Author: Ellen Bell

I’ve got an early. A paper review. So this will have to be quick. I don’t feel quite right if I don’t write something. It isn’t just the recording of what I’ve encountered, seen or thought about, it’s the physical act of writing. It steadies me. Grounds me. So it will have to be a list, of sorts.

Jay. I saw it yesterday afternoon, well almost night for me. It flew onto one of the trees opposite his window. That square of white on its wing. I called out. Where is it? he asked but it was gone. Portentous a colleague at work used to call them. Are they? I’ve seen maybe five in my life. It feels good, I like to think something is going to happen. I always do. Life is always moving, I know that but sometimes it can feel stagnant. What will you bring?

The dolphin I saw yesterday morning as I walked. It wasn’t a real one. It was an inflatable one, left by a wall below the Prom. Abandoned or forgotten, I know not. Was it bought as a bank holiday treat from Stars or another of the tourist shops along the front? Was it too big to put in the car? Or had it been lost at sea and then brought in again on the tide. It was a clear blue plastic. A dolphin with a smiling face.

The tricycle I saw today. It too seemed to have been abandoned. A young child’s trike, clearly. Highly painted but a little shabby with masking tape wrapped around it’s seat. It was resting against a lamppost along South Road.

The helicopter whirred in the sky for hours last night. Our neighbour was at his window smoking when I returned and he said he’d heard it too. It was over the golf course at first, he said. I heard it about half past twelve. I had too. And then seen its lights over the sea. It was hovering, clearly. Heat-seeking, like the London helicopter that the Liverpuddlian poet Paul Morley went on for that radio programme Night Vision. It was fascinating and amazing what they can detect from up there. Was someone lost at sea? It is an ominous sound, making me think of Kate Bush’s song on Hounds of Love – with its noise of helicopter blades and a voice shouting, Get out of the water, get out of the waves…

A good day yesterday. A peaceful day. I kept it at bay.

Sleep well, I said opening the door. Cheers now, he said.

There’s a spot of blood on your duvet cover, I said to him at breakfast, is it from your shin?. Yeh, I know, he said, I saw it last night but I can’t work out where it is from. It’s the pills he takes, they thin the blood, so if he cuts or scratches himself he just bleeds and bleeds. Mind you, he always has, ever since I’ve known him. We’re not big bleeders, he says, mimicking one of his mother’s saws. It always makes us laugh. It’s such a preposterous thing to say. As if a family bleeds alike. Perhaps they do. We’re not big bleeders could also be referring to size, to stature, of course. I never heard her say it. Did she do it tongue in cheek? That little person, that definitely not ‘big bleeder’. Shall I wash the duvet again? I ask. No, just leave it, he says. It doesn’t matter to him, these things don’t. To me it does, but perhaps it is a good thing to let loose a little. Sponge it off, they use to say. Come here and I’ll sponge it off. Just like the face being wiped by a bit of your mother’s spittle. Come here, let me see. Rough love.

I woke to the smell of curry coming through my bedroom window. It was so strong, the cooking process have just begun. Was it from our neighbour below? Like me, he is often up in the early hours, though unlike me he then sleeps through most of the morning. I temper my irritation. He means no harm, the fact that I feel assaulted by such strong smells is not his fault.

My waking dream stayed with me for the first time in days. I’d asked that I remember it but was less rigid about it and it seemed to have worked. I was in a small chapel or church. It was of domestic proportions, a busy, rather cluttered environment. I was trying to reach for something and climbed up onto two tables, straddling them, one foot on each. It was precarious. They each had a table cloth on top of them. Beneath me women were starting to come in sorting out hymnbooks, flowers possibly for the service. Jenny Agutter as Sister Julienne from Midwife was there officiating. I thought I would be told to get down, or at least asked what I was doing. But no one troubled me. The women were active, engaged in their tasks, their faces looked strained, stressed, cross even. I felt high above them, separate and now steady.

The morning light was smoky with mist. A fine rain dusted my face though there was no real evidence of wetness. There were more people about than I expected. Down by Alexandra Hall the air smelt sweet, like new mown-grass and ice lollies. Towards South Marine it smelt of last night’s barbecues. On Northgate Terrace a seagull ripped at a dustbin bag.

