Author: Ellen Bell

The nurses in the flat across the quad must be either asleep or at work, for there is no light from their kitchen window. There is nothing but black. Pitch black. There is only the moon, a half moon. The moon and me. It is 6.15 am. We’ve had breakfast and he has gone back to bed. I could do so also but it is not my habit and Sunday is my work day. I can get a lot done without the distraction of phone calls. I have a session to do this afternoon but that is not till four. Till then, this is mine, this time, this hour, this minute, this moment.

I saw them ahead of me ambling down South Marine towards the harbour. She was shouting and waving her arms about. A smallish girl in a fur-line parka. Her companion, a boy, was wearing black silk shorts that touched the knee, rather like the one’s boxers wear. It was cold, they’d promised two degrees. He was replying to her but his voice in keeping with the hush of the dark was low. I crossed to the other side of the road. Shit, shit, she was saying. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself. I wanted to walk in peace, to remain, undisturbed, in my reverie. She’d spotted me. I knew it. Ayeee, she shouted, where you goin’ hon? I let it pass. I didn’t turn around. It’s not that I wanted to rude but I just wanted my solitariness. She lost interest, I could tell. When I turned down in to the harbour, I could see them still walking towards the Perygyl.

The wild weather has thrown so much flotsam on the Prom – twigs, branches and seaweed strewn across the cobbles. On South beach there is even a tree root. Like a forest graveyard the sand is peppered with branches and large bits of tree. They lie there like beached whales, their branches in a kind of ossified agony stretching for the sky. It makes me sad to see them. In the summer months students light them for fires. It will get better, he tells me, each and every morning. It will. It will.

No smoking woman with the plastic bag this morning.

Striding past the Bandstand trying to walk with my buttocks in and stomach pulled tight, I heard a moan. Looking down onto North Beach I saw a man, curled up in sleep, lying on the seaweed covered sand. His arms were bare. A giant of man with large, fleshy upper arms. He wore a sleeveless gilet.

Then, coming up to Pier Pressure a trail of night clubbers began to file out. Seagulls circled in the sky above, messy and cawing. A gaggle of girls in sequinned dresses led the troupe, their clothes a spangling delight in the streetlight. Glorious.

I’m tired. My eyes close even as I write this. And a dream came something about someone sending me an email, someone significant in the art world. I woke and questioned its veracity. And then a voice, a woman’s voice with a trace of American, that’s right, she said, it happened. My waking dream this morning was a little more prosaic. I was in an enormous house of which I was either the cleaner, au pair or housewife. A woman and child came to the window. I opened it. She was the daughter of the householder, I want some serving tools, she said. I let her in and began opening drawers for her. She found some things eventually, though the knifes, I thought were woefully small. Earlier it had been about my younger sister, who kept getting a haircut, shorter and shorter. Funny, I’d thought in the dream, she is looking more and more like me that is until I looked closer and saw that she had a fringe of yellow-blonds curls like the actress playing Rosamund Lydgate in the BBC adaptation of Middlemarch. My accountant was there too, in the background. I told him I would be making food for his child. So many dreams about food, about making, cooking and choosing restaurants.

I made a start yesterday and immediately one sees different ways of doing things. So many decisions to make. That is an issue, I cannot trust myself at the moment. All I can do is keep on the tracks. Keep to the tracks.

Edward Casaubon is a figure of ridicule and of pathos. My key the mythologies may be the only thing I will be remembered for, he tells Dorothea. All that work. All that self-importance. All nothing. All dust. And she knows it. Oh, Lord grant me self-knowledge and humility.

I didn’t take music this morning. I wanted to pay attention, to observe, hear and sense my surroundings. I smelt wood smoke, stale beer, the kind of smell that sticks to one’s clothes in a club. A student or students had clearly just walked down North Road. I also smelt the hot breath of a gas boiler, making me slightly nauseous.

Tomorrow, I shall hold her. Nothing is as important. I am blessed. Even in this bleakness I feel it.

