birth and stardom. Are they like us? She will never have to do this again, I said to him, scrubbing the plates after supper. She’ll never have to wash up, cook, do the washing, the ironing, put the bins out for herself again. Think of that. But she’ll also never be able to leave the house without someone taking her picture. How would it be to be without money cares, to not have to work? But it’s not like that is it? Their time isn’t their own. And they are in a goldfish bowl, gold-plated perhaps, but a goldfish bowl nonetheless. Poor things, poor loves. I suspect they rue their privilege daily.

So here am I in my anonymity – ever alert to its freedoms and its limitations. My flying high is all inside. Is that not better, more lasting and utterly unreliant upon another’s whim?

She did answer the phone. He recommends an operation. She is reluctant. And then there is the funeral. She is clearly shocked by the frugality of the show. No funeral, no funeral tea, just a burial. We want the same, well I want it and he is happy to acquiesce. (I won’t be there, will I?, he says). As far she as she is concerned it’s not right. When her dog died, she told me, there was a ham supper. She was alone, with just her son running the farm. She buried her husband five years ago, she said leaving me with an image of the woman with shovel in her hand.)The family fall-out has distressed her. She feels torn between the rights of the mother and those of the daughter whom the family have ostracised. I had to turn my phone off in the end, she said. Poor love. Such a sensitive soul. I feel and care for her. Truly. And I recall a friend of a friend refusing his sister the right to visit him as he died. Such an harsh act. Nothing can be done. Leave well alone, he says.

But she didn’t. I wonder if she is OK. She asked me to ring her. We have much in common, she said. Perhaps they are away. I will try once more.

And neither did she. I wasn’t expecting her to. She is nursing her grievance still, obviously preferring that to talking to me. So be it.

Town was busy this morning from the night before. Conversations, chat reached me as  I walked along. A girl on the phone by the Prom shelter, her feet, at the end of large, fulsome thighs encased in skin-tight jeans, in dainty ballet pumps laced up the ankle. I’m fine, she said, I’m fine. And then more slowly, deliberately: I will make my way home. Then walking through the Castle grounds I catch two boys with the glare of my torch. L.E.D., one of them says as we cross paths, then, F.E.D. I’ve no idea what he means. Outside The Angel two girls are sprawled on the steps leading up to The Academy. I’m so pissed, yeh, one of them says, her head lolling forward. Walking down Great Darkgate Street a lad on a mobile phone is shouting: Hello, he says, you still outside The Angel? Finally, two students trundling home towards Penglais. One in rocky biker gear is earnestly telling the other: You know you’ve just got to try.

Go compare, the advertising slogan says. No. It’s time I stopped doing that. It is enough to be me in this constant state of trying. Trying to be good, to be better, trying to try. We fail when we do not try, she said. Yes, that is the heartache of it. We have no choice but to go on trying. So be it. And there is such a view to admire along the way, don’t you think?

I went for a tin of rice pudding yesterday. Not for me for the food bank. It’s something. A gesture. It’s for my benefit, rather than theirs really. I need to be jolted, to be reminded how fortunate I am. And I am. And this is what I would like, in those circumstances. Some comfort, as I said. Traditional rice pudding, it read. Would that be with the skin then? Traditional rice pudding with sultanas. Will they hate the sultanas? I dither at the aisle. Take the risk. I remember school rice pudding. It was served in these enormous tin trays and there was always a skin on the top. A skin like a crust, often very brown, sometimes burnt. Many of us liked it and would vie for a piece. It was sickly sweet and the rice was cloying and heavy to digest but it was warm and comforting. Did she ever make us rice pudding at home? She made it for the dogs certainly, without sugar but dosed up with cod liver oil. They wolfed it down.

We’d sat watching a lone student practising on the tennis court beneath us. His serve is all wrong, he said, my love, my once Wimbledon junior champion. It’s his drop, it’s not high enough. Then there ensued a discussion as the rights and wrongs of interfering. Should he say something? He was itching to do so. But might he just offend him? Perhaps he is content. He’s trying at least. Yes, he said, but practising won’t help. It won’t help. I thought it was all about practice. Practice makes perfect. Such sayings spin round and round in my head. Other people’s voices, guiding, cajoling, bossing. I thought that if I wrote and wrote I would get better, that it would happen, just by the sheer repetition of taking myself to the page and writing. Isn’t this the case? I know no other way. And often it is a long and tedious way. It has always been so with me. I’m no child star, no protégé material. I’m a plodder, dogged in my desire to better myself, to get better, to become good. I felt an affinity with that student. He was practising alone. Over and over again. But he’s no good, he said. Had it been easy for him, a natural athlete? Perhaps. It was long before I knew him. Be kinder I want to say. But I don’t.

The morning begins to shine with promise. Back to my practice. My writing. I want to sleep but won’t, not yet. Work first.

Will she answer this morning?

They were piling out of a flat just off North Road. One after another. There must’ve been five or six of them. Had there been a party or something? First they trailed off along the street that cuts onto the Prom only to turn back again and head up the hill ahead of me. Jesus Christ, one of the boys said.

