Author: Ellen Bell

We had a tiff he and I. It rarely happens. The flashpoint, when it does happens, tends to be over something technical. We are both technophobes, scared of what we don’t understand. And we don’t understand technology. We get by. He with his iPad and iPhone and me with my laptop and current forays into film-making. It terrifies me. And the worst thing is I feel so stupid about it all. I believe he feels the same and it makes us squabble. This time it was over the DVD. We were watching the closing scenes of Andrew Davies’s adaptation of Pride and Prejudice before going to bed. We’ve seen it loads of times. Countless times, but for some reason, this and our last ‘screening’ of North & South, have been hugely enjoyable. You notice the nuances in the endless re-seeings. I like that. You can take time with it, go back, as we do, several times. Well, when we turned the DVD machine on the picture went green. I’d cleaned the house yesterday so the inevitable, you must’ve touched something, followed. I am so careful. Always. Anyway, I got up and fiddled about. Careful. Any good? Yes. Finally. But then the picture started to stick, just at the moment when Lady Catherine de Bourgh came to bawl out Elizabeth in the Bennet’s little paddock. Shall we just leave it and it may right itself? I asked. No, I’ll take it out and clean it, he said. He did so and then it wouldn’t read it. Whirr whirr went the machine. I think it’s bust, I said. No, it’s the disc. It keeps saying ‘error disc’. I try another and now it won’t open. In the end he accuses me of being silly. How that word gets under my skin. Am I ever silly? His mother used to say it. I would bite my lip, knowing her goodness and his tenderness towards her. Don’t call me silly. Just don’t. I go to bed in a huff. He comes in with a desultory kiss. Then I wake in the early hours and remember our discord. He feels it too and comes in a second later. Sorry. No, I’m sorry. We were just tired. Yes, we were. Two things kaput. First the tyre with a nail and now the DVD machine. What next?

He sent the film. I cannot say what I think of it. I like it’s simplicity. But what others will make of it, I don’t know. I cannot say. I just cannot. But it is made. I am fascinated by hands. Hands working. What is that about?

Another frosty morning. But now, at 9.15 the sun shines yellow and orange on the rooftops. He is at the chiropodist. How prosaic. He cannot feel his feet. Sometimes he loses his slipper under the table and doesn’t know for minutes. Poor love. He needs to have them tended regularly. He is seventy now. Sometimes I have to pinch myself. How I love him. How I love him. This much, this high, this big.

I did it. I wrenched it out of me. And it was fine. It usually is. All that worry exhausts me. You look so pretty, he said afterwards, now the strain has gone. We were sitting in the Arts Centre, me with a cup of coffee and he with some water. Come back at 10.45 he’d said. Go and have a cup of tea. Time goes so fast. I wanted to sit with him, bask in the relief of it. I did it. Well, he did it really. He set it all up. It was all ready when I arrived. We did it last night, he said. It took half and hour to set up. The camera, the monitor and a chair draped in black. Perfect. Three-quarters cordoned off with a screen. It was perfect, except that is for the cold. My hands barely worked. The sewing was crap but I loved watching my hands move on the screen. He did it. But I did it too. If organising it, conceiving it and doing it counts. We stood in his office watching him begin to edit it on his Mac. I wish I had your technical skill, I said. I taught myself, he said modestly. It’s about not being fearful, I suppose. It crashed. Even that didn’t throw him. He was sanguine. I know what you want now. So we left him too it.

I did it but I’m not sure how to judge it. Will it do? As an experiment in what is possible, certainly. Shall I enter it for the Open? I want to offer all three options. Again, that will be an experiment too. Can they see the possibilities? Are they Open at the Open? I’ve nothing to lose, except the £25 entry fee. It is all part of taking myself onwards. I’m making this mine, this funny new practice of mine.

I only managed to write one word in the fifteen minutes. Itself. That is all I managed and the even then the f was a bit dodgy. But it isn’t about the sewing. It isn’t about the craft. It is about the doing of it. And that, at least to me, looked beautiful. Disembodied hands. Articulating. Creating. Writing. Forming. Reading.

