Author: Ellen Bell

I remember it looked marvellous in the television advert. The family playing it looked so happy. Two kids, a mother and a father, all playing it together. And the thing itself shone with perfect newness. I wanted one so much. I wanted that happiness, that familial accord. And there it was under the tree. I could tell by rattling it that it was what I’d asked for. Under the wrapping the box looked smaller than the one in the advertisement. But I knew that I wouldn’t be disappointed. I had one. They had bought one for me. All would be well. All that promise would be mine. Now and always. Opening it on that Christmas Eve I was filled with joy. Here it was. Yes, small and a little shoddier than it had looked on the small screen but nevertheless it was just like the picture.

But no one would play it with me. Not now, they’d said. Maybe later. And I couldn’t play it on my own, what would be the point. Mum and Dad never played it with me, not once. My sisters did, but only a few times. What happened to it? I think I kept it in the box most of the time. In my room. That first frisson of pleasure never to be repeated.

There were few people about this morning. Most of the students have migrated homeward. Their cars have gone from the Prom and from behind Alexandra Hall. I heard some girls laughing along Pier Street, but that was all. Lip Lickin’ Chicken was open and a few bodies hung around outside The Angel. Stragglers.

I called her. She took a little while to answer. A slightly querulous voice. Who’d be calling now? At this time. But she warmed up. I had to introduce myself. I remember. I remember now. We talked of Dad and her late husband and where she would spend Christmas. I made her laugh. She’s eating too many mince pies. Can I tell her I care? That we both do. That I cleave towards her softness, her lovingness. She talked of her son in Australia. He has depression. He called last week. It was his birthday. She wants to go and see him but is uncertain if she’d be welcome. I sent him money. I wanted to send them presents, something to open but I don’t know their sizes, what they like anymore. So much grief. We’ll visit, take you out to lunch. That would be nice. So nice. So nice.

I hope that this isn’t a disappointment to you, the letter said, and that you will keep writing.

I didn’t have to apply. I don’t have to do anything. He says it all the time. You don’t have to do anything. Anything. You don’t have to do it. So why do I? Especially when the nays, the rejections hit so hard. That’s what it’s all about, he says. All writers experience it. Gore Vidal was on the radio on Sunday morning, In the Psychiatrist’s Chair, and he kept talking about writers. Writers. His club. His milieu. Do I belong? Have I earned the right to call myself a writer? It took so long for me to call myself an artist. And now? I say it without a flinch. I don’t flinch. I know that I create. What if I just did it without judgement? Neither good or bad. It just is. I’m writing now, does that make me a writer? Always this need for outside validation. It won’t come like that. It has to happen within first. You write because you need to. You make because you need to. That is the first impulse, the first requirement. What comes after is a bonus. Making money from it, applause, reviews, acceptance, honour, whatever it is. It is the cherry not the cake. The cake has to be what is inside pushing to come out. I know my lack of confidence. I feel it is as a cold place inside, an empty place, an empty room. All that I don’t know, all that fear of being foolish, and yet there is this drive, this impetus to make, to create, to write. It is overwhelming.

Let’s just sit with the failure a while. A failure. Just a word. Fail. Sail. Hail. Just words. What have you learnt? I organised myself, made it real for myself. Made decisions. I saw the wobbling. Perhaps they picked that up too. And let’s face it, awards are not all they are cracked up to be. One is expected to jump through hoops, wear a strait-jacket. This way it remains mine. I hope you will continue writing. Will you be put off? No. He encourages. I think it is good. I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it. It’s the not finishing that hurts. So many ideas not yet realised. I have to do it, to make them tangible, manifest. I take a remedy and wait for the detachment.

I think about the two of them all the time. Are they sleeping? Taking rest. Is she still in pain? I wish I could do more. I wanted to help. Did she cry too? What does she feel? I miss her more than I can say.