You’re a born worrier, my Nanny used to say. And I am, I still am. They come unbidden these fretful thoughts, coming on waking mostly. And then that is it, they have taken hold and my back and shoulders begin to tighten. What was it this morning? Well, it began last night. I couldn’t decide what work to focus on this morning. There is so much I want to do, to get started. You want to achieve more in one life than most people achieve in six, he said, his Siamese cat miaowing in the background. The question is, or at least was last night in bed, do I concentrate on one piece this morning or get several going? And does the latter option mean that I am somehow less focussed? A jack of all trades master of none? How that adage has haunted me. I have so many interests. I am magpie, a jackdaw, a collector, a stealer of shiny things. And I am so in a fog at the moment. There are lots of paths but which one to take? Take them all, he says. You’re experimenting. Stop fretting. When I said I had so many ideas and I don’t know which to pursue, he just said, that’s good, isn’t it? Yes. And the ideas, when they come, are lovely. I feel alive then. I’ve bought two books. Should I, shouldn’t I? I always try to get them second-hand. One about lines and the other about being a craftsman. I want to read about the process of making. Where it will lead, I don’t know.

So many uncertainties. Life is uncertain, to believe otherwise is foolish. We try to order it, to impose a regime on the chaos, merely a plaster, nothing can hold the mystery, form or control it. She hasn’t called. I didn’t expect her to. Not yet. It will happen, we are all willing it to be so. I will hold her, breathe her in. I think about ways of seeing her more often, and for a longer period, not this snatching of time. Can I let it go? Can I send out that wish?

Two lovers were embracing in the shadows as I walked from the Castle towards The Angel. I heard their murmurs, their bodies held close were reflected in the rain-soaked tarmac.

There was a moment of joy. The Waterboys came on  in my ipod singing A Man is in Love. Walking in the rain, around the curve of the Prom towards the harbour, I imagined myself dancing to  it, the jig, the diddly-i as Terry Wogan used to call it. I was being whirled round by him. We’d practiced and the dance was fantastic, fluid, hypnotic, glorious. I found myself smiling. I could see it all.

She is better, her voice was stronger, the fear had gone. She was just off for a walk with Bonnie, she told me. And I could hear her in the background, staccato barks, then keening. I’d better let you go then, I said. So glad you’re better. Thank you, she said.

I began looking at cross stitch clubs thinking there might be some contacts I could use. What a minefield. So many. There are Saturday afternoon clubs, Monday morning clubs. There are even holidays, weekends away at the Hilton sewing. Don’t forget your glasses, it says on the website. Should I go? What a mine of information that would prove. Do I want to dispel the myth I have in my head of the kind of woman who would go to such an event? Do I want safety here or challenge? Should I get in touch with the organisers? Who goes? And what do I want to data for? What am I trying to find?

The sound of the rain on my umbrella was nice this morning but the air was chill burning the tips of my fingers.

Let it be, today. Just let it be.

I heard some shouting. I was coming down the hill from North Road. I thought it was a man’s voice but it was a woman’s. Two women, girls really, walking along the road parallel with the Prom. One of them shouting at the other. WALK! NO WALK! They were some way behind me. I turned to look. The shouting one appeared to be holding the other up. The silent one was a skinny thing and dressed in a tiny boob tube and mini skirt. WALK! the woman shouted again, seeming to drag her companion along. Was she drunk, spaced out? I walked on, striding up the hill towards Constitution Hill.

I have to say the same thing to myself. Stay at home with me, he implores. You don’t have to go. But I do. I do. It is tough though, these winter mornings. The rain spatters the windows as I prepare breakfast and my heart sinks. I wore his coat again this morning, though the rain didn’t come till later. Cocooning myself in warm things helps. I lose myself in the swaddling. I make myself invisible in black. All attempts at grace lost. It doesn’t matter. Do you like it? he asked at breakfast. Not at the moment, I reply. But I reconsider. That’s not strictly true, I say. When I get towards the harbour and there is that stretch of sea, it is magnificent, even in the wind and the rain. I am overawed by it at times. And I do for brief moments forget myself. And that is good.