A frosty morning. It glittered on the road and paths. Do you have snow? I asked her as she gently placed my apples on the counter. No, though they are promising sleet showers at Devil’s Bridge on Monday. She tells me her cottage is cold. We’ve only got storage heaters. We just use blankets, she says and laughs. I hate being cold, he said this morning. I know. I know my love. The flat is artic at times. Bryan, our draught excluder-cum-dachshund, doesn’t. Draught exclude, that is. Come on Bry, he says as we stand in the hallway putting on shoes, buck up. Now the sun shines. A beautiful day, despite the cold. She said she is going to take her little daughter to the pantomime. Cinderella. Her son and her husband will stay at home. A boy’s night in, she says, with a curry. They sound such a nice family. I cleave to her, and her, and her.

Despite the cold there were several people about this morning. Girls mostly. Students probably. Last minute exam nerves? We saw lots of them yesterday in the canteen. Foreign students doing their last minute cramming. One, a Chinese girl, mouthed the sentences as she read. Shorty John does that when he reads, he said later at supper. That’s OK, I reply, sometimes that’s the way some people learn. Yeh, he said, but he’s nearly eighty.

I saw one man at 3.30 am this morning smoking outside the King’s Hall. He had on a woolly hat, trainers, tracksuit bottoms and a navy towelling dressing gown.

They’re featuring an abridged version of Colin Thurbron’s (is that how you spell his name?) travel book about Siberia. What stunning writing. It stops me still. This morning he was writing about how the fifty years of atheism in Russia has virtually been forgotten. Faith is rife. It delights and warms them. We had icons in our home, one of his interviewees, now a priest, tells him. That’s how I know about our religion. It was never forgotten. Never lost.

I dreamt of her last night. I’d met her at a station. A big, cavernous affair. We talked, walked, looked at food halls (one had wine made from tuna fish, what is that about?). I asked about her daughters, her book (though my questions about the book prompted questions from her, did she know that I hadn’t read it yet?). She was dismissive of her achievements, made getting a Leverhulme grant sound like a nothing. Then she asked me.

What I don’t understand is, what you have come for?

Do other people feel like this? This bleakness, this closed-in sensation? The darkness comes down over me like a shroud. I do what I can to defeat it. I light candles, I keep busy, I hug water bottles, wear big jumpers. Anything that is cosy, warming, softening. He has gone back to bed. I could do that, god knows I hate to leave it when my alarm goes off. But doing seems to be what I need to do. To keep busy hoping that it will pass. That this gloom, this ever-descending bleakness will pass. I walk out into it. It is hard to do that. Every cell in my body shouts out against it, don’t do it, stay in, stay warm, stay in the light. I often dream that my torch doesn’t work. That it’s beam won’t come on. It is never as bad then. Always worse in prospect. How like life. Walking into it makes it manageable. Then I become scared of what awaits me on my return, what the daylight will bring. What is it that is bringing this anxiety? Is it merely symptoms of SAD or the menopause perhaps? Or is it some deeper ennui?

Doing something new. I’m doing something new today and I’m completely out of my comfort zone. And having to rely on another. I cannot direct, cannot take charge, I have to acquiesce, to give in. It doesn’t come naturally. He is gruff, cross at times but I can manage that. I like him for all that. We’ll see. I trust him too.

I asked about her burn. She rolled back her sleeve. A nasty one. I felt it. I felt the heat of it, the sting of it in the pit of my stomach. She doesn’t rattle on as she did. She is calmer with us, with me especially. Respectful. I like her. She warms me, makes me feel wrapped up, cossetted. She is the kind of woman, mother who makes everything all right. And she loves her husband. My Gareth she calls him. He started her car for her so that it was all warm and cosy for when she got in. Everyone needs a Gareth, I said. Yeh, she said, he’s terrific. She is dismissive about her burn. Mind you, you should’ve heard me, she said. It was New Year’s Day. I wanted to do the same meal I’d done for one son, for the other. It was alright, I put Vaseline on it. She has big arms. Farmer’s wife arms. Everything is just so behind the counter. She is proud of her neatness, her order. A worker. She works hard. Is open. And loving. I can see that.