There’s a tree on North Road full of starlings. I hear them through the dark. A shishing, a wishing, a chittering. A noisy tree. An animated tree. It’s near the eye clinic, just before I turn the corner. Are they a separate flock from the one under the Pier? Why have they chosen that tree? Are they just there at night? It is a weird sound, eerie. Such chattering. Getting ready for their murmuration.

Shopping done. I ask about her son’s play and her daughter’s nativity. She is proud. She promises to bring her discount card when we next come. A sweetheart. Does she do it for all her customers?

Off now, work soon. Keep safe my loves. x

What a time we’ve had. So much journeying. And it isn’t just the miles, its the spilling of emotion. Containing and spilling and processing. You overthink things, she says to me. And she’s right. I’d like to switch it off. It is to no purpose, it merely tenses me up. Like a guitar string, he said. Your heart is like a guitar string. Did he mean its beat or its pulse or the way it sounds? I knew what he meant when he said it, though. It is too tight, too strung up. I feel much. I felt much as I held her. Scared and overwhelmed. The tenderness of her, her wanting, her need for comfort to be made safe, fed. And then arriving at her house and my very same need being met. Candlelight, warmth, the smell of a cake freshly baked, soup and everything closed up against the dark. We got a little lost. We’ll I just forgot myself for a moment. I’ve walked that road so many times, how could I have forgotten? But it was nice to see the decorations. The city was resplendent. It’s because they complained last year that there weren’t enough lights, she said. They’ve made up for it this year. And she, that little one, her eyes wide open and staring at the Christmas tree. Those deep little pools. What have they seen? How is she making sense of it all? Just four days in this world. Four days and so much to get used to. We’re getting to know her, they both said. Both so tender with her. Watch those clips, he said, forcing me to peel off my dungarees. I hadn’t thought. I felt gauche, a little clumsy. He was being protective. His love, his babe. It is right that he is so. And I am glad of it. The TV on the whole time. Christmas hits. Mind-numbing jerking about in red and white. But a warm room. She in socks, so tired, spaced-out. Sorry, she said, I can’t make conversation. I don’t need you to. It’s alright. I just want to be here a little longer in this warm room with you and her. I knew she’d be a girl. It is apt. With lips like cherries, little rose-buds. She is in pain. She winces when she sits. He said she cried when I did. I don’t know. I don’t want to hurt her, unsettle her. All is well. A new life. A kitten of love. She snuffles against my neck. Trying to make sense. To find comfort. Such love, such helplessness.

Coffee after coffee. We seek the warmth, the comfort, the lift. Road after road. We must stop. I watch people. Families meeting up at the crossroads. Several generations. An elderly lady in a duffel coat. She is placed between her friends. She sits hunched over slightly, playing with her hands. She talks to herself, quietly. She’s got a little Alzheimer’s, he says. But her face brightens up when the young girl joins them. More and more relatives arrive. Chairs are moved. Musical chairs. A warm scene. And at another table, a little boy. He watched me and I watched him back. Flanked by his parents, I observed him talking to them. Always thinking, he took time to reply, measuring his responses. What was he, five, six? A big-eyed, earnest little boy. So self-contained and clearly so bright. And bullied at school, he said. No, I said.

I dreamt I was waiting for some kind of auction. It was in the countryside. I was to meet my sister there. He drove me. We passed a man in a low-slung sports car. He smiled at me. I entered the waiting room, my sister was just leaving. My sister yet she wasn’t. She was a red-head. Then a rather officious woman came over with a little pad. She wanted me to write down what I was looking for but all the pages were full with pencil scribblings. She was trying to find a blank page when I woke.

No decorations yet, next weekend I think. I’m not ready yet. Not quite.

I hope you sleep my loves. x

The wind was strong this morning. So strong that I couldn’t go down to the harbour. I clung to a lamp post for a while then gave up. A mass of gulls stood on the rocks, some bobbed in the water beneath the Pier. Along South Beach there were a bevy of oystercatchers. They hopped away as I approached. I like their call. Though in the wind, nothing could be heard but it. A howling, a raging. I went out in his coat again. Three layers of warmth. I felt snug. It smelt of him. A few taxis went back and forth but other than a cluster of students outside the Why Not? club there were few people about.