I did it. I called her.

I may have said so before that I don’t find phone calls easy. I mean work ones are fine, they have an obvious purpose, and a beginning and end. It’s the other kind, the social kind where boundaries, particularly of time, are more fluid. She took ages to answer and her voice, so familiar even after all these years, was tentative, hesitant. She sounded pleased to hear from me, though she had been warned. Had she fretted about me calling? I hope not. It was well meant. There is nothing but love. Really. He doesn’t understand, not truly. But that doesn’t matter. This is about me, and her, and her. The three of us. We are a grandmother, I said and she laughed. And we are. A shared gift.

It took me back. That longing. That longing to belong. The delight I felt in her. Her wit, her generosity, her openness, her kindness, her ease. At least that is what I saw back then. She’d been wary. And rightly so. Me too, but then I opened to her, the need too great to suppress. I’ve always done it, sought mothers. Still do. Did she know this? Did they all? How many has it been now? Five or six. Not all to the same degree but mother figures certainly. Belonging and not belonging. Because you don’t, not really. There is no blood connection. However much you love, serve, yield to them you are not theirs. Does she feel the same? I shouldn’t think she thinks about it, not deeply. I hope not.

It took me back. The bustle, the chaos, the busy-ness of it. The chats, the cups of tea, the dogs, the walks and the noise. I welcomed it then, wouldn’t do now but then I suppose she wouldn’t either. A big life contained in that house. Uncarpeted floorboards, all of them crashing about in their slippered feet. Pyjamas on in front of the TV, Neighbours, Coronation Street and The Beautiful South on the stereo.

It took me back and it was nice to go there.

A testing day yesterday but we managed it. We solved it. We survived it. You shall not be overcome. How beautiful. You may be assailed, you may be diseased but you shall not be overcome. Is that a promise? Can I hold you to that?

Two girls holding hands. Where was it? Yes, on campus. And then later the next morning, two boys doing the same. In the dark. I like it. I like that fact that they feel able to do it.

I chase time. I know I am doing it. So many things to relish, to anticipate with pleasure and there is time to do it. I have so much freedom. So much.

I looked at it when I’d finished working on it and the yellow was just gorgeous. A lemon-cheese kind of yellow. Take them in, such moments, they count. They count against the doubt.

Fucking gossamer, he said waving his hand across his face as we carried the shopping from the car.

How I love him.

I pass by a girl and boy talking outside The Angel. Well, he is talking, she is lighting a cigarette. It’s like, like…,he is saying, it’s like if you’re gunna like….She smiles, leaning her head to one side as she listens. At the other end of the walk street another girl is sitting on the pavement, leaning against the door of Ahmed’s Barber Shop. A tall, rake-like figure of man is leaning over her, cradling her face in his hands. I love you to bits, right? he says, with a trace of menace in his voice. Or am I reading that into it? Yeh, I know, she replies, her eyes still downcast. I carry on down the hill hoping that I wil get a lift from the smell of baking bread from Slater’s Bakery. But no, there is nothing. There rarely is these days. Perhaps they’ve had air-conditioning put in and no longer need to open the door. Outside the mini Tesco a lad stands uncertainly, his body keeling slightly as in in a strong wind, watching a lorry driver beginning to unload. They drink so much. I tell him of it when he wakes. Perhaps it’s not just drink, he says. An owl whoo-whoos in the distance, over head. It’s the eeriest noise. No oystercatchers this morning, just a few seagulls screeching, and one that I watched soaring about the students’ hall along the prom, a white glider, elegant, sublime. They’d promised rain but it stayed dry.

My neighbour was up when I returned home, though his bedroom light was switched off as I opened our shared hall door. A thin slither of light could be seen through his front door. Then it opened. He was there pulling a suitcase. Are you going away? I asked. Yes, he said, to Vietnam. His father had been a missionary and I think he was actually born in China. His siblings live all over the world. He is going to see one of his brothers in Vietnam. How long for? I ask. Three weeks, he said, look after my mother for me. Of course. Of course we will. Will she ask for help if she needs it? I hope so. Though at ninety-nine she is amazingly fit and fiercely independent.

A bitty day today. I need to have an eye test. Well, I don’t need one, it is due that’s all. It breaks up my working time, but heigh ho.

We talked of the massacre of the Palestinians last night before I went to sleep. He sat on the edge of my bed. Shove yer feet up, he said. It’s nice to hear his voice, it calms me. What do you do with such information? I ask him. Where do you put it? What can you do to be at peace with it? Well, he says, I read about it, I find out about it and then I try to put it away. I can’t do anything about it, after all. No, I said, you can’t. But aren’t we meant to feel for them, ache for them, stand alongside them? Yes.

Don’t give up your light, he told me, years ago, the man with no teeth. Don’t. After all there is as much good, as much love as there is not. I am sorry. Sorry for your pain, all of you. And my concerns are but specks in comparison. Rest in peace. You are so brave.