Author: Ellen Bell

It’s one of his. A top, a black top with casse pieds written on it in white that he bought from agnes b. in Oxford years ago. He would have it. As he would have the black leather coat we saw in that market in Amsterdam. He hasn’t worn it for ages so I thought I might. I’ve washed it in readiness but I don’t know now, not now I know what casse pieds means. It should be hyphenated. Casse-pieds. Something to do with feet, that much I did know. French always sounds and indeed looks beautiful. What did I think it meant? Something positive, up beat. No. Casse means broken. Broken feet. Put them together and it means boring, a drag, a pain in the ass. Will I still wear it? Possibly.

No rain again this morning. Still so pitch black though. Driving North yesterday morning towards Ruthin we watched the morning come. I love that blue sky. A mellow, yet deep blue that slowly lightens as dawn breaks. The world is still in shadow but there is life, a promise of light. Not that dulled, coating of black that is the early, early hours. I came upon a couple talking in the street. He was standing at her front door. Had they just met? Was this a date? He stood on the pavement, she was in her doorway. I observed his body language. He stood some way away, his hands in his pockets. She was talking. She was animated, And it took like…., she was saying. I walked past the 24 hour garage and saw the smoking woman with the plastic bag coming out. This is clearly where she does her shopping but at 3.30 am? Her bag was full and there was the usual light cigarette between her fingers. Earlier, down by the harbour I’d walked down the ramp, shining my torch to light my path and had come up a figure emerging from the gloom. It gave me a start. My torch caught a glint of a row of buttons. An old army coat, headphones and long, lank hair. Was it a man or woman? I couldn’t tell. The house on St David’s Road where the woman who comes into work to do paper reviews lives was lit up. At least the front porch was. The door glass is stained and bejewelled, it’s window orange in the blackness. A police van drove up to the Pier Pressure night club and deposited an officer on the ground. He was wearing a short sleeved shirt and smiled as he jumped down. Trouble? Behind Alexandra Halls a male student got out of a taxi and a girl got out after him. He took her hand and they walked a little down the hill to his door. He opened it and stood aside ushering her in. A gallant gesture that seemed old-fashioned, a little overblown. Is this a first date? Are they first-time lovers. She walked awkwardly in her cheap shoes with their cumbersome, clumping heels. They weren’t beautiful, weren’t special but to each other perhaps they are.

Its the white page, or in this case screen that scares me. Trying to find something out of nothing. A nothing. And to make it alive, potent, worthwhile. The gallery was busy. Two big men in fleeced jackets wandered around. It was a while till I realised who they were. Guards. They were there to guard the silver. I liked the work. It is quiet, peaceful and simple, un-egotistical.

I think about it all the time. The rage of her grief, how am I to manage it? I have enough trouble regulating my own. But I do believe in talking, in ironing out through talk. It has to be done. Let me be kind. Let me be wise. Let it resolve itself for the best. The best for all.

It was a crossword answer. I couldn’t get it. Extinction, death seven letters and it began qu. What a beautiful word for a seemingly unenviable state. Wipe out, end, final, zilch, nothing, nada. The end. Quietus. Just quiet. Imagine that. Just quiet. I long for it, and it is within my grasp daily but I cannot allow myself to take it, to be in it. I stood for a moment, duster in my hand and listened to the birds in the trees outside. Do they know how beautiful they sound? Do they know the joy they bestow? And would such knowledge affect their singing? Quietus. There wouldn’t even be birdsong. Would I mind? No. The idea of nothing, the nothingness of absolute peace is bliss to me. The end of anxiety, this endless anxiety that saps the soul from me. And yet, in between, in the small spaces in between the eternal fretting there is something like knowing. It is enough at times. See to the details, I tell myself and let the bigger stuff take care of itself. As it will. It inevitably will.