I fret and fret when I am bleak like this. How to be, how to behave with strangers. They wanted to cancel the booking because I wasn’t available for the next guest. It didn’t feel right, I stood my ground. Have I alienated them? I need to trust, all will be well. What is for me will come to me. Always. Always. Let it go. Breathe and let it go. Give the day over, be present but detached. So easy to write, not so easy to put into practice.

A man walked across the road from me. He, like me, seemed without purpose, a stroller. An early morning perambulator. I had my music on and watched the forecourt attendant in the 24 hour garage shout a greeting to a customer. I couldn’t hear the words. He was mopping the floor at the same time. Sometimes the music makes me feel separated. But I have it low. I could still hear the birds. The blackbirds. The robins. They were all in full song.

There is a hard frost this morning. It is on the road, on the pavement, a shimmering glister of slipperiness. I walk gingerly. A result of ageing, that vulnerability, the one that does all it can to stop the body falling. All that time taken up repairing, it takes too long. It is beautiful though and makes up for the loss of the Christmas lights. There is nothing to see in people’s windows, they are all gone. All that cheer. Just January and her bleakness and cold. The cold is strange this morning. There is warm air too. It smells sweet, like gas. Is there a gas leak in town? It doesn’t smell like it used to. They changed it. It used to be odourless, I think. Until people started gassing themselves in their ovens. Just like Sylvia Plath. Was it like going to sleep? She put blankets up against the doors to protect her children from it. How desperate. Poor love. To get to the stage where there is nothing. You can’t see anything worth staying for. Leaving. Leaving it all. So the air was sweet, first along the North Prom then down towards the harbour. It smelt like chocolate. Was someone baking cakes or biscuits at three in the morning? Some people believe that spirits conjure up smells. I read some where that someone kept smelling fried onions, or is that from fiction? Was it the ghost in It’s a Wonderful Life? Was a spirit haunting the Prom? Where was the warmth coming from?

Sometimes I don’t want to listen to things I see on the radio listings. I think I want one particular thing and then another offers itself. I think about doing a piece of writing/sewing where I just list what I listen to while I work. Anyway, I didn’t want to listen to the biography of Muriel Spark and then I did. It was great. A Vital Spark. The author writes about visiting her in Italy. She was famously impractical and moved in with her friend Penny, a sculptor who did everything for her, housework, cooking and typing manuscripts. ‘Writers are only half there’, she said. Am I less of a writer, artist because I do the other too? It is a perpetual question. The myth is of the obsessive, the one who writes/makes through the night eschewing food and sleep for the great work. I am too regular for that. I like my rhythm, I like a neat house, order. And yet, she was fascinating to listen to. A liver of life, certainly. And we had our leaving in common. I tried to do the best I could with my son, she said. Yes. A vital spark. Yes. That is good.

I am so edgy about tomorrow. So uncomfortable with the not knowing. The clumsiness of having to put myself in someone else’s hands. All will be well, at least it will be what it will be. Let it go. Let it become what it can and will be. Trust. That is all you can do, just trust.

The wind is bitter. An east wind that blows low along the ground. I watched it catch up a plastic bag. It had been lurking around a bin in the Castle playground. Then all of a sudden it was raised aloft, high into the air. It danced, dived and turned around and around before dropping hard to the ground. I stood for a moment by the hydrangeas, listening for their rustle before another bag, a transparent one, crashed sharply against the edge of the trimmed lawn. The wind stirs up the flotsam. It makes the ground white with cold. Dry with cold. The cold dry.

We were the first to arrive at the supermarket. The shelves were still bare. Shelf stackers stood in huddles unpacking vegetables and fruit. They talked of football and rugby. A restricted code of players names and tactics. Another language. Male talk. Male banter. This cold saps one’s strength, one’s resolve and desire to do anything but stay in, hot water bottle on the lap. But it is done. All unpacked and done. I like the routine of our week. The taking care of it all. Lists made, meals planned and then this glorious space in which to work.

