Author: Ellen Bell

List one hundred things, she writes, one hundred things that you love. Gosh, where do you start? It’s not that easy, I’m hard-wired as a worrier, as scaredy-cat, thinking lovely things is new one for me. Make a start. Hyacinths, to be specific the scent of hyacinths, when the blooms have just begun to open. And Night-Scented Stocks. I love that smell too. And Sweet Peas. The colour of cornflowers. Fields of cornflowers and poppies. Porridge, not with milk but just with water, no salt but a sprinkling of nuts and seeds. Hot water bottles on my tummy as I write. My darling boy, my man, my love. My girl. The sun. The light in Italy, in Spain. See it isn’t so difficult. Stewed gooseberries, no sugar, still hot. Stewed blackcurrants. Clean, white cotton sheets. Grapefruit, big fat ones. Oranges, ditto. The smell of freshly cooked bread. The smell of freshly ground coffee beans – the ones in the Monmouth Coffee House most of all. Having my feet stroked by him. Deep tissue massage with the Brute. Sunshine on my face. Drinking Lapsang Souchong at that hotel, feet curled up on the sofa. Doing crosswords with him. Walnuts. Wasabi Kale crisps crumbled over my salad. Christmas carols. Brass bands. Walking on the Perygyl in the early morning lit by a full moon. Breakfast. Enough for now. I’m spent. There is more. It is interesting to see what seems like one’s priorities. Smells and tastes first. Smells first. I live by my nose. What did that reader say this morning on the radio about dogs’ noses? Did he say they had more than one? That doesn’t make sense – I was listening with half an ear. He did say they love all smells, putrid, fetid, rotten smell delight them. Walking past The Pelican Bakery this morning at 3.50 am they had their doors wide open. I tried to describe the smell to myself as I walked.

It doesn’t grab you first off. There is a delay. Then you are in it. A cloud, a thick cloud of yeasty warmth. Today there was an undertone of buttery-ness. There is salt, a moist scent of slightly off-milk. Sweetness. A sweetness like breast-milk. I am filled up by it. It is my compensation. I don’t eat it but I can ingest it via my nose, my pores.

Three boys in the morning dark sitting on a wall. Geeky sorts. One quite large, his flesh rolling over his trousers, the other two small in height and thin. They are silent when I pass by, then the large one begins talking as if there had been merely a pause in their conversation. I’ve literally had my time, he says. The others do not reply.

Tired from our journey yesterday. So many homeless on the street of that city. They sit dull-eyed their hand outstretched holding a polystyrene cup aloft. What can we do? One man was fast asleep on the pavement, wedged between a wall and a fuse-box.

A rainbow family. Two women with their brood. A shared one? I couldn’t tell. A girl and boy of mixed race, a white girl and white baby boy. One of the women had a shaved head with a peppermint tuft of hair at the front. She wore pink Doc Marten boots and a heavy leather jacket. She held the baby boy with such tenderness. Outside the café window I watched a Chinese woman and her white male partner and their child. More rainbows. It heartens me to see. We drove round and round entering bus lanes by mistake. Will they fine us? It’s happened before. Alarming. There seemed like there were no exits. The city would not let us go. We ate lunch in the hotel I worked in over twenty years ago. That same drudge-ness, service was slow, uninterested. They’re eyes only lighting up when it is time to pay the bill. Three floors up, I sat and watched people at the bus stop below.  Glad to return home. Weary. But what a joy to see her. The warmth of her friendship lifts me, nourishes me.

Chores done. Amen to that.

I bring so much fear to the making of my work, whether it is art or writing. Sometimes it completely floors me. This dread. This heavy, stomach churning dread. What is it? What is it that I am frightened of? This is my work, my story, my tale. I do it alone, in a safe, private space. And yet, the demons, the frightening ones follow me in here. Not just in here, in my studio, but into my head. So this is what I shall do. I shall write them out. Here on this page. Everyday, 500 words. Writing out. A purging before the real work is to be done. And yet, this is work. This is as real as the other. Perhaps a distinction need not be made. Is it safe to write it out here? This is a public space. Yes. I believe so. It’s rather like my performances. I am in public, in a public space and yet I am also invisible. Made invisible by the nature of what I am doing. Claws retracted. Domesticated, made tame.

No Donnie-don this year, he says as we walk the Perygyl, I wonder why. Donnie-don or Donnie-doris. Our name, his name for the dolphins we usually see out at sea in Cardigan Bay. Perhaps it has been too cold, I say, or the fish haven’t come. Who knows? Who knows? I register his disappointment and indeed, mine. It is glorious to see them. (If indeed they are dolphins, might they be porpoises? The dead one I found on the beach a year or so back was definitely a porpoise.) They make one feel light, joyous, connected to something larger, important.