I thought it would have passed. My work is done. Deadlines met. And yet, there is still this anxiety. My niece posts the same on her Facebook page, videos, cartoon and a constant dialogue of her dealings with her inner turmoil. He doesn’t understand such confessional behaviour. I do. It’s a way of lancing the boil, getting it out, looking at it, articulating it. I wish I could see her. She isn’t coming to the do. A funny, sharp, passionate girl. I have so much affection for her. He says I’m not alone, that so many people suffer with it. Do they? Are we all worrying away about things we cannot control? All the while there is so much to be joyful for. Tomorrow for instance. I shall see her, them. I shall hold her. But it isn’t straightforward. There are so many unknowns. But you could just let it be what it is. Not try to interpret or anticipation how it will turn out. Let it be what it needs to be. He is sanguine. He is wise. Far wiser than I.

She was in today. The snow had thawed. What did you do? I asked. Played in the snow, she said. She seems happier. Lighter than of late.

It was good to see her. Such a beautiful woman. Gorgeous eyes. And she is so talented, snipping away even as she chats. She was so engrossed in telling me about it, that at times she’d down tools and perch on her stool. She wants it so much. I didn’t tell her. I had no need to do so. I am happy to listen to her life, her dreams. I like to her talk. It lulls me. I am emptied. My mind, for once, stilled.

Will it work? Will I expect too much? The sun came out this morning in a blaze. A custard yellow light, lighting up the houses on the hill. Deep, warm hues. The sky is blue. The wind is still a shock though.

I don’t really know what I am doing. I cut away and hope for the best. Neat and tidy bodgers, she used to call them, me, us. I wonder if she is still living. A rum one, that one. We’d see her walking into town along Chesterton Road, or on Jesus Green with that dog of hers who barked incessantly. Gruff. Hard to know, hard to like. Brusque. And yet. She told me once of an affair she had. What fun it was, she said. What fun.

She was born on Monday 11th December at 2.31 am in the morning. And weighing 7 lb 7 oz. I try to make it real in my head. I imagine the weight of her in my arms. Her tininess. I knew she’d be a girl. It was inevitable. The line continues. The flow of knowing. Familial. A kin. A kith and a kin. Hers. And she was mine. For a while. For a wee while. Will she look like her? Will she grow tall and long-legged as her? I want to wrap them both up in blankets in a never-to-be-scared-again blanket. For I remember the fear, the fear I felt for her. From the moment she came. From that moment. Nothing was ever the same again. He tells me she is in pain. A difficult birth. Poor love. Can I help? Can I soothe? I hope they are warm. I will see her soon. A quick flit. A stealing out to go and see them. Such a journey. Such a trek. I want the smell of her. The preciousness of her. To feel my place, if only for a short while. To take it. To savour. Congratulations, congratulations they all say. Is it for me to accept them? Is it my place? He is scornful, celebrates my rights. They are mine, he says. Mine to have. I am right. I am blood. But what do I deserve? I try to love the best I can, I always have. Society casts its shadow and I hide. I hide myself.

A flashing blue light down Llanbadarn Road as I returned. A police car, parked up by a van. The driver was standing on the road, there was another man in the passenger seat. No one spoke as I walked past. A stop check? A random check? Or something more sinister?

He isn’t coming back. I am sorry for that. I liked his presence. A light-hearted being, or so he seemed. He made me laugh. They’ve found more lesions on his brain, she told me yesterday. I am sorry. He is still so young. The other one. The girl. She will make a full recovery. Her father is with her in Cardiff. A loving family, I think. She will recover. A long fall. A life lesson.