I will write it. I will write it for me. I think about who I am writing it to. Myself, obviously but who is the reader. I write for him and for her, though I suspect she’d never want to read it. How would I have felt if my mother had done something so confessional? Would I have jumped at the chance to know her better? I believe I would. She revealed so little. I don’t know whether she was introspective. It wasn’t comfortable for her to be so, I suspect, as it wasn’t for him. I am not like my parents, I never have been. I am grateful for them. They have been the means of this experience of life for me. The conduit. Can I let them go now? Now that they are gone. Can I let go of the desire to please them? It is futile. A waste of energy. I think about where they are, and indeed who they are. I think their ties to us were slight, in life as in death. I am glad. I like to be free.

I wanted sunlight yesterday. It shone so warmly, a red light on the roofs. But when I went out into it it was cold. I leant against our car and closed my eyes. I let it touch my face willing it to warm me. I wanted to do so much, to walk, to stride out and yet I also wanted to sleep, to lose myself into unconsciousness.

My dreams have eluded me the last few days. I like to remember them. I get a sense of spaces, of how spaces feel but the details have been lost. One came back to me as I walked yesterday. An image of South Marine Terrace with all the houses shot through by Storm Eleanor. Their walls were punctured and stuffed with a cotton wool-like substance. Did it unsettle me? I don’t think so. The damage was being dealt with. Everything was a little surreal, even in the dream.

I think about her as a mother. She is so capable, so steady, a changed girl. I am so proud of her. Such a gift.

It is ten past six in the morning and her lighted window is the only one I can see in the darkness. As in a Hopper painting, what I can see through her window provides a narrative of her life. I’ve seen her many times, awake like me, in the early hours. I imagine her to be a nurse. There is something no-nonsense yet bustling-busy about her. She is a rounded woman with bright scarlet hair that has been scooped up into a bun. This morning her ample body is swaddled in a white toweling dressing gown. She seems to be talking to someone sitting at the other end of the kitchen, by another window that is curtained off. She stands over a table chopping or preparing something. It is a cluttered room. As is what I can only imagine to be her bedroom where the shut curtain drapes over several piles of books haphazardly placed on the windowsill. I like to watch other people’s lives. I find it immensely restful. Just to observe, not participate.

Town is still quiet. My walk was lovely. Chilly, certainly, but not as dire as they’d forecast. My hands didn’t sting and the wind was nothing. There was a girl outside Pier Pressure shouting. I couldn’t make it out at all. Just a stream of swear words but lyrically linked. Was she Irish? And I fuckin’ did an’ I fuckin’ said an’ he said an’ I said will you fuckin’ listen an’ he said……A man was standing before her trying to calm her down, another was just staring. She was a tiny thing, wiry. There was almost an insanity to her. Is it just booze? Does she need help?

I thought as I walked. I need to let go of it all. All this worldly stuff, this constant seeking. The achieving of them, those goals, makes no earthly difference to my state of mind. Nothing does and nothing will. Ever. It is merely gratification, empty. That candy floss again. He wrote about sitting on a park bench for days and months, just staring. How attractive that sounds. Not because I long to be lazy but for its potential for opening up, shedding and getting to the nub of it all. She said that the course will culminate in a day of silence. How will that be? I want to be able to do it on my own. I try to do without stimulation, that great avoiding. I walked sans music today. I am in silence still. Four hours of silence. Of being alone. And yet, I’m not, not really. We talked about that lady for whom the ambulance was late. She died alone. She must’ve been so scared, he said. But they were devastated. Of course they were, it is their job to save, to make better, to provide succour. They let her down. They left her to die alone. She told me that her friends mother insisted that she wanted her own way. To be left alone. I was on my way to my mother. She died before I got there. An hour, that’s all. Would she have preferred it? The final goodbye spoken to the wall. Did she think of what she was leaving behind?

I am a little anxious about Wednesday. It is all new to me. Do I ask too much, will it be possible to produce something professional? All I can do is wait and see. And ask for help.

I must leave it now. I am rather like a terrier, I always want things done. Done and dusted.