A very large spider scurried about by the front door as I stooped to put on my walking boots this morning. I shuddered but found myself talking to it. It eased my panic. Might I be ugly to him too?

She mentions them every time I see her, he says. He’s talking about the geraniums and Margaret. Margaret our ninety-year-old neighbour. She sees them each day when she goes out of her front door. They have blossomed, bloomed. I am inordinately proud of them. You’ve done it, he said. It’s your nurturing. I just hit and hope, I say. As I have done with both gardens. The first in Cambridge, the second in Truro. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. One year the sweet peas came. Glorious by the kitchen door. Inhaling the scent, the sweetness. Then in Truro, nothing. Not a sign. The rhubarb was abundant though, and the lavender. I want to be good at it. To take care.

Each morning I check the B&Bs. Mostly still vacancies, though yesterday Yr Hafod and Shoreline were full. That’s nice. I am pleased for them. The rain has kept people away. It has been too relentless. And the wind. The Prom flags are ripped ragged by it. In shreds. Do they replace them each year? Who makes them?

I listened to The Moth Radio Hour yesterday for a full three hours. It was a toss up between that and Little Dorrit. I’ve heard LD before so I went for the Moth. Such wonderful stories. And told by real people with all their ums and ahs and hesitating emotion. One particularly struck me told by Jona L a writer. He wanted to talk about his shame over a mis-quote in his book about Bob Dylan. He was  publically castigated, lost his job and self-respect. He talked about looking after his young daughter, about why he writes and quoted a Sufi saying, that went something like, God breaks your heart over and over again till it is open. And then there was the Sudanese refugee. Such a life. How can we not offer shelter to such people? I was moved as I worked. Worked my Work. So slow but imbued with thoughts. It is enough. Is it enough?

He is concerned about one of the cats. He keeps seeing it lying down, motionless. It is old. It is dying. It distresses him. I want to do something, he says.

I found another shopping list to add to my collection.

Braces’s Bread….enough said.

Brilliant, he said.

I tried to find ones that were still closed, their petals retracted like cat’s claws. They can be iffy from supermarkets, just one step up from garage flowers. They’re great hulking things. I have to use a sawing motion with the scissors in order to sever the stem. But they fill me with joy. As they did van Gogh. Dishevelled things, even in death there is beauty. And the colours are surprising, so many tones of yellow. In his paintings the backgrounds were yellow too. A real innovation at the time. It is shocking, alarming, such yellow. The yellow of hot suns, of jaundice, of fevers, of madness. I always place them in my blue jug. The blue of summer skies in Provence. I haven’t seen cornflowers this year, or indeed sweet peas. Neither last long once cut. Too precious, too fragile. And the sunflowers, how much more glorious to come up fields of them. This is joy though, this taking of the outside and bringing in. My little bit of heaven.

The sunflowers project causes me the most stress. My idea? Well my intention is to perform the sewing of a copy of van Gogh’s sunflowers in the National Gallery. You know, in front of the actual painting. I want to ape those painting students who stand with easels copying the great masters, stroke by stroke. It’s all about testing. Seeing how it feels, seeing how I feel doing it. It may not be possible. Perhaps we won’t be able to take photographs. Maybe I will feel too exposed, too foolish. But you see, the ideas come in, thick and fast, I can see them in my mind’s eye, so clearly, and I just have to see them through. But oh, the lead up. Such tension. Is this worthwhile? Is this worthy? And I am useless at counted cross stitch. I couldn’t colour in the lines as a child. Knitting patterns make me hot and bothered. I veer away, I can’t follow the rules. So it becomes my take on a pattern, an  adaptation. No one would notice, but I know. I know. It doesn’t matter, it isn’t about the product. It’s the experience of doing it. And what a realm I encounter. Hobby world. All that kitsch-ness. I baulk at it. So make a necessity out if it. Find what they say, these women, who intimidate you so much. The upholders of twee. Find out about them. Make them real. Specify. How does it make them feel? It was better yesterday. For now the critical voice has a new, stronger counterpoint.

Been listening to Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome all week as I make breakfast. So clearly written. And the ending. Ethan and Matty on the sledge, their last rush for freedom, for the thrill of contact, of closeness. And then Matty, unable to walk, being taken in, cared for by the presumed sickly wife. The misery of being the one left behind. The tyranny of the not-quite sick. Then later I listen to Little Dorrit, and his mother, never venturing out, ruling her empire from her bedroom. Air-less, inward, despotic.