There were a pair kissing as I passed by up the hill. A noisy kind of kissing. A show of kissing. I stepped out into the road to give them more privacy. Nicer that way. For all concerned. I don’t miss it, all that heat. The losing yourself in kind of heat. And then on the Prom sitting on the steps down to the beach, another couple. He was a big man, with a bald head. It was too dark to make her out. Perhaps she was a he? He was leaning into her/him, tired, lost or just sad.

A milder morning than of late and as a result more people about. I went round the back way. I had too much to do.

We took a quick detour yesterday before going to work to see the lights. It was lovely. It lifted us both. He tells me that they use a private company to do them all. It costs thousands. There were strings of lights across most of the roads and beads of lights in the trees. A spectacle. Gentle, mostly white, bluey-white lights. Lovely. Thank you. And thank you all for your Christmas trees, lit up in your front rooms. I really appreciate their joy. They bring me joy.

She is out there being so open. Going to quiz nights, carol concerts. An open heart. An open mind. Bring her home safe. Let me open a little too. Let this fear go free, disappear. Soon.

They call it a hard frost. And this morning it was everywhere. It glistens and glisters in the street and moonlight. A shimmering on every surface, car, pavement, bench and railing. I walk gingerly at first. It’s an age thing, this fear of falling. When I do these days I injure myself. It hurts, the bruises are vicious and the repairing time endless. So I walk with care. Be careful, sweetie, he calls as I leave the house. I will, I will. Our neighbour’s ninety-three-year-old mother refused his offer of an arm as she walked along the back path to meet her friends who were to take her to church. I have my stick, she said. An independent woman, she still walks into town everyday. A jaunty striped beret on her head. She is very deaf now. And her eyesight is failing. She loves our geraniums. She sees them every time she opens the front door. I can’t see them very well, she says, but they give me such pleasure. Her husband was a missionary and her five children had been born in Africa, India and other exotic places. In her fifties she decided to take up children’s book illustration and did pretty well churning out drawings of The Mabignogion. She is a force.

I saw a black mound as I walked towards The Pier Pressure nightclub. It looked liked a bin bag or a pile of plastic encased rubbish. As I neared it I saw it was a person’s back. Two people, a boy and girl were sitting on the ground facing each other. The girl had green hair and was saying, I don’t know like, what you feel like, but I feel like….. Earlier on Llanbadarn Road I’d seen a woman at the door of The Old Workshop, now a student house. She looked like she was talking into the door buzzer, or struggling with her key. Should I intervene? I thought as I walked past. Not wanting to at all. She swayed a little. Was she at the right house? Had she lost her key? Would she freeze out there all night? She didn’t appear distressed. There was a silence about her. When I returned she’d gone.

There was a walking figure ahead of me along the Prom towards the harbour. I hung back a little as I watched it, trying to weigh up whether to be wary of it not. It was tall. Man or woman? Slim, could be either. No, definitely a man. Drunk? No, not swaying. He is dressed for the weather, so mostly likely sensible. I pass him. He turns. A young man. No threat. Gentle face. Later I pass him again as I come round from the harbour. He is shining a torch. Definitely sensible.

I finished it. The second one came easier. The story was clearer. Though, as always in reviews you cannot say all you want to say. There just isn’t the room. I hope she is satisfied with it. He pushes me. Challenges me to cut things out I cling to. He is so often right. It takes courage to push me so. And I am glad of it. I want to learn, to do the best I can. I am so grateful, for so many things. I cannot begin to list them all. But for his love, most of all. Most of all.

I think of her. Keep her safe. Keep them both safe, all three. A young family. Let there be peace.

It was beautiful when it came. It makes the world still. The soft purity of the flakes, dropping so gracefully to earth. Then one turns on the news and all is chaos. We push against such calmness. We must still do what we intend to do. Pushing, clamouring to keep on rushing ahead. We cannot let it stop. Just stop. It is too frightening. Too alarming.