Another neighbour, Betty the cat’s owner, has planted some herbs in the planter that she hooks on the railing opposite her window. There is thyme, basil, oregano and parsley. It’s the nearest I can get to a garden, she’d said to me last year. Perhaps I can branch out too. There’s a little shelf on the roof below us. I’d love to grow sweet peas. Would they climb the fence? Perhaps it is too late to plant them now. Maybe next year. The geraniums give at least three people joy. Myself, him and our neighbour’s ninety-nine year old mother. I can’t see them very well, she says, but they give me such pleasure as I come out of my door. It is worth it for that. I think of her as I water them. We don’t really own anything out right. It is shared. A shared ownership, a shared joy.

To work. I keep thinking about emptying myself. There are no shoulds, he says, over and over again. I’ve allowed work to define me, working hard makes me believe that I am a good person, worthwhile. I need to be in the spaces in-between. What am I then? Am I more myself then? I think of being abroad, on holiday sitting in the sun. I let it the space come in then. I let it become blank. Wait and see. Make the space and an answer will come.

It’s coming off the sea, he said. Now it’s hanging over Pen Dinas. It’s strange. I don’t understand why it does it. It looks otherworldly. A dirty looking mist, a little brown. Like smoke.

Town was mayhem this morning. Lots of noise. Lots of drinkers.

Two lads with Swansea accents walking towards me, their shirts wide open revealing pink skin from the sun. They are eating pizza from a box as they walk. The way to resolve it, one is saying to the other, is you go that way and I go this way. Later four or five lads can be heard shouting and singing in the Aldi car park. First they chant the name Cardiff City and then they sing a traditional Welsh Folk song which I know but can’t spell. My back tenses up. A not unusual phenomenon but this time perfectly natural. They could do anything those boys. I need to be on my guard. But all is fine. I am invisible in my boots, hat and waterproofs. Electronic music thumped out of Pier Pressure night club. A woman stood next to a man, the word OBEY written three times on the back of her bomber jacket.

More serendipity. Abi Morgan on DID yesterday morning talking about meeting Margaret Thatcher when she was waitressing at an event at the NPG. Then recalling how eight years later (or so) she was writing Iron Lady. We talked about it, he and I as we walked back from North Road. She said she was small, I said. Was she? he asked. Apparently, I said. Then lo and behold it was a cross word clue that evening. Coincidence again? Methinks that academic protests too much.

It seemed to work. I got pictures of them all, my current panel of judges, stuck them in my book and put speech bubbles coming out of their mouths. Though I struggled to really decide what it is they are saying to me. More today. Some supporters – others hindrances. And yet, it isn’t that clear cut. Not really. It held off. I did work without so much tension but it came later. As if it waits. It feels like that sometimes.

He sat on my bed. Budge up, he said. He soothed me, as he always does. We are in this together. He is my witness as I am his. Nothing matters, not really. Except this that we have. This precious thing, this kindness, this love. Love that is kindness, kindness that is love. I am made good by it. He makes me good. It doesn’t matter what I do. I am proud of you, he says. And I know that. But sometimes this falling away of all that I’d hoped for, vague though it is when I examine it, breaks my heart. I am become so small and yet inside I am immense. How that can be I don’t know. Will never know. I don’t think.

Be kind. May the sun shine through the mist. x

They were there yesterday and today, though this time they were lying in the gutter rather than on the pavement. The reminded me of the kind of knickers my mother bought me to wear for tennis. Big pants with a row of frilly lace on the back. They looked ridiculous. I felt reduced by wearing them, as if I’d somehow regressed back to childhood, to babyhood. A fluff of saccharine sugary-ness under my simple white, functional tennis skirt. It was what was done in those days. Not now, the female players wear shorts under their skirts or dresses. These pants clearly belonged to a child, though. They were white with a broderie anglaise-d bottom. Had they just be dropped and forgotten? Or had they fallen out of a pram?

He was at his window again this morning. I do prefer it when he isn’t. It isn’t that I don’t like him, for I do. It is just that I would rather not have to talk at that time in the morning. It is my thinking time, my solitary time (for all the people I see and encounter on my walks, I am still alone). I’m sure he feels the same way. Our conversation seems to be just as awkward for him as it is for me. He wants to stand there and smoke. And contemplate and stare. Cheers now, he says as I make my way down the steps. What did I say? Something inane. My mouth struggles to form words. Sometimes I wait in the hallway until I think he is gone.