I go to bed early. 6.30 pm if I am lucky. I need to. Even then I only get six and half hours. I need eight. One in the afternoon, perhaps an hour and half and then I am well and strong. Sometimes work calls like they did last night. She was so embarrassed. Were you sleeping? Oh, I am so sorry.  It’s fine, I said, not wanting to draw too much attention to my singular habits. It shatters me though, that being woken from sleep, even though it was only 8.30 pm. Hardly late by most people’s standards. Sometimes my oddness feels good, other times I am shy of it. Wanting to keep it under wraps. Just lie, he says. But I don’t want to. Lying is not good. A denial of good truth. Can’t people take the truth if it is given kindly? And then, just after I put the phone done the banging started.

I couldn’t make it out. In my grogginess it sounded like crashing, or some object being smashed. But it kept on happening. A crashing then a kind of spattering, shaking sound like metal ball bearings being rattled in a tin. Then it came, in my semi-waking-ness it came to me. Chinese New Year. They were fireworks being set off, no doubt by the cluster of Chinese families who live in our Llys. That made it OK. I was glad they were celebrating their special day. Glad that they felt able to. Sleep came then. Precious sleep.

My walk was lovely this morning. The air was fresh but not too cold. No rain and little wind. I walked to music. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. There was no moon, the sky was dark, thick black. I saw stars. And as I walked back from the harbour Nina Simone began singing I Love You Porgy. Sublime.

We bickered. He couldn’t get the IPad to work and it made him tetchy. I was embarrassed and tried to sssh his anger. It made him worse. It was too public. I was on show. We were on show. They all knew us. Oh, you’re the lady who comes and sews. It was all a kerfuffle. She worries that there is nothing for me to see, to participate in. It was non stop.  Such a palaver just getting the residents into the lounge for lunch. Two needed hoists. Others required wheelchairs, ‘prams’ as he calls them or an arm for support. They all shuffle. Everything takes an age. One lady was eating porridge when I arrived. It took her all of two hours. I’m ninety-two, I heard her tell one of the staff, and I never tell a lie. In between sucking her porridge she fretted over her bus pass. No one’s stolen it, the staff member said, it’s in your bag, and besides there are no buses today. Not today. A paramedic came to look at her chest. Not in here, let’s get you back to your room. This involved a hoist which had to be wheeled in. It lifted her off her chair and suspended her in mid air before dropping her into a wheelchair. The straps of the hoist rucked up her jumper revealing the flesh of hips, stomach and breasts. So tender. So pink. Shades of womanhood still present in the curve of her hips, the slope of her breast, yet gone. Empty, emptied. A quietus of sexuality. Her chin covered in hairs while her wedding finger still shone with diamonds.

It is hard to witness. I watch and find deep compassion in the watching. There go I, my loves, in you, in you and in you. Some stare at me, their eyes blue with curiosity and never to be articulated questions. He is kinder than I. He sits with them, holds their hands. I merely bear witness. Is it enough? Is it ever enough?

Kind. Mankind. Man kind. Are we not kind? To be kind. To find that core of rightness, of altruism. Is that not a quest?

The morning is still. I hear crows, rooks, blackbirds even though all the windows are snapped shut against the window cleaner. The water seeps through. Plastic windows, they are not my cup of tea. They feel wrong in the space, they do not fit with the stone. Ah, convenience. Yes, I understand and I remember plastic was the great thing in the 60s when I was young. Everything that could be formed in plastic was. I remember a set of plastic beakers we used to take with us on picnics. I loved them. They smelt of happy days and that a faint residue of sweat and orange squash. We did have happy days, you know. I recall their smiles and laughter. Oh, Chris, she’d say, her head thrown back. Plastic was brightly coloured, opaque or see-through. It spoke of freedom, of affordability, ease, convenience and youth. There were plastic chairs, tables, sofas, everything. And now it is the great no no. The oceans are full of it. Where else was it supposed to go? Shall we go back to glass? We all create so much waste, so much stuff. A life of it. A life of amassing it. I grow weary of it. How to be lighter? How to be lighter on this earth?