What was it? he asked pointing at the brown envelope. PLANET, I replied. I explain the albeit tacit expectation that as a contributor one is expected to subscribe to such journals. He is astounded. Tell them no, he says. But I understand. If we want these magazines to continue we have to fund them. It is as simple as that. There’s never anything in it, he says. That’s not true, I say, sometimes there are some very good articles. Yes, he says, when you’re in it. This edition is good. It is good. And he is on the front.

It takes me back. How many years? I was studying Illustration at MMU. It was 1992 or 1993, I cannot be sure. I was working at the Royal Exchange as FOH staff. Ten pounds a session they paid us, and sometimes if the play was a long one it would be three to four hour shift. How I hated walking up to my bus through the Arndale. It wasn’t safe. Rough-edged, it still is. He was playing Romeo. He was so alive, so energetic. He ran onto the stage. His movements were animated, jerky, speeded-up. Such an actor, even then. I was awe-struck. Utterly, awe-struck. Sometimes he’d come behind me and put his hands over my eyes. At the end of the run he gave me a big hug. Would he remember? Probably not, he must’ve encounter so many like me. So many. He is on the front cover. His hair has been dyed a vivid blonde. She told me he wasn’t for me. She said his name, though a shortened form. He isn’t for you, she said. Did I ever think he would be? I was smitten, certainly. Touched by him. A special being, I think.

I shall spend the rest of the morning listening back to the interview. There may be something there I haven’t remembered.

Have I told you I am due to see them on Monday? My heart is glad.

First I must call her. She was so poorly last week. I hope she is better. Will she answer?

I know it is ridiculous but we drive 150 miles there and back for a hair cut. We don’t have to do it but there is nowhere decent here. So we do it. Every two months. We stop for coffee on the way, take our own lunch and do crosswords. A trip, he calls it. I like our trips, he says. And we talk. We talk in the car. Sometimes I snooze. Mostly we talk. We iron out things, we mull over things, we try to order and straighten things. Sometimes there are eureka moments. The landscape is incredibly beautiful, majestic at times. Often the winding of the road continues to play through my body long after we’re home. He gets cross now and again. Fucking tractor, fucking lorry. Did you see that? Fucker. But it is never violent, it is a letting off of steam. We want to be on our way, keeping moving. It helps, it helps this sadness of mine to be moving. And to talk. To talk as we move. It helps.

In and out of semi-sleep yesterday afternoon I kept seeing a series of white doors. Close to my face is stone, wrote Rilke, or something like it. I’m not good at remembering lines. I’m trying to learn Philip Larkin’s High Windows, I have to do stanza by stanza. When I see a couple of kids and guess he’s fucking her and she’s taking pills or wearing a diaphragm, I know that this is paradise everyone old has every dreamed of, bonds and gestures pushed to one side (that’s the bit that I get stuck as I walk and chant it to myself) like an outdated combine harvester. That’s it, that’s as far as I’ve got. It is so simple and yet not. And the twist at the end is fantastic. He uses words that we speak, nothing precious, nothing sacred, just beautifully profane. Beautiful. But I digress. These doors. They were white, a shiny white like enamelled paint or vinyl. They were up close to my face, like Rilke’s stone, I couldn’t move. They surrounded me. They had little metal handles, so they must’ve been cupboards, as high as me, as high as my face. I didn’t want to do anything, I wasn’t ready, or couldn’t open them. And each time I closed my eyes there they’d be, back again. It’s symbolic, he said, when I told him. It was peaceful to encounter them again and again. The opening of them could wait. For now I could just enjoy the pure white.

Little things. Little things please. I wouldn’t say it was joy, but a brush of pleasure. Such as walking back to the car from the hairdressers up towards the market. And then needing a pee and going into the town hall. A lovely old building, heavy sculpted stone, reddish in colour. The mosaic tiled floor inside, the notice boards, a framed tapestry on the wall. The smell of polish of floor cleaner. And the toilets with their shiny magnolia paint, old ceramic sinks and floor length mirror. It all stimulated memories. Of what? School? Civic buildings. Things being in order, hushed voices, echoing corridors. Nothing rushed, nothing electronic. Old ways. He felt the same. A belonged familiarity.

Then there was the sun on the fields as we drove. Then rain. It was enough. Enough for now.

And today, the moon.