I send her love. My love, longing for sleep. I remember the weight of it all. And he, he too needs sleep. Let it be so.

I regard her as a gift. Not just for the love and awe her tiny little form excites in me but for the way in which she has brought her mother and I closer. At least it feels that way to me. I sat with the phone held close to my ear relishing every breath, every pause. For a moment I lost my self-consciousness with her. We just talked. It was prosaic stuff, of no real import, but there was a naturalness, an ease between us that was manna to my heart.

She rang you back, he kept saying. She rang you back. She saw who’d called and she rang you back. She wanted to speak to you. Yes, I said, she did. I think of all those mothers I interviewed, the life coach in particular, with her tears coming in great wracking, noisy, boo-hooing sobs. She wanted to know her grandchild. Her daughter had informed her by email of his birth, had sent her a few snaps but held complete control as to when or indeed if she would be allowed to meet him. I stood outside of her pain, watched and tried to make sense of what it was that grieved her the most. Not being ‘normal’? A normal grandparent in the eyes of the world. Was that it? Or was there genuine pain at not being able to interact with the child of her blood. It was so hard to decide without asking her directly. We all feel differently. I am detached. I know this. It makes it all bearable. The grieving was impossible to live with. It had to stop. There is glass between us. Until, that is, she is in my sight. And now it is the two of them. They are of me. It is that simple. No one can take that away from you, he says, no one. Does it matter? Does this blood-ownership matter? It’s an ego thing, this needing to matter to another. She has so many who care for her, and I am glad of that. I want her to be safe, to be protected, guided and loved. I ask no more. I am a child when I do. And that is not her problem. She has done nothing wrong. Have I? I cannot say. She won’t tell me. I did the best I could. That is all. That is all.

I asked her. I plucked up the courage and asked her. She seemed delighted, he said afterwards. He’s right, she did light up. I touched her arm. I don’t know yet what it will bring. All I know is I need this interaction with real human beings. I want to hear their stories. Record and work with them. It is about the ordinary, at least as it seems on the outside but I want to find the extraordinary, to show the uniqueness, the idiosyncrasies.

Town is still quiet. Hardly any wind this morning but the air was chill. I felt the difference on my face, though it was not unpleasant. She replied saying, yes, you must come and stay. We will walk by the river. I am touched. I want to see friends this year. To stay with them, be in their sight for a little while. To connect, E. M. Forster wrote. And to see the two of them. My two little girls. Soon. February she said. Soon.

I miss it when I don’t manage to write this each day. Not always uplifting, I nevertheless need this blurting out of thoughts. Town is still quiet in the mornings. The revelling is over. All is flat. Grey and flat. Sombre even.

And the sea, too has calmed down. The other day is was lashing over the Prom. It is an uneasy sensation watching it seemingly reclaiming the land; taking over, with its dirty, swirling mass. The shops along Terrace Road had their sand bags jammed up against their doors. It is a messy, murky business. The water is pernicious. It creeps in, seeps under, cold and muddy. We drove down Pier Street in time to catch one of the waves as it smacked hard against the Pier. A triumphant arc of durge capped with white foam, that flung itself high into the air before coming down hard and spilling along the pavement. People were out with their mobile phones held aloft. It is captivating, enthralling, like watching a lion hunt a wildebeest, you want to stop it, stop it happening but you are transfixed by the terrible inevitability of it. It is so much more than we are, thank God.

We’d planned it for days. A little respite. A seminar. A talking through of my proposal. Should we ring to check? No, he said, I’ve looked on their website and there’s nothing there about them being closed. But as we climbed the drive it didn’t look good. There were great lines of muddy tyre marks along the tarmac and part of the front entrance was cordoned off. Sorry for any inconvenience, stated the sign, while we’re building two new luxury self-catering chalets. There’s a note on the door, he said, you stay here. Shut, he said on his return. Shut till January 14. It’s the second time this has happened. Can you blame them? Not really. They want a break. Christmas must be so demanding. But I wanted the comfort of their sofas, their tea in metal pots where the handle gets hot. I wanted the white linen on the tray. I wanted that stultifying silence. I wanted to see which puzzle one of the guests had started and to talk, talk to him about my ideas. We were thrown. Do we just drive straight home? Or find somewhere else? We decided to stay and parked the car in a small car park round the corner from an inn we’d been to before. The last time was terrible. It was almost the end for us. Both at the end of our tether. Grief, uncertainty, I cannot speak on his behalf. I’d come back from Norway empty. His mother was teetering towards death and he was just as lost. We couldn’t talk it through, make any sense of it.