We do the best we can. I truly believe that we do. It cannot be neatened up. It cannot be contained. It is messy. It is necessarily so, I think. Kids were out in the rain this morning. One tiny girl running her jacket over her head. Yesterday I passed two lovers standing on the Prom. He was wearing a woollen hat and his hands were jammed in his pockets. They stood close to each other, their bodies almost touching. She was stroking his face. I walked round them. They didn’t move.

A woman has replied to my call for interviews. How sweet of her. But as always she is miles away. There was nothing in Wales. Never mind, he says, I like our trips. And I do too. I think it is good for us, though tiring. It takes us out there. To something new. Still dog tired. What is it, the shift from routine? My third day at the home today. Always these jittery nerves beforehand. It is still so unknown – what I am looking for, what I will see, witness and experience. I just need to let it be. Let it become what it needs to become. Shall I give it six months? And then what? What will they want from it? What will I have to show for it?

I think about her, about what I will say. I just want to sit with her, be with her, just her. Sit and wait. I know she is hurting. Can I help? Can I help any of them? Can I help myself? Perhaps it is not about helping but as I am doing in the dementia home, just being present, truly present before another being. Am I present as I sew? I pay attention. My head is bowed but I am alert. Such a layering. It is a mess this life if we seek perfection, that is. I had no idea that anorexia and perfectionism were so closely linked. See here, she told the doctor showing him her emaciated arm, there is still so much flesh to be got rid of. It is something one can do, the shrinking, the shrinking of one’s physical self. Bless them, bless them all.

He’s got two to three years, she said. I don’t know how to digest the news. It’s his blood. He is just very tired. I’m eighty-one on Saturday. A party, no, just the family and the grandchildren. We’re to have lasagne.

I’d like to go and see them. Family. They are my family.

Show me how.

I don’t know how they can stand it. All that noise and clamour. Machines clicking, clunking and banging. And the flashing lights, on and off, on and off. And that grim overhead strip lighting. Are they getting something from it that I don’t see? Or no longer recognise? My six year old nephew loved it, kept badgering to go back in there, to change new money for old so that he might play the coin game. I remember those in an arcade in Blackpool. I remember the smell of money on my hands. It was brass then and copper and the smell, along with that of sticky sweets and toffees, clung to ones hands. Rather sickly but heady too. I knew it was trashy, all of it, and yet I, like my nephew was drawn to it. Martin Sixsmith in his excellent radio programme on psychology was talking today about the lure of advertising and all the subliminal tricks they use to get us to buy. Are arcades like the one on the Pier doing something similar? It was busy with kids, older kids playing the slot machines, shooting at ducks, throwing balls into a basket ball machine and riding static cars. It felt like a free for all, no ne seemed to be overseeing it. No parents hovered. Were they allowed to just run riot, their  money slipping from their hands? A cacophony.

I came upon a marvellous programme on the radio on Sunday, a kind of spoken diary written by someone coming to terms with having early onset dementia. She was amazing in her willingness to turn her affliction into something positive. I say yes to everything, she said, committees, trials, lecture tours, teaching, everything. But the poignancy was the way she dealt with loss, loss of memory, job, status and feeling of usefulness. She also talked about how she could no longer bear noise. Even at Christmas she couldn’t sit at the table with the rest of the family, it had become too much. She had become hypersensitive to sound. But she had also noticed that now she took time to sit, to watch, to listen and pay attention. There is always good but sometimes you have to look really hard for it.

It has been a trying few days but there have been shining bits. I love to be around their lightness, not all day but for a while. I forget myself in their pure pleasure in being alive. We did a murder mystery hunt in the wind. Or at least we began it. It blew right through my bones. But the sun shone. The day before there’d been a rainbow. They looked better for their visit, revived. And I have forgiven myself for only giving what I could.

I made the pancakes. I found the resolution and the energy. And we finished Middlemarch, re-winding the end quote several times for George Eliot’s words and Judi Dench’s honey-ed tones.