The moon wasn’t full. I was wrong. It is tomorrow, at least that is what The Times says. And it is to be a super moon. Two full moons in one month. How does that work? I ask him at breakfast. I don’t know, he replies, I’m only reading what it says here. They call it a blue moon. Once in a blue moon. Do they say what a blue moon is? I ask. No, he says. Blue moon you saw me standing alone…

I went out dressed for rain. I wore his coat, under which were my waterproofs, including two pairs of waterproof trousers, two pairs of socks, a hoodie, a hat, a scarf and a pair of two-layered gloves. It didn’t rain. I was sweltering. Girls in tiny dresses with no sleeves or straps teetered past me in stiletto heels. I like the invisibility that wearing his coat gives me. It smells of him, a musty, male smell rather like I imagine a racoon or a muskrat must smell like. It drowns me. I pull the arms down over my fingers so that they hide my gloves from the rain. They too, like my trousers are meant to be waterproof, they aren’t. Or perhaps it is just the Welsh rain, too wet.

The moon makes me scratchy, unsettled, snappy. Not nice. I don’t feel nice inside. I watch my behaviour with others. I watch my temper, my irritability.

She was twenty minutes late. I was so cross. It wasn’t her fault, it was the client before me. I could hear him going on and on. And she is so sanguine, not a someone who forces, or takes charge. Come day go day. A nice quality. I tried to smother my crossness. Sorry, she mouthed at me as she opened the door. I said nothing. Be nice, Ellen, I kept saying to myself, be nice. Sorry, she said shutting the door. I’ve got a meeting, I said, I’ve got to go by 12.45 at the latest. This isn’t quite true, I said to myself again, is it? One o’clock would be fine. Yes, my internal voice continued, but I want a little time to sit and gather my thoughts before the interview. I know, I continued, but be kind, you’re making her feel bad. I want to, I replied, if only a little.

You see the struggle. The struggle to be kind. It shouldn’t be, it should be innate. I felt uncared for. If she cared she would of ended the prior session on time. Ridiculous. It was in my gift to make it OK for her and I didn’t. She makes me uncomfortable, I said to him afterwards. But it isn’t true. I make myself uncomfortable. Anyway, she prodded and massaged and the long and short of it is posture. I need to stand up straight. So that you look like you are five six, she said. That would be good, I said, only realising afterwards that I am five foot six. I feel clumsy in her presence. She is confident in her physical self. At least I think she is. It’s the being told off stuff. Just memories perhaps. Stand up straight, don’t slouch, pick your feet up. And I try, I try Mummy, I do.

The café was busy and noisy. Several kids were shouting. We bickered over which table to choose. He went for the tea and banana. Two in the end. Do you want toast with that? the woman behind the counter asked him. She is impossibly cheerful, he said. Apparently she offered him a bowl of chips too. The smell of chips pervades. A young lad brings people’s orders on a tray calling out, two plaice and chips and a mug of tea? I watch a small man in an over-sized chequed jacket scurry away leaving behind a large blue rucksack. Has he just gone for some more food? I think to myself, not sure what to do, is it a bomb? Should I contact security? Then he is back. I smile at him. You forgot your bag, I say. I know, he says, I’ve got an interview and I’m distracted. Good luck, I call after him.

She was on time, looking a little different without her glasses. I offered her tea but she declined. She let us take a photo from behind and was fine with the recorder. I lost my nerve. I felt self-conscious. She seemed happy to be there though. Wasn’t phased by my questions. I wanted to find a way in, I don’t think I did. I will listen back, perhaps there will be something. I’m very methodical, she said. I love to sort out the threads. Her auntie taught her to knit at six. She was neat. People commented on it. My first thing was a blue scarf. Who needs scarves in Hong Kong? she said laughing. Little bits come out. She doesn’t have any on her walls. I left them behind with my husband. They were all in boxes. Friends tell me that I could’ve got sixty, seventy quid for them. Her hands are neat. Her hair a long burnished red tail. I wanted more, I think. Keep going, he says. It will come right. Doubt is OK isn’t it? Isn’t it?