The Shoreline Guest House is full. The first one this year. Congratulations.

Two bonfires were still burning on South Beach.

The fog felt wet. Was that rain? A real pea-souper. I couldn’t see the Pier from the Bar.

Would he still call it a coincidence, that Cambridge academic that I heard on the radio? Would he? Shall I tell you of it? I was trying to think of an artist’s name. As I always am these days. Joseph Beuys, I was trying to remember his name. I thought I would look it up in a book on Performance Art that I bought second-hand a while ago. I knew that he was something to do with the Fluxus movement. So I thought I would start but looking up references to that word in the index. It was there. I found it easily because it was highlighted in pink. What are the chances eh? No other marks in the book, it is pristine. And yet, there it was in the one place I need to find. A gentle nudging portent, perhaps.

I’ve agreed to write something down, to have statements there in my book ready to challenge the doubters. Those critics that I’ve invested with knowledge way beyond their years or experience. But it is hard to start. My sense of my own foolishness being exacerbated by the articulation of it. But I will preserve. I am looking for clarity. The fog is apt. A thick whiteness.

I thought of her last night. Thirty years ago. An age and yet a brief flicker.

Happy birthday, my love.

Sometimes finishing a review can leave me a little unsettled. Is it good enough? Have I been unkind? How to encapsulate all that I feel? I just don’t know. I wanted to go out. To go to Aberdovey. To drink Lapsang Souchong in that warm sleepy lounge. To implode. To talk, to unravel. And make all well again. First he had to have his feet done. A regular occurrence when you’re knocking on and a diabetic. They have to be watched apparently. Not that he is decrepit. Not by any stretch of the imagination. He is well, lively, sharp.

We had coffee in town first. I want to go somewhere where I am anonymous, I said. He makes friends, well acquaintances, wherever he goes. All the café staff know him. Hi, they say. I am less known. I keep myself to myself, plus I don’t go out as much as he does. I just want to sit and not feel obliged to greet people. Is that OK? Of course, he says. I wanted to go to the Carlton but he wanted decent coffee. So we compromised. Coffee first then I would sit up in the Carlton and write till he was done with his feet. I like sitting up there. It’s a no-nonsense caff. Regulars, painters and decorators in shorts, students and couples, go in there for full English’s and pots of tea. The smell of fried eggs and bacon pervade that upstairs room and Heart blasts out of the speaker in the corner, but nevertheless I like it. I like to sit at a velour-covered banquette and watch the street below. I watch him walk away, nipping into to Nero to say hello. I sit and write, my bottle of water at my side. Two women at the next banquette are talking about dentists. One is due to see they hygienist and is scared. It’s been five years, she is saying. My teeth are so sensitive. I’ve got the Ibuprofen in my bag. They then go on to discuss the merits or otherwise of electric toothbrushes. I use my electric in the morning and my hand one at night, says the first woman. I do too, says the other, but at night I first use the electric and then the hand one. They don’t feel clean enough with the electric.

He’d forgotten to put in petrol so we had to go beyond the hotel to fill up and then drive back. The tea was good. And we talked and talked. Good things were unravelled. I don’t really believe that I’m an artist, I said, not really, not deep down. It’s true. And then later, a voice, strong distinct coming into my head as I closed the fridge door. You can do anything you like. I told him. Now, that’s a break through, he said.

Town was crawling with revellers this morning. What an old fashioned word. Drinkers, kids, students…whatever you want to call them. Is there a generic word? They sit on benches eating fried chicken and pizza. Eh, she’s loyal, shouts a girl sitting on a Prom bench eating and flanked by two blokes. Guys and dolls, five minutes, hollers a voice upstairs in the Pier Pressure nightclub. Then up by The Angel  a group of girls are remonstrating with a group of lads. It’s jovial, a play fight. Don’t give me your shit, one girl shouts. Making my way down Great Darkgate Street, a girl in a bright-green football shirt sits cross-legged on the pavement outside the SPAR. A boy sits opposite her staring in the other direction. Listen, right… she is saying, her voice trailing off.