I wasn’t happy with what I wrote yesterday. I need to return to it today. Three hours, I should be able to turn it around in three hours. Shouldn’t I? Trust. All will be well.

Poor thing, he says. Who? I ask. We are at breakfast and he is reading The Times. He points at one of the articles in the middle pages. This woman, he says, she’s in eighties and was trapped in the bath for three days. Bless her, he says again. It takes me a while to digest it. She must’ve been so cold, I say. Weren’t there any neighbours? I ask inanely, while I continue to think about it, trying to put myself in her place. Well obviously, he said, but if she couldn’t get to the door. But surely someone would’ve noticed. She did shout, he said. Three days. Three days.  How can it be that one is so alone. We are surrounded by people. Why didn’t someone help her? Poor, poor thing. Has she recovered. What more can we do to look out for and care for those vulnerable beings around us.

I cannot write about what happened yesterday so I shall write about my dreams instead. I had many. I remember waking at 11.30 pm and thinking I must remember this. I was in a huge shopping emporium like Harrods. On one of the upper floors was an office dedicated to Press enquiries about Diana Princess of Wales. It shielded Press questions and promulgated her continuing good and wholesome image. There was a large TV monitor in the room showing a close-up film of her. I was shutting the door and thanking them for the opportunity to work with them. Had I been an intern? As I said goodbye I asked if they would consider me for future opportunities. Then I was going down some steep stairs. They were so deep that I didn’t feel right. An old man in a dusty suit was also descending and made some joke at how difficult they were to manage. He congratulated me on my ability to scale them. Then I was with my father watching him prepare for a game for dogs. He had rows of chocolate treats for them. He wanted to get them to do something and wished to acquire the skills with which to control them. I asked if he knew what he as doing. No, he said. I started to show him how to manage and get the best out of them.

The bleakness has returned. It is heavy on me. The weather, the dark, not having enough sleep, work and that thing yesterday. I could be any, just one, all or none of the above. I keep going, almost too rigid about routine. It helps. And for the rest of time I do work in short burst and find as much comfort as I can. Bodily comfort. As I write there is shawl around my shoulders, my little two bar fire is on, though just one bar now (got to watch those bills) and soon I will make some tea. It is still pitch outside. Just a blankness through my window. I am sorry that it has tainted their visit. It is a joy to see them. She is easy to love.

Time to make a start on the review. I have ideas and the rest will come, it always does. Trust, be patient. What will I say to her? Be kind. Just be kind. Can I say that with impunity? Have I always been so? It is certainly my intention. Do what is right? What is right? I don’t know. Just, just be kind.

It is ridiculous, I know. And I know it is happening. I can almost hear the click. There it goes now –  my back tightens, my jaw stiffens and the fretting takes over. My mind is like a mouse, or a hamster on a those little wheels. Round and round it goes. Sometimes it stops, like the rodent, and the wheel rocks back and forth before starting again. Anything, just anything can set it off. What was it today? Well it is usually to do with time. Rushing to get things done yet wanting to do them well. And each new chore or job becomes a burden, a stress point.

When you’ve time can you photograph the Newsroom camera? Now? No, when you’ve time. I do it, and it takes longer than I think because I want to get it right. And then I send off the photos and I look at them and re-look at them thinking they’re too blurry. And then the fridge needs defrosting. And then family are visiting and then there are the wee baby grows I want to alter. All five because her little legs are all ready so long. She’s going to be a model, she said proudly. Very possibly. And I want to do it now, fast, but beautifully with love because it is for her. And it takes so long by hand. Shall I use my machine? I haven’t used it for ages, will it still work for me, will I be able to remember how to work it? And then there was the printer. I told you about it yesterday. It broke. They’ve given us a replacement. An upgrade so I’ve got to set it up. Aagh! I do get stressed over machines. I don’t understand them. I try my best. Honest. So not today. I will take it out of the box, place it in situ. That’s all. That’s enough today.