The moon is full. Its cold white light was lighting up my studio when I woke. I didn’t even have to turn on the light. I could see the nurses in the flat across the courtyard were also awake. They milled about their kitchen. Their cat leaned its black sleek body against the window, its tail arched and flicking. The moonlight helps. The darkness isn’t so black, so bleak.

Well, I did it. And I am not really any the wiser. Need I be? I don’t know how I feel about it. It’s just an experiment, he says. You’re just trying something out, that’s all. It’s true. But I am conscious that other people are involved. What is my outcome? What do I give them? What will or do they expect? She seemed delighted, he said. And she did. I can’t wait to tell the others, she said. Look what I’ve got, I’ll tell them, an artist-in-residence. I’m glad that she feels that way. And that she seems to accept my modus operandi. My only concern is that the residents won’t see you, she said. The staff have noticed you, though they won’t say anything to you. But the clothes you’re wearing mean that the residents might not see you against the furniture. I had to tell them not to sit on the cat, she also gets lost against this dark leather.

Do I mind? Do I mind that I am invisible? Isn’t that part of the point? How can I explain that to her? She is kind, solicitous, sensitive towards me. I like that. I feel held. I feel that it is OK. Though both he and I got a bit twitchy listening to all the dos and don’ts. Don’t pick up a resident if they fall, don’t let anyone out of the front door, don’t take a resident downstairs with you if the fire alarm sounds and so on. All rather counterintuitive but understandable when she explains it all. I want to be invisible, to watch to just be a presence but it isn’t that simple. It never is. Just by being there a duty of care is expected. Or more a willingness to obey the rules. It is a closed-off community. I felt privileged to be allowed in. To sit and sew and bear witness. They are open to visitors but on their terms. It has to be so. They sit by the front door. One in a coat, woolly hat and gloves waiting to be to let out. They won’t be. They can’t be. Have you got a car outside? the man in the woolly hat asks him. A gentle man. An ex-professor from the University with a soft Scottish brogue. Would you mind taking me for a drive? he asks again. He wants to be of help, it is his want. Next time, he says, touching his arm. Next time I come I’ll take you out. Don’t, I want to say. Don’t promise something you won’t be able to do. But he seems completely compos mentis, he says to her. Why is he here? Everyone here is living with dementia, she says. Can I come with you? he asks as she takes us on a little tour to point out the alarm buttons. Of course, she says, saying his name, as they all do. Names are called out, repeated over and over again. He follows, taking his arm. He didn’t know you, she said. But he recognises a kindness in him, I want to say but don’t. There is so much to say, too much. What was I witness to? The old lady I’d seen before holding hands with a man. I’d assumed that he was a resident too, and that a friendship had blossomed into romance, but after yet another person walking through the front door hailed him, I realised that he was her husband. Her husband from outside, from another life. I do love you, she kept saying as they held hands and sipped their hot chocolate. Lovely tea, she I said. I do love you. This is paradise. Yes, my love, my angel, my flower, he said. His eyes when she fell asleep held such misery.

There are some flickers of joy. I have to acknowledge them. It is important. Like making him scrambled eggs for supper yesterday. I gave time to it. I watched it’s preparation. The whisking of the milk into the yolks, the melting of the butter, the slow hardening on the bottom of the pan, the feel of the wooden spoon in my hand. But it was more the gift of it. A wholesome food. Simple. All it needs it is a bit of time and care. A giving. It was enough. I remembered the taste of it. Make it creamy, I told myself. Just like you used to like it. Like her I don’t like the smell of the eggy pan afterwards. But it is worth it. The gift of it.

Is bearing witness enough?

I haven’t got long. Fifteen minutes, that’s all. She advises twenty. Just twenty minutes first thing every morning to write 500 words. Don’t think about it too hard, just write. I’ve got fifteen. So, I think it might just have to be a list. It’s all about paying attention, noticing, recording and seeing what happens. What will it be? What will I be? Mummy, what will I grow up to be? Did you ever ask that question? Que sera sera. So be it. But what is it? My first day today at or is it in the residency. I try to lower expectations, though what I am expecting I cannot say. She jiggled me with her threats of things being ‘borrowed’ etc. I will sit clutching it all. And yet, there is the promise of something. Might something happen?