She’s been snowed in as expected and another manager was in her place at the till. I like this one too. A different kettle of fish. Rather brusque, matter-of-fact. A good-time-girl, well not really, more like a hockey/football player good-time-girl. One of the girls, one of the lads/girls. She is down-to-earth, salt-of-the-earth. I like her. She goes to the Costa del Sol with her mates but her skin is too fair for the sun. Her hair, cut short, is downy and fine. Today she, like most of the other staff who were in at that ungodly hour, was wearing the now obligatory Christmas jumper. It had a snowman on the front with a real scarf that you could actually tie. Another member of staff had on a pixie top, or a Santa’s elf, I suppose, and even one of the higher management had one on. I noticed a new girl. She was sorting out the advent calendars. She too had one on, a green one with an array of baubles appliqued onto it. She looked shy, separate. A refugee perhaps, she looked Somalian. The one on the till said that she’d had to borrow her father’s gloves. Do you think she lives with her father? I asked him in the car. Yes, I do, he said. It changes the picture and I start stories in my head. Is she a carer? Has her mother died? Or does she live with both her parents. She must be what, forty or maybe late thirties? Perhaps she can’t afford a mortgage, her own home on these wages. She has a air of comfort, of ease, of almost self-satisfaction about her. I’ve met many like her, it isn’t real. The bluff is a way of managing.

Ruth Rendell was on the radio yesterday. On In the Psychiatrist’s Chair. I feel and inordinate amount of anxiety about being late, she said. Yes. I understand that. I feel an inordinate amount of anxiety about everything. I started the piece, felt better for a time before the doubts started to come in. Was it good enough, was it erudite enough, was it deep enough? You can only do what you can do, he says. You can only know what you can know. You’re not a poetry scholar. I know. I know. I lay in bed last night trying out rewrites. A mistake. It played into my dreams. Summoning up weird scenes of actors in Nazi costumes on floats driving in a cavalcade. A madness. I must learn to switch it off. Let it be. I have time. And it always gets better, well mostly, when I return to it.

So comes the quiet time. Work dries up and it is time to hibernate. Well, we shall when we have made that one journey, well two. I want to see her. I want to be there when it is just new. To see, smell and touch its newness. Can it be so?

I woke from a dream at about 12 pm needing a pee. When I returned to my bed I tried to commit it to memory. He and I were in a garage waiting. Waiting for our car to be serviced, waiting for to buy a new car, who knows? He was doing his usual thing. He knew everyone and was buzzing around chatting and passing the time of day. I began to get irritated, feeling left out and abandoned. He came back to me at some point and when I remonstrated about him spending so much time talking to one of the girls in the office, he said, she’s not middle class like you, meaning she had problems that I didn’t have and required his help. I understood and celebrated his kindness even though I was cross. However, knowing I had a teacher training course to attend in Oxford I left without him, after looking everywhere for my bag. I found it and started to walk. I walked out into a sunny day up and hill relishing the idea of going off on my journey on my own. There was a signpost which I read that said ‘The Cliffs’. I understood it to mean a neighbourhood rather than literally ‘cliffs’. The path through the grass reminded me of those in Cambridge that divide up Christ’s Pieces. That’s when I woke. Then when I returned to sleep I was with him in the garage once more.

Have you ever done that? Returned to a dream you’d woken from? I can’t remember ever having done so. This time it was the beginning of the working day. People were arriving at their desks. Most rather grumpy. I tried to make a joke and asked one of the lads if he could cut my hair too? (In the dream this made sense to me, though he looked rather quizzical.) Then I heard a woman talking in a back office. I think she was on the phone ordering some dried blueberries. She wanted some dried blueberries from Edinburgh for her wedding dress. She eventually came and joined us in the waiting room holding a punnet of berries. She was still talking about her dress, how it was to have other fruit ornamentation and a fox draped across it.