A cyclist rode down to the end of the Perygyl as I walked, his red taillight flickering in the darkness. I hovered until he left wanting it to myself. I watched the mist over the sea. It’s going to be a good day. a lovely day.

I deadheaded the geraniums as I left. The blossom falls heavy on the ground. Cherry blossom confetti.

What’s it like out? he asks as I go in to wake him. I love the regularity, the repetition of the words of our life lived together. It is generated by him mostly. He did the same with her. And she always giggled. They wrapped her up those sayings, they coddled her. They were the continuum, the unchanging steadiness of a cosy life. We have ours now. What’s it like out? Drizzly, I say. Not what they promised. How’s the weather, who I see, if the kids are out drinking, if the tide is in are the questions he asks. It isn’t the passing on of information but the ease of the sounds. The familiar, the known, the uncomplicated. What’s it like out? Wet.

It was manic in work yesterday. Too many people. All speaking Welsh, feasting on cake. You don’t know what you’re missing, he said, biting into a fairy cake. She made them. I didn’t know. A cool girl. More than a little cold. Is it shyness? I try not to take it personally. Yesterday she spoke to me, but only later when the rush had gone. She thanked me for doing the permits. It’s OK. She’d made the cakes. It changes her aspect. A maker, a creator. It changes how I see her. I watched her pack away her cake tin. A nice tin with a metal handle. Do remember the endless round of biscuit tins? They were the cake tins of my youth. Though not at home. Mum didn’t make cakes. It wasn’t her thing, baking. But my grandmother did, my English grandmother, that is or was it Nanny? The other, the Norwegian one, probably could but didn’t in my sight, at least. We saw little of her. Fleeting visits. The boat, the sea-sickness and the language I couldn’t fathom. How does it feel to sit amongst a crowd of people and not understand what they are saying. No one is at fault. It is what it is. I try to switch off, to let it roll over my head, but bits of words embed themselves there and come to me in my sleep. I cannot spell them – sounds like  ‘bobod’ – is that something to do with people? Individually they are all kind, good people, en masse they unsettle me. I am adrift.

Adrift. Stay with it. How would it be to not plan, to not seek, to not ……how would it be to be still? Just still. Not doing. You want to achieve in your life what most people achieve in six. I thought that it was a good thing, now I am not so sure. Are we only what we do?

The drizzle is clearing. Will we get to Aberdovey? The piece is written. I fret over it. I need to complete and send. It is enough what I’ve done and I have made the criticism gentler.

I think about bits of plastic bags caught in trees looking like birds, I see them as we drive by.

To be still but moving. I am still in the car but moving. It’s a perfect kind of stillness. Don’t you think? Or is it cheating?

They’re painting the Prom railings. It’s a bit like the Forth Bridge. It is endless. Though it’s been two or maybe even three years now. Council savings, perhaps? We see the painter in Morrison’s sometimes. He always says hello to him. Is it the same one? They are doing section by section. The bar end first. They put a coat of undercoat first and then the gloss. Black and yellow ticker tape had been wound round the uprights warning of wet paint. This morning some of it had been wrapped around the entrance to the shelter. It has come loose in the wind. It made me think of the scene in American Beauty when that boy films a plastic bag being lifted and tossed by a breeze. Here the tape danced. Winding and swirling like a light-as-air snake. Beautiful. I wanted to stand and watch it for hours. I could’ve done. I wanted to.

The lack of rain brought the kids out. Two walking towards Pier Pressure, both the boy and girl in shorts. Do you dabble in ..? he was saying. It sounded like dairy. Surely not? Another group of three, two lads and a girl, on a bench. They were fucking dropping those clubbing sounds…, one of the boys was shouting to much hilarity from the other two. I smelt pizza and fried chicken. Lip Lickin’ was open. A girl with purple hair was queuing inside Pizza Lush. Their music boomed. Following another threesome home. One of the girl’s lagged behind. Come on, the other two implored. The girl in front was tall and thin with legs like pins jutting from a pair of black lace-edged shorts. I’ve got the worst headache imaginable, the lagging girl moaned. And my house is at least ten minutes away. I could cry.