Back to the list. What did I notice today when I walked? A white bow on the ground, on the pavement. A white leather, made-up bow with a dark dot in the centre. Had it loosed itself from a shoe? Or a handbag? The woman who smokes as she walks. She was on the Prom walking towards me, having just turned past the castle. Her ubiquitous bag for life flapped in the wind. She wears a pink anorak and heavy walking boots. Her eyes are always cast down. She has on glasses and is always smoking. Her gait is a heavy one. A farmer’s one. Her legs are wide apart and she clumps. I saw a row of sparkly stars in the glassed-off porch of one of the houses along South Marine. The moon was out, not quite full. A girl and boy were huddled together trying to speak into a mobile. Where are you? the girl was shouting. We’re on the beach, she said, though they were standing on the Prom. By the bandstand, interjected the boy. Her voice had a Northern Irish lilt. Noh, she kept repeating, Noh. The sign for the Pier restaurant had dislodged itself from its hanging. It swung haphazardly in the wind. Children eat free. Vegetarian options. Unrivalled views of Cardigan Bay. Open all day. Yesterday there was a lad striding towards me along North Road. His legs jerked about as he walked, his hips swinging. A sound. A discordant sound. He was singing. Singing along to his ipod. I couldn’t make out the words. He looked happy.

They’re only dreams, he says. Yesterday afternoon I woke from my nap and cried. It unsettled him. I couldn’t shake it off. You’re making me edgy, he said, it’s only a dream. I’d captured a little bird, I felt it’s heart beating in my hand. I wanted to cage it, trap it in one of my artworks. I made moving images, moving animations, the bird was to be part of it. It kept trying to escape and I would catch it again. I was so sorry, so sad to have hurt it, harmed it. I couldn’t see it later in this enormous art piece I’d created. It looked like Cae Melin, with buses and cars moving down it’s hill. See, I said to a woman regarding it, I made that. Where was the bird? I couldn’t see her. Nothing was real. Then this morning I woke from another. I was at an art school, and have been in many dreams lately, making room for my work. Clearing away other people’s work. The top was not level. Where are all the boards? I asked. Have that space, a girl said. There was room, there was a shelf. Yes, I thought, this will do. The studio was high up. A positive dream. I was wanted, welcomed but both students and staff.

Off now. Off to work and then to Hafan y Waun. Wake up sleepy head. Time to go. Time to go.

The Shoreline Guest House on South Marine Terrace has reversed their sign in the window. It now reads Sorry No Vacancies. I always get a frisson of something like pleasure when the B&Bs of this town are full. It means business is booming, all is well, there is a heaven and so on. It doesn’t of course. It probably means that the owners themselves are on holiday, en vacances. (I’ve never made the link before between the French for holidays and vacancy. We have no vacancy because we are en vacances. I wondered whether to write vacance or vacances and it seems, so Google informs me, that the jury on that one is still out.) Anyway back to Shoreline, they can’t be possibly be full at this time of the year, not with this weather and surely there hasn’t been a run on travelling salesmen and all the students are back so no parents bringing them back. So it must be that they are away. I hope it is somewhere nice. Lanzarote perhaps?

The answer came while I walked this morning. I was thinking of seaboard. The American, so he claimed last night, for sea line or sea shore. He was pleased, we virtually finished The Times jumbo. You’re on a roll, he said, very good, Poppy. I like to please him. There is never any competition between us. He is delighted when I succeed. And I feel the same way, though sometimes I sink when my mind isn’t sharp. I want to delight him, too much some times. I talk about wanting a father like Dr Gibson in Wives & Daughters. Their relationship (his and Molly’s)  is kind, respectful, fun and warm. He and I had none of that, until the end perhaps. There there was compassion, at least. I’m you’re Daddy, he says. I know, I say, but it isn’t the same. But there shouldn’t be regrets. He brought me what I needed. I chose him for that. Let it be. Love comes and has come from other quarters. I have not been in need, not for a long while.