And then just before I was going out for my walk the bulb went in my room. He calls it the innate hostility of inanimate things, and shouts at them. They need to be told, he says. I try to see it as a blessing. A hidden blessing, perhaps. I changed the bulb with a different kind. The light in there is whiter, brighter, friendlier somehow. I like it. So, you see, it can work.

My eyes have been scratchy. She’d say, what is it you are not seeing? Not wanting to see? I’ll get you some Optrex, he says being his usual loving kind self. No, thanks, I say, still grumpy with self-pity. I don’t want to put liquid in my eyes. But I change my mind. Yes, please, if you would. He comes back with something called Golden Eyes. It’s odd putting the drops in there. I flinch. But it is soothing the irritation. The woman in the chemist said it was probably an infection from your hands. Oh, I said. She wasn’t unduly worried, he said.

The wind was strong but the rain held off. I was grateful. A group of students were chasing a plastic cup down the Prom, one of the girls, all legs and mini-skirted went tumbling, her heels caught up in her handbag. One lad sat hunched over a bench rubbing his eyes.

I got her name wrong. Ugh. I used to hate it when people did that to me. Always Helen. Helen. Helen. A Mancunian thing? The dropping of H’s.

Off to work. Then home, coffee, sewing and The Archers. Enough.

I wanted to write about intimacy, about my ambivalence towards it. My sometime ambivalence. Sometimes I yearn for it, I find myself cleaving towards friends and family members just to belong to them, longing to be part of them, their life, their warmth, them. And at other times? Well, other times I want to run and run from it. The knowledge of them, the too intimate knowledge of them, like the smell of her sometimes. But that was so long ago. I connected the scent of her with my horror of her, they became indivisible. I wanted to write about intimacy, they way I long for her to want to know me, to show me something like specialness, but she does not, cannot, will not, who knows? And I cannot and should not ask it of her. It came to me yesterday, just let it be. It is good enough. We want more from her than she does of us. Is it so unusual? It is a fantasy, either way. And now we have this gift to share, it is a way in. It was the same with her, she was soft then, less bitter, less razor-edged. I wanted to write about intimacy but my printer has broken and I am thrown. Technology does this to me, always. I try to reign it in. To pull back from the fluster. All will be will. I’ll sort it, he says. And he will. But I will have to set it up. Can you get the same one? Am I alone in this panic. Richard Sennett writes about how we have to work with and drive machines we don’t understand, haven’t made or built. Yes, and I truly struggle with it. I want to know why they break, what am I doing wrong?

No rain when I walked. Coming back down Llanbadarn Road I saw a road sign lit up red, reflecting the back lights of lorry that had just driven past. It stayed red for minutes after the truck had gone. Blood red, it had absorbed the hue and was sharing it back. A sign warning of temporary lights for a school. Red pulsing in the darkness. The rain has now come and I have to go out to work soon. Soon.

Comfort. I crave it in this dark. The smell of bread is enough. I walk back past the bakeries. Two of them. Slater’s and Pelican. I peer into the steamed up windows and see the blue light of the fly traps hanging above the doors.

He tells me of an article by a writer in the I where she has to say which character from fiction she is most like. She chooses Dorothea Casaubon. She calls her do-goodiness vanity. I didn’t see her as vain, he says. No, me neither. But perhaps she is right. Perhaps she is. Does it matter? Really?

I’ll sort it. Don’t worry.

A nice touch, flowers in the public toilets and not some scabby petrol station bouquet, fresh and vibrant verbenas. An exemplary motorway services, no muzak, no horrid strip lights and good, wholesome food. We will go there again, if only to remember that hour, holding her.