Telling him my dreams makes him laugh. Where’s the symbolism in that? he taunts. Come on, come on, eh, eh? I like to make him laugh. It’s good for me too. Too tense yesterday. So much so that it has brought back the rash on my wrists. Angry wheals. It will pass, it always does, he says. I just need to face it, sit down with it and write it. Soon. Just offload first. It’s good to do. It makes writing less high falutin’.

Relentless rain this morning. I borrowed his coat. I felt cocooned, oblivious to all around me. Which is a little unsettling, especially when crossing the road. I couldn’t judge the speed of the train of taxi shooting past in the wet. (I saw a woman walking towards me along Llanbadarn Road, as she neared I could see that it was one of my colleagues from work. She didn’t know me, swathed as I was in his coat, so I let her walk by. So late. Had she been on their Christmas party and stayed out? ) I walked past Bodalwyn House’s decorated window, I saw stars and Christmas trees this time.

A lad crashes out of The Pier Pressure nightclub, falling and stumbling. Several people laugh. In response he kicks out at some barriers. He just keeps kicking and kicking. Maniacal behaviour. My hackles raise and I walk quicker. It is all speeded up. A girl running barefoot in the rain, a man calling after her and running too. Another hunched over a bench. The stick of starling guano. A brackish, salty metallic stench in the rain. Cold rain. On and on, soaking me. Pitter, patter on my hood.

Yesterday, after the rain and sleet that lashed our windows a strange light. A sky that turned the roofs of the houses beneath Cae Melin a steely blue.

Our neighbour was at his window when I returned, enjoying his last fag before bed. I see him as I walk up the stairs, the yellow of his bedroom light spilling out in the gloom. Sometimes I don’t want to speak but today I stopped. I didn’t think you’d be out in this, he said. Who is the more eccentric? I wonder. Me for my early morning walks or him for his late nights spent betting on his computer. At least that is what he thinks he does. We don’t know. I like him. A bright, rather reserved, man. A retired Science teacher, who’s travelled the world working, China, Austria and who now lives and cares for his ninety-three year old mother. He’s just been away holidaying in Gran Canaria. Was there sun? I asked enviously. Yes, he said, lots of it. We talk of Christmas. We do very little, I say. And you? His daughter and grandchild will join him and his mother. Will you cook? I ask. Yes, he says. Turkey and bread sauce and so on. The whole works, he said. The whole works.

The wind had dropped by this morning so I could walk the Prom. The weather forecast, however, had lied. It rained, snowed, sleeted and hailed. The air was bitterly cold. And I walked with my hands in my pockets to stop them from freezing. It impedes my striding though and I feel less steady when I do so. But the air cuts through my gloves, particularly when I turn the bend at the war memorial and head towards the harbour. There was lots of revellers out. Some without coats. And one girl, a tiny wee strip of thing, was in a sleeveless all-in-one shorts outfit. She stumbled about in giant platform soles. How can she not feel the cold? I would be blue and shivering. Is it the booze that makes them oblivious to bodily needs? Two people, a girl and boy, came out of The Pier Pressure nightclub wearing tinsel round their necks. Tinsel necklaces, one red the other gold. They sparkled under the streetlights, the wind making them scintillate.

An array of Christmas cards and decorations had been stuck on one of Bodalwyn Guest House’s two front windows. I stopped to look at them. They were all home-made, clearly by a child or children. There were cards, little santas with free moving legs and various other Christmas symbols. I recognised the ubiquitous use of sugar paper, cotton wool and glitter. They were charming, and were either recently made or had been treasured and preserved with loving care. Were they donations from the children or the house, or perhaps grandchildren? All the pretty bits of the decorations were stuck so that they faced the street, leaving the backsides to face inwards, into the living room, I presume. Is it their own, private living room or are such fare for the benefit of the guests too? I remember bringing back such things from school, days long before fridge magnets, and wondering what happened to them. They were never hung, never displayed. In those days you didn’t celebrate everything your child did. No paint encrusted offerings in the kitchen then. I was touched that someone had cherished this child’s drawings. It stopped me still. I breathed in delight.