You won’t have to stress and strain, he’d said. It hadn’t made sense then. When was it? I was coming up to twenty-eight. Oh, a Saturn Return, he’d said, groaning. What? I asked, what? Nineteen ninety, twenty seven years, twenty eight years ago. And yet I remember it so well. His cat, the sound of the traffic outside his window. His terrible teeth and his admiration of my wide-legged red silk trousers. He’s dead now, long gone. You won’t have to stress and strain, he’d said. There is a plan. You won’t be disappointed. All will come right. All will come right, he said. I don’t have to but I do. I do stress. I stress myself. Is it the menopause? I ask. No, he says, I think it is the weather. We rowed the other day about an article he’d mentioned written by a SAD sufferer. She swears by those lights, he said. I wasn’t responsive. I didn’t show the requisite interest and he got shirty. Fair enough. He was being kind and I was being narky.

I can live with it like this. Under par. That is what I am, a little lacking in get up and go. Every hill is a mountain. But it is OK. I’ve been listening to Martin Sixsmith’s radio programme about psychology. There is no such thing as madness, said one of his late contributors. He uses audios from the past, it is fascinating to hear Freud and Jung in particular. There are only varying degrees of sanity, he continues. Another talks about anti-depressants and how they suppress all feeling. They are not discrimatory. I want to feel. And to do so one has to take the good with the bad. Or alternatively not judge either. This is how it is. Grey today, a little lighter tomorrow. It is all experience. All colours through which to encounter the world.

Best to learn poems by heart, come to know them, he says. I’ve begun. Well my first reading. Philip Larkin’s High Windows. I will print it out today and begin to learn. I know so few. Learning by rote had gone out of fashion when I was at school. I want to teach myself. Begin at the beginning, always. I can quote a little of Mary Oliver’s Wild Geese, and I do frequently as I walk, but not much else.

I am prepared for Monday. Am I nervous? Yes, it is beyond my control. I don’t know what will happen or whether I will bring anything at all. Just myself. Just bring yourself. My new tapestry came today. This is what I’d imagined. Much simpler than cross stitch. It came in an enormous box. It’s getting closer to what I’d thought. I’m looking forward to starting. So many things on the go. I have a lifetime though, don’t I?

Is what I do here so different? I am trying to do as he suggests and give it a miss. I just quickly check for messages, that’s all. Don’t scroll down. Just don’t. I don’t want to see. Both sisters have written something. I’m glad that that the first is happier now and feels more able to be open and communicative. And the other? Well, she does so much and it all goes down. What to make of it? Is it not the same? A capturing of life. A showing of life. Perhaps not. I write for myself. Who knows who reads it? Maybe no one. I write for myself, always. I write to get it out, to make sense of it, to order it. Facebook has to be different. The motives are not the same. Look at me, some are saying, look at my life, don’t you want it? Others are saying I’m feeling shit will you love me? Will you make me feel better, my friends, my thousands upon thousands of friends? I too post things there. And on Twitter. But I tell myself I am expected to, that I must advertise my writings. I keep me out of it, mostly. Not here, though I try to write vaguely, no names. No names.

Dodo. I say. Her sister calls her Dodo. Dado? he asks. No, I reply, Dodo, DODO! How can I hear you when your head is stuck out of a fucking window? He is shouting now. Now he is laughing. It soon goes, that fire, that flame of anger. It is me, I am agitated. He picks it up. It is me.

I’m standing on a ledge with my head stuck out of the skylight. The sun is hot on my face. I need some sunlight. I should go for a walk but I am tired and long for my afternoon sleep. And it is cold. This is a compromise. I can see forever, way over the rooftops. I feel my face warming. Lovely. Just lovely. Except for the shouting. What is the name of the film? It isn’t a film, I want to say. It’s a book. Middlemarch, I say to the clouds, the trees, the rooks. What? he calls. Middlemarch. Middlemarch.