I’m glad we went in. It was empty except for two men sharing tea and scones in the window. We pushed through into the public bar. A small wood fire was trying to burn. The cleaner’s tray was still one of the tables. She had a bob of shining black hair and was singing. You’re singing, he said. Oh, don’t mine me, she said laughing, I’m just the cleaner. We shared tea and water. I put on the tape recorder and we laughed as every possible extraneous noise began to happen. The main telephone rang and the man behind the bar answered it, all very loudly. Then his phone went, it was a woman from Planet Organic ringing about his enquiry for Jason Mouthwash. This took at least five minutes. Ten minutes later another woman from the same firm called back. Just confirming your order, she said. Then our tea arrived. A jingle jangle of  pots. Water? Oh, the man replied, it’s just coming. Then he had to reignite the fire. If I can just squeeze by? he said. I was sitting right on top of it. Nevertheless progress was made. You’ll have to make it more coherent than that, he said, looking serious. I have to tell you what I think, be tough. Yes, you do and I love you for it.

I’ll get there. My mind is working on it. I want it. But mostly I want to do myself and ideas justice. That is all I can do, the best I can do. Always.

The pub smelt beautiful. It smelt of wood smoke and wood polish. I’m glad we went. Glad we went back. Thank you. Thank you for everything.

It was enough. It was enough to get me panicking. Is it a wart? That spot on my forehead? That spot on my forehead that refuses to disappear. I felt queasy at the thought, assailed by folkloric images of witches, hags and gnarled fingered wise-women. I tried to be sanguine. They happen. They are just a part of getting older. It’ll go. Put some stuff on it. Which I do, only to then read that it should not be used on the face. I then try to peel the it off. I succeed eventually and am left with a bleeding circle. A perfect circle on my forehead. Like the red sequins that Asian women attach to their forehead, their third eye. Is it a red sequin (I always thought it was) or is it a spot red henna or cochineal? Now it looks like a spot, he said triumphantly. And it’s just what I would’ve done. So there we are. No closer to the truth. The scab which eventually replaced the bleeding was still there this morning. A spot or a wart? Who knows?

We always approach the supermarket shop, twice weekly, separately, with separately trolleys and separate lists. It’s faster that way and wandering around one pushing the trolley one giving directions used to make me feel a little uncomfortable. Memories of childhood and shopping with my mother perhaps? I’d finished before him on Monday and I spied him at the other end of the shop talking to the cleaner. Apparently he too had had a cold. Couldn’t do a thing, he told him. No energy, no energy. Shame he couldn’t take the time off. He was laughing when he got into the car. Do you know what he said when I asked him how he was, he asked. No, I replied. I ‘ate January, he said. I ‘ate January, he repeated. And before I could reply, he said, and I ‘ate February too.

I haven’t made my resolutions yet. I haven’t felt inspired to do so. There is too much I want to change and that concerns me. And yet, I know in my heart of hearts it isn’t about external change but internal. A small tweak and all will feel better. It is just these low dragging spirits. The dark. The endless dark. See, it’s past eight am and it is still dark. And yet, I know that it isn’t personal. The darkness has its place too. I need to cease judging, weighing up good against bad, just let it be what it is.

Anyway back to resolutions.

(1) to accept what is. That’s a big one but instrumental in achieving the second.

(2) to be content.

(3) to pay attention and

(4) whatever else be kind.