I was snoozing though the clunk sound woke me. It’s alright someone’s just hit my mirror, he said, it looks OK. He’d pulled out to avoid some cyclists. Later, he started to slow down. Someone’s flashing me, he said. He stopped the car and a woman came to window. She was very agitated. You’ve just broken my mirror. I’ve been following you. I’ve got you number. Her face was pink, even under the face powder. Look at it, she said, it’s half hanging off. I can’t afford to pay for a new one. We softened, both of us. Who’s to say whose to blame. But she was in such distress.

He called her last night. I just want to be reasonable, he said. And will call again tonight when she’s checked out the cost. It felt good to be kind. It is always the right thing to do. No matter the consequences. Is this car jinxed? Is there such a thing? Wasn’t it just another route to remind us of kindness and its centrality to our lives.

Another white page to wrestle with. I always get so nervous. Will it come? Will the story come. I liked the show. An intelligent artist. Let it come, let it flow. Breathe, Ellen. Just breathe.

It was lying in a municipal flowerbed just beyond the station. A child’s umbrella, a merchandised Spider-Man one. It was opened but flat. Had it broken, been blown inside out by the wind? Had the child dropped it and someone had picked it up and put it in the flowerbed? Had it been loved? Rather odd to have an umbrella in Spider-Man’s colours. I mean, would that particular super-hero have needed an umbrella. I never really get the merchandise thing. We didn’t have much of it when I was a child, or was it just that my mother wouldn’t have bought ‘plastic rubbish’. Were those her words, or am I just imagining them? I’m sure I would’ve loved a Snow White dress, or a Cinderella crown but I suspect I would’ve seen the shoddiness of the imitation pretty early on and felt swindled. For me the magic always belonged inside the film, inside the cinema. Though when I watched them later one with her, the magic had gone. I was transported no longer. Little does that for me know. Except perhaps London.

We would’ve still be there. Our last full day there today. I mourn its loss. You have it to look forward to, he says. I know. And I need to let it go but a part of me is getting on that train to Covent Garden or Leicester Square and walking to Monmouth Street for a coffee. Even in the rain there is so much joy to be had.

A short one today. We are off to Newtown to review a show.

She told us never to use clichés. I know. But sometimes that is all there is. The blossom petals strewn across the pavement by the wind look like confetti. What else can I say? They do. The mess of them. Pink spots of light papery-ness, lifted by the wind.

I made a start. You’ve made a start, he said. And I have. Drawings from twenty, almost thirty years ago torn up. All that decision-making. But I am lighter for it. I wonder if these constant dreams of trying to find a suitable restaurant are linked to this. I am seeking something that will nourish me. Something foreign, unfamiliar.

She just thanked me for the copy. That’s all. No other comment. I have to get used to it. If it is wrong they will let you know, as he did. Otherwise just be grateful it has passed muster. It is enough.

They are digging up Llanbadarn Road, just before the junction with Penglais Hill. They’ve sprayed all sorts of pink and yellow hieroglyphics onto the tarmac. It looks like a hopscotch game. Do you remember hopscotch? I still get a frisson of fear when I think of it. Such a long time ago but those years lived out on school playgrounds still haunt me. I didn’t get on at all. Not with the girls or with their games. Hopscotch, skipping and that elastic game. I didn’t want to do them, to participate but to not do so separated you from the crowd and that was unthinkable. I just wasn’t athletic. I was uncoordinated, or at least that was what I’d been told and believed it to be so. I wanted to be alone. It was a strain having to fit in, to talk, to take part. Go and play, adults would say. Go and play with the others. But I want to be by myself. Stop moping, go and make friends. Such a long time ago. But is it? I want you to work in twos, she said. Find someone you want to work with, make eye contact. If there is someone you don’t want to work with don’t make eye contact. There were only six of us. What could I do? The first time I acquiesced, the second time I said I didn’t want to do it. Didn’t want to play. I knew it messed things up. One would be left partner-less. She stepped in. It was fine. I just lay there and cried.

I saw its lights as I came round the corner. I thought it was making its way out to sea and expected to walk along side it as I approached the Perygyl. But it wasn’t moving. It had run aground. Or was just waiting. Waiting for the tide to come in. All its lights were on. It was so near I could see a man in a grey hoodie on the deck talking on a mobile. There was a car parked up at the end of the harbour. It’s radio boomed through the door. At some point the driver must have got out, switching the headlights off as he did so. I saw him as I walked back down the Perygyl looking out to sea at the same boat. Was he waiting for him? The boat was lit up like Oxford Street at Christmas.