There is joy still. For all the bleakness, there is a strata of joy that never leaves me. It can become obscured but it is always there. A trust. A faith. A certainty. It is beyond the workings of my mind, which at times I have to admit is a devil. I noticed from the newspaper that the Lord’s Prayer is going to be changed and the devil, not us, is to be held responsible for our sins. What is that about? Is he not an illusion, merely a trick of the light. It’s opposite. And are there really any sins? Ach, too philosophical for this time in the morning, and besides, what do I know? Nothing. Zilch. Talking about philosophical questions, I had a text from my niece last night asking me if I will ‘talk’ to one of her students about ‘what makes something art’. Glory be, where do you start? Of course. Of course, I will. I used to get loads of emails from students when I was making the paper works. There was no awe, just an expectation that you would deliver. Not so now. My work is too oblique for them these days. It’s gone beyond. And I am happy for it to have done so. All is right. All is well.

Work now and coffee. Onwards.

She was very chatty yesterday. It’s lovely to hear her being so cheerful. Her daughter has hung the lights outside the house. I asked if they were prepared for snow. Yes, she says, we’ve got enough for a week. You know, some tins, gluten-free flour and so on. Good. Keep cosy. Keep safe.

Enough. Two more pieces to go. Then done.

The chair looks lovely. Perfect whiteness. We were both edgy about getting it back in the house. So together and yet so separate. I want to save him such grief. Can I?

I get consumed with a feeling of such dread. It is the dark. The dark, the wind and the rain. It was lashing at the windows as I prepared breakfast. I knew I had to go out in it. In that. He’d offered me his coat. A kindness, certainly but he would need it later and it would get drenched. So I used mine and wore my waterproofs and gilet underneath. I felt mammoth, unable to bend. Once out in it it wasn’t so bad. It never is. I avoided the Prom. I had to. It was too much, the wind was too strong. So I walked through the shadows of the town, feeling oppressed and enclosed. I found more decorations, though. The Treehouse, our local health food shop and café had some beautiful lights on all three floors. A luminous white in the dark. Lovely. And there was another tree in a B&B that reflected its multi-coloured lights into the windows of the church across the road. A spilling of colour. I wasn’t alone. I thought I would be. There was a man skulking in a shop doorway out of the wind eating a turkey sandwich. Morning, I said. Morning, he mumbled back, his mouth full of food. Other figures passed me. Both with hoods over their heads. Who walks at such a time and in such weather? I am clearly not alone. I then walked up over the Buarth. It is poorly lit up there. It brings me down further. And then all the cleaning to do. Sometimes I set myself too much. Often when I am low like this. I challenge my sadness. You don’t have to do it, he says. Tell them you can do it. But I can’t, if I give in now I will never take on challenges again. I need it and yet I don’t. Hard to explain. Stay at home with me, he says, still sleepy and warm from his bed. I must go out, I say. I must. A compunction. The rain stung my face. Biting and sharp. I just need to sit with it. Know it, make it familiar. The fear is an illusion. I am writing now. Just write. That is all. The fear is that of being found wanting. And yet, all I can do is what I can do. I missed walking my whole hour this morning. Just three-quarters. I didn’t feel as pushed, as stretched and I’d missed the open space of the Prom, the sea. That stretching out to somewhere else. Winter will pass, I know it. And just now the sky outside my window is fantastic. Azure blue with creamy yellow clouds. She is soon to bring the chair. My chair that she has upholstered. God knows how we are going to get it up the stairs again. He isn’t as strong as he was and I’ve never been so. I write this as a stream of consciousness. To see. To see what comes out. Can you prune geraniums? Anna Massey read a short story on Monday. I love her voice. I miss her. She passed away this year or was it last year? Such a voice. Treacle. Beautiful. I can hear his key in the lock. I must away and call her. She wasn’t at home last week. Maybe she has snow. I hope she is safe. The daylight has come. All will be well.