I love serendipity, at least that is what she calls it. You know, when you think of someone and they appear or call you. Or like yesterday when the Independent Jumbo crossword clue was for an Anthony Trollope novel that was adapted by Andrew Davies in 2004 and I said The Way We Live Now. It wasn’t the right answer but then later that morning I was sitting a sofa in Hafan y Waun doing the second day of my residency and there on the bookshelf next to me was a paperback copy of The Way We Live Now. Sceptics would say bah, its just coincidence. Surely not. It’s not a particularly popular book surely. And to find it there. Incongruous, specially as no one reads. I liked it. I felt looked after, watched out for. And my fretting, for a moment, ceased.

How I miss writing this when I cannot. And I can’t always do it. I need this half hour just to sit and think and spill onto the page.

A busy day. Racing around like a blue-arsed fly. Is that the right saying? Do they have blue arses and if so, why does that make them faster? A good day, though, rich. Work first, two lovely guests, then coffee and crosswords then the care home and then lunch and then back to work for the World Service then back home to hoover have a quick nap then upstairs to make supper. Racing around like a blue-arsed fly, exactly. But the residency was good. She worries. Did anything happen? Did anyone talk to you? No, they mostly slept. I was their watcher. Sometimes they’d wake to scratch, or yawn or to check the time. Sleeping till lunch time. A man was still in his pyjamas. Some wander in and out. One man had on a cagoule and stood hovering by the window before going out through the French windows to the garden. He looked so sad. But he watched me, as he watched the handyman who was up a ladder repairing the fire exit light.

He came in to photograph me at the end. Your private photographer, she said, I’ll let the staff know that he’s been briefed. He sat in a chair at the other end of the room next to a lady that we’d both recognised. She’s the one we used to see in Morrison’s on a Saturday morning with her son, he said, nudging my arm. You know the one with the tattoos, beard and earring. Yes, I remember now. A tiny bird of a woman, though her slippered feet were huge. She was keening, worrying about her laundry. Where are my jumpers? she kept asking. She started to cry. He patted her hand and told her that he recognised her. I’m eighty, you know, she said. I used to be in showbiz before I got ill. They call her Shirley, Shirl. Don’t fret, Shirl, the laundry is back this afternoon. I’m such a high-strung person, she tells him. I used to be a soubrette, you know singing and dancing. Mind you, I wasn’t proud, I’d do anything.

I sew and scribble, sew and scribble not knowing what I am finding but it is something. Something precious. I am so grateful. Just to sit amongst them. A minder, a watcher. They don’t notice me, even the staff, after a while don’t notice. That’s OK. That’s what I want. To be invisible. To walk invisible.

A glittery hair clip on the Prom this morning. A shiny thing. Things. Containers of story.

A man in a red rain jacket walking towards me along Mill Road. My hackles raise. He comes near. His head is hooded. I see his beard. He smiles. Hi, he says. Good morning, I say and walk past warmed by his smile. You see, it’s OK, there is nothing to fear. Nothing.

I missed the rain. I asked for it to wait, just a while so I could walk dry. And it did. Thank you.

I get so het up. It is only me. It is only my work, my writing and yet the tension gathers. My arms are heavy with it. And then I think of her, with her sling. Incapacitated. We take our two arms for granted for so many things. I wish I were nearer, that I could be more practical help. I feel her pain and am sorry for it. But I digress. I am going back to it. I am going to face it. I want to finish it. I want to form it. I need a plan. Just read it, he says, don’t do any meaningful writing today, just read it. Yes. I just want to sit with it and to make a plan. I’ve avoided doing this for so long. I just wanted it to happen, to flow out. It doesn’t work that way, some order might help. There is room in between to breathe. Are you breathing now?

No room at the inn. Try the Travelodge. Could we share a room? It would be cheaper but neither of us would sleep.