Waiting. Aground. We were supposed to be in the National Gallery today, performing in front of the painting. I am grieving a little. Yesterday was productive, domestically. And I felt better for making all clean. Today, I plan to do more, to spring clean my studio. To discard old work and make room for new. But anxiety has taken hold. It started almost on waking. It’s the space, the gap of none work. I want to root through, to root out what I no longer use, to make room but I fight it too. I know how important these empty spaces of time are. Busy-ness is the ultimate distraction. It crowds in, not allowing us to see anything else but the deadline and what is being asked of us. There is nothing to do, she says. There is nothing to achieve. No there isn’t, not really.

I seek peace. I know this. And a simpler life. To be able to notice all things. To have time. To breathe. Maybe I will never achieve it, or at least not for long. Is that OK? To aim for small chunks of peace. This clearing out is part of it. So much clutter in my head, my body and my home. Or so it feels. Actually we have very little. Neither of us are acquisitive, except perhaps for him and his jeans. He has his fads, but then so do I. I just smother them better.

Enough, now. I’ve my monthly accounts to do then begin. There is power in beginning. I paraphrase Goethe. Make a start.

There was someone sitting on a bench on the Perygyl when I arrived there this morning. I tried not to be irritated. It is mine. At that time in the morning it is mine. I want to be alone there. To stand unobserved at the end of it and look out to sea and the stars and the sky and be alone. I couldn’t tell whether it was a man or a woman. It was too dark. I just saw the boots extending out from the bench. We didn’t greet each other. It didn’t feel appropriate for either of us. That time is a liminal time. Often I can’t find my voice. I think we both wanted silence and solitude. Perhaps they were just as disappointed as I was. I stood for a short while and moved on. Let it be. There is room. There is room for all of us.

The moon was a circle this morning. Flooding my studio with white light. No torch needed. A circle. A perfect white circle.

A sign of summer. Kids making bonfires on the beach. I love the smell. I can smell it from a long way off, carried as it by the wind. I saw their shapes against the yellow-orange of the flames. Mostly they build them on South Beach.

I wanted to make it bearable, enjoyable even. I asked him to stay out. I wanted the flat to myself, to clean it unhindered. To be able to leave all the doors open, to take my time. I think that was what worked. I gave myself to task, even the hoovering. How can I make this OK? I asked. By not fighting it, the voice said, by letting it be. I turned on the radio. Radio 3, nice and loud. Petroc’s calm voice made it OK. And it was. And now it is clean. The sun shone through, the birds sang through the open windows and it smells fresh. I love it when the floors have been mopped, all that dust and fluff, for the moment taken away.

We didn’t go. And that is OK too. Even having to pay the deposit. It is OK. The weather here is kinder. We have sun while London has rain. It is for the best. I will let it be so.

It is time to let it go. We gave her a name though I cannot remember it now. We’ve only had her for five years, but oh what an expensive love she has been. He wanted her. And we’ve enjoyed her, certainly. But I am happy to let her go. And he is excited, test-driving her replacement this very morning, I believe. I shall leave him to it. And I have to let go too. Of my safety. Be kind. That is what I tell myself. I want to give him joy, security, and love. So yes, he can have it.

The sky is cerulean. A few clouds. He says he will walk with me to North Road to our bench if the sun is still shining this afternoon. That would be nice. Will they be playing bowls?

I finished the review. I worked hard. He was kind, supportive. Though I was scratchy near the end. It’s when I put pressure on myself. It has to be done NOW! Does it? Breathe. Let time take its course. I like being in the writing. In it, in the process of it. The start and end are always a little uncomfortable. The start because I don’t yet know where I am going and the end because tiredness brings on doubt. An ugly, self-abnegating doubt that kills all joy of achievement. It is so good to have him there. I take it in with a board or book to lean on and pen and leave it with him. Will he like it? Is it any good? Sometimes I just don’t know. But it feels right to keep on doing it. I reach out with my writing beyond myself. And that is good.

I will call her on Friday. And her. And her.