If you were a character from fiction who would you be? Dorothea Casaubon. Why? She is full of ideas, full of schemes, longs to do good, to have a big life making a difference. She gives it all up for love, for marriage to become another hidden life and unvisited tomb. Or Jane Eyre, Elizabeth Bennet, or Jane Bennet or maybe Charlotte Lucas sans husband or Lucy Snow from Villette……

Two girls were sitting on a bench as I approached the Pier Pressure night club. It was gone three am and lots of youths were milling about. The girls, one dark, the other blonde, were sprawled on the seat. Every now and again one or the other of them would turn and shout at a crowd of what I can only assume were lads walking on the other side of the road. Grow a dick! the blonde girl shouted. Her hair was in a side pony tail and her lacy vest had slipped off her shoulders. Grow a dick and come back to us, she continued. Her friend repeated her words but louder, her red-lipstick-covered mouth a cavern. GROW A DICK. GROW A DICK AND COME BACK TO US. YOU’LL HAVE TO GROW A DICK IF YOU WANT TO HIT US!

Hit us? She didn’t mean that surely. Or was it some kind of restricted code for ‘hit on us’ perhaps? Is this the new courting? The new wooing? They weren’t scared to taunt in this way. They were delighted with themselves and their wit.

Walking past The Angel something flies towards me landing with a clatter on the ground. A boy tumbles towards it, legs awry. If I can’t do anything, he shouts to his friends, at least I can throw my phone.

A preparation day. Just get the stuff ready. And stop fretting, it will be what it will be. It is a try-out, a tester. There are no right or wrong ways of doing it. A simple line. I think about a sampler but perhaps it is too complicated. I want to be alert, just let my fingers do mechanical things. That is enough.

I want to ask her. She wrote about it in her Book of Silence. She talked of her day where she walks, writes, prays and sews. What do you sew? I want to ask. What do you sew? And there is a quote I want to find in there. She writes about a woman who was shipwrecked on an island for years, if I remember correctly. She too sewed. It mapped out her day, gave it form. What did she sew?

Time to work. Enough. What is it that Goethe, there is power in beginning?

I’ve just spoken to her. She isn’t well. Her voice sounded faint, quavery, scared.

I’ve been sick, she says, and I have this pain in my back. I thought my kidneys would be better, they’re not. Sorry for being such a moaner. You are no moaner, I reply. You handle it all with such fortitude, such grace. All you want is for your energy to return, that is all. I am sorry. What can I do? Is there something sinister going on. Her daughter has stayed home from work so that she can take her to the doctor’s. Usually you can’t get an appointment on the day, she says. I’ve been lucky, I’ve got one for ten o’clock. I make my excuses and ring off. I am so sorry. Sorry that she is scared.

I’d forgotten to take my phone to bed with me. He left it in on the stairs for me so I missed the alarm. I overslept. Only by ten minutes but it throws me. He was doing what he thought was best. I didn’t want to wake you, he said. I know. He is kind. Next time please do. I heard the alarm in the end. Waking from a dream where a woman’s phone had burst into flames. She and her husband were supposed to be looking after me but she was utterly distracted by the phone. Then later, again when she was supposed to be caring for me, I had to ask her for help. I was hurt. Can I have a hot drink? I asked her in the end. I was hungry too and ate a dry English Muffin. I can remember the taste of warm, rather bland dough in my mouth. Does one usually taste food in dreams? I was in an art school of some sort and had to choose whether to climb up some circular, fire-exit-style iron stairs up to the studio, or stay on the level I was already on. I went up. Ellen can’t buy the tiny buttons she wants, said a tutor. I don’t want to buy them, I wanted to interject, I make them. Two girls were sitting on high stools working on costumes on mannequins. They were making trousers. I can’t touch them, one of them said. All I remember is feeling of neglected, of being out of sorts, a little lost.

I can’t get things clean enough. Marks everywhere. I want spotless and have to settle for tarnished, marked. His blood didn’t come off the sheets. He doesn’t mind. It doesn’t matter to me, he says. I want white. Pure white. Apparently Barbara Streisand always has a new toilet put in whenever she stays at a hotel. Am I that fastidious? I’d like to be. Jenny Diski had a pure white bedroom. How is that?

The sun is out. The cleaning has been done. Jeans and books bagged up for Oxfam. I like this sloughing off. Will I want these things, will I miss them? No. Let them go. I hope she will be OK. Is it the infection in her hip? Keep her safe. Let her be well.