I dreamt I was walking through London it was dark and I came to what seemed the edge of the urban part and came upon a heath. A wild area. It wasn’t what I intended. Then a woman spoke to me telling me I could get a train to where I wanted to go. That platform’s closed off but if you ask the ticket seller he can sell you a fare, she said. It was one of those old fashioned stations, like the one in Greenwich where there is a kiosk that sells newspapers, confectionery etc. I ask for a ticket and reached to get the money he had given me from a cardboard travel money wallet. The ticket seller stuck his hand in for a higher note saying, that should cover it. I didn’t recognise the money at all. And the notes were enormous. A saw a man from the corner of my eye reaching down to pick up a first edition stamp pack. Anyone here interested in girly magazines? shouted the ticket seller. They’re being given quite a beating, he continued.

He laughed when I told him of it. Where does it come from? All of it, I asked. And girly magazines does mean that, doesn’t it? I asked. It’s not referring to Woman’s Own or something? Oh, no, he said, it means that alright.

The Survey ship was in the harbour again this morning, lit up in the dark, as were two fishing boats. Huge crafts with green trawling nets hanging suspended from their bows.

Walking along Llanbadarn Road at 3.10 am I crossed paths with two students, a girl and boy, both were wearing fairy wings strapped over their coats. Later, taking the Prom and winding towards the castle I heard a noise across the road. I turned and saw a tumbling girl. A flash of flesh as she fell off the wall, a boy caught her. All legs and thighs.

A frost or was it a light snowfall coated the roads and paths. I walked gingerly longing to stride.

Just sit with it. All will be well. It is for you, no one else. The important thing is to write it. Write it out.

My hands still remember the weight of her, the feel of her tiny bones. My neck remembers the gentle rocking of her head, still wobbly, and the suck of her lips. My ears remember the snuffling, and the mewling. My dress remembers her smell.

All that way. Ridiculous really. What was it? Seven, eight hours in the car? For an hour, an hour of cups of tea and that precious burden in my arms. And the other one. My other precious angel who I cannot stop touching. Both of them. One so so tired and the other so fractious. I was less scared this time. Even walked off with her in search of the bright walls of the play area and all the while feeling the eyes of her parents boring into my back. I just wanted a little time with her, alone, to whisper, to coo and know her living warmth. And Annie Lennox’s song Precious Little Angel singing in my head all the way home.

All was quiet this morning. Nobody about really. No smoking woman, just a lad spied in a basement on a black leather sofa, in a vest, watching TV. And a owl in the trees or in the sky over Llanbadarn Road. I couldn’t see it, just heard it. Not a hoot or a whoo, whoo more a waagh, waagh. Is that a screech owl? The sea was a gentle lapping thing, all threat gone. No frost either. And no moon. No Aberdovey in the distance.

We broke the routine. I fancied it. Needed a fillip, a lift up so we stopped in Rhayader. A corner café, by day a bistro by night. Men sat singly at tables, hunched over plates, elbows on tables. Workers, their hi vis jackets and bags on the floor. A large man opposite was doing The Sun crossword and waiting for his bacon sandwich. He ate it fast, great bites, murmuring the answers to the clues between chews. Alright? he said catching me watching him. Alright? he said as he left. The café stank of fried bacon but I adjusted or the smell dissipated. The coffee was weak but hot. He ate a scone. I buttered and jammed it for him, it was warm and soggy. Brilliant, he said.

More coffee later. Two cups. I was flying. A busy Starbucks full of people conducting business meetings or working on laptops. A very different demographic to the one we go to in Oswestry, no kids or teenage girls with tattoos. I was nervous. We did crosswords. And waited and waited. Then at the services we waited. Be kind, I kept saying to myself. Be kind. I walk in on an elderly lady in the loo. No, she shouts, pushing at the door. Sorry, I’m so sorry. I thought I’d locked it. I apologise again when she emerges. It’s not your fault, she says. Dignity only a little shaken. She wears dark glasses and an expensive jacket, her white hair a neat foam.

She is grown. Her texts are all about her child. I’ve got a very restless little girl here. It fills her life, his life. They are content. There is no fighting. A peace pervades. Just a lack of sleep. Her face needs sleep. They arrive all bags and paraphernalia, with a tiny person in a car seat. She is so pretty. So pretty. My love. My loves.