I could flesh them out with all those little details I obsess over. But essentially that is it. That is my promise for 2018. Begin today. So I shall accept the wind (which is still howling), my spot/wart, my cold (though it is improving), my jaded spirits, my wobbliness over my work, the dark and all the precious gifts that this life of mine brings. By accepting all those things, which I shall judge as neither good or bad, I will be content. My back won’t stiffen, I will breathe steadily and calmly and I will smile. I shall pay attention to every job that I do today. Whether it is intellectual, practical or domestic, each will share equal weight in my attention. I will watch myself doing things, paying attention to my hands as they type, as they prepare food, or clean or hang out the washing. I will feel my inner body as I move, as I breathe, aware of every breath and the absolute miracle of it. I will taste food as I’ve never tasted it before. And I shall be kind. Kind in thought, word and deed. Letting the negative and unkind thoughts and actions that come unbidden float away unacknowledged. That is my work. This is my work. All else is inconsequential.

The morning tries to break. The second wash is done. He lies abed resting. All is well. Thank you.

I didn’t walk this morning. I feel rather bereft, strange, as if something has been lost. A moment. That coldness on my face. Bearing witness to another kind of life. The night time life. The dark.

He insisted. You’re not going out, he said. It won’t hurt. Just once. Though he is threatening the same stricture for tomorrow. Not in that wind, he said. You’re not. It’s a play. A playful bullying, born out of kindness. I know this. And I know that I sometimes need to be cajoled into obeying.

Virgo are rigid, I read yesterday as I glanced over some internet astrology sites. Stuff and nonsense, I know. And I stopped myself reading before I went too far. I used to enjoy it all that prediction stuff. I wanted to know the future, to know that something marvellous was on the horizon. You see, all that romanticism that is bound to failure. It doesn’t work that way, and nor should it. What is, is now. And that is all. All there is. I believe in pure astrology but it is the interpretation of it for the mass market that is rather dubious. I think this year will be significant for me, it is a multiplication of sevens after all, but the real significance will be internal not external. For that is the only true reality. The rest is like candy floss, of no fundamental substance.

Are we rigid? I don’t like to think so, but perhaps I am. Yes, I know I am. I need to do what I set out to do. To not stray from my course. And yet, to sleep as I did this morning for an extra three hours was so nice. I feel better for it. Going out into the dark at this time of the year is so hard. I know it isn’t the Arctic or down a pit, but the wind can be ferocious and the cold bitter. But I am cleansed, cleared out by doing so and I need to move.

This dis-ease externally is merely a reflection of what is going on internally. I welcome it. It excites reflection. One becomes intensely aware of one’s body. Its edges, its bones, its skin. Everything is felt, everything computed. Smells come intermittently, as if slightly delayed, and tastes are more about feel than flavour, hot is very hot, cold if very cold. And the shivering. Again a gift. One feels one’s vulnerability, one’s tenderness. And still I get this desire to solve, to re-address my issues with my work. To unravel it. To heal it as I heal myself.

My morning dream was so prosaic. I had to laugh. I was in an enormous M&S. He and I were due to take a journey, though he wasn’t with me then. I thought I would try to find a sandwich for him. A ham and mustard perhaps. But there had clearly been a run on the sandwiches. Almost all of them were gone. Women stood in my way so I couldn’t see what was what. I felt irritated and tried to redeem the situation by seeking out some yoghurt for myself. Again, nothing doing. Just ones with fruit in them. Then I found a seat and waited. My sister arrived and I stood up to greet her, thinking that she would be leaving with us. Oh, no, she said stretching out her hand to a woman sitting at the table next to me, I’ve still got a full day’s work to do. I’m her sister, I said also stretching out my hand. So I gathered, said the woman, offering me the wrong hand to shake. I then thought about a chest of drawers in the place that we were leaving. I’d imagined I could just take it with us without unpacking it. But I saw in my mind’s eye that it’s lower drawers were damaged and knew what I’d have to empty it and leave it behind. Besides, the things inside weren’t mine. Weren’t ours.

Prosaic yes, but revealing. Most revealing. I have much to do. Begin writing. What I don’t know. Just make a start and it will come. I avoid it. It’s like facing that white space and actually walking into it. A fearful act or an opportunity. Let’s see, eh?