As I walk in the morning, my way is lit by the swirling, be-jewelled lines of slug mucus. They dance across the paving slabs, trailing their saliva that glints in the yellow lights of the street lights.

At 3.40 am and I pass a girl standing on the Prom with a group of friends. She holds a carton of Kentucky Fried Chicken in her hand. After each bite she sucks her fingers dry. Each finger, pushed into her mouth.

The sun is meant to shine this morning. Amen to that.

Did I tell you we go all the way to Oswestry for a hair cut? Two hours there and two hours back. Ridiculous I know but it’s only every 8 weeks and we’re cut to the bone, both of us. Like shorn sheep. Prickly. Yummy. I love the clean-ness of it. I feel my skull, the tiny fragility of my head. So tender. Waiting in a garage forecourt as he filled up with petrol I saw a man walking past, a large box of Kellogg’s Frosties under his arm. That’s all, just that. A special cosy treat? I used to love eating cereals. As a child I thought they were healthy, we all did, believing the hype. Cornflakes and Rice Krispies felt austere, as did Bran Flakes, Frosties were yum, all that sugar. I didn’t know. And Coco Pops, my sister’s favourite turned the milk brown. I liked the top of the milk. Top of the milk on top of a bowl of Frosties, lovely. That was then, not now, not now.

We’ll have a seminar, he said. We’ll talk it out, talk it through over a pot of tea. Yes. So we went to Aberdovey to the hotel on the hill that overlooks the sea and drank tea. Darjeeling this time. It was very weak. Only one tea bag for two people. Looked like piss, tasted of nothing. Can we have another please? The waiter with his silver tray was apologetic. It was how I was taught to do it, one bag per pot even for two people. I apologise for complaining not wanting to hurt. I see his red cheeks. But I want to taste. To taste such treats. Later the sun came out and we sat in it. Clean. It cleans me right through. The heat on my shoulders. He was so kind. He gave me his whole attention. There were a group of elderly women in the lounge when we arrived. Four of them. One was talking about a wheelchair for her mother. It was too heavy, I told her, she said. I told her, I’ve got a bad back, I can’t be carrying that. They didn’t stay long, at least not all of them. Two remained for a while. One read her kindle, the other, whom I couldn’t see kept getting messages on her phone. I’d hear the ping, ping. We talked and talked. We talked of writing, of Julia Cameron’s suggestions, distraction techniques for when the critical voice came in. I wrote them down in my book. Dancing, baking, drawing, walking, making a pot of tea. We talked of art. Making art. I told him of my plans for The Parsonage Museum, my performance on the tube. You must write it out, he said. I understand it when you explain it. I felt good. I felt high. I felt whole, enriched. A good day. Home then. Yoga, sorting out his pills then nap then supper. Then the rain came. Torrential.

Dry this morning as I walked but windy. I love and resist the wind. It’s wildness thrills me but sometimes I am just to tired to walk into it. I do though. I always do. I have a long to do list. Things to do that will help. This is one of them. Morning pages. My version. 500 words a day. I will try. Get it out. Writing is getting it out. Getting it down. Paying attention.

There was a hedgehog in the road. I got out of the car but it was dead. Blood leaked from it. Then later a policeman came to the studio. They didn’t tell me you were a policeman, I said. A gentle soul. Scottish. A tender, tender being who cried afterwards. I cry easily, he said as he put his knife-proof vest and walkie-talkie back on. His phone went. Ah, my first text, he said, smiling. Well done, Sarge. Well done. He hugged me. It’s tricky hugging a policeman with all that gear on. Something jabbed my chin. Driving back down the hill we saw Darth Vader dragging a suitcase, one hand texting on his phone.

Barcelona. Friends condone. We are part of it. Part of Europe. How can we leave, beleaguered together, as one? My heart goes out to all. Rest in peace. And the rest? May you find solace.

Blackcurrants on the list. No, the shopkeeper said over the phone, we haven’t seen blackcurrants for weeks. No gooseberries either. Tart fruit. Soft fruit. They’re still picking them on Adam’s farm on The Archers. I miss them. The blackcurrants staining my mouth, my tongue purple, the grainy, almost gritty taste of the skins. He says he will try again today. Frozen ones perhaps.

Autumn comes, I feel it. The air is cooler, fresher. And that luscious promise of warmth is gone.

All gone. Soon no films. Amazon is closing LoveFilm. I am sorry. I enjoyed the spontaneity of it. What would come? We’ve enjoyed the choices. They’ve taken us elsewhere. What now? More box sets. Safer, a known place.

She didn’t call. Did I think she would? She sent a text, no explanation, just a promise to call today instead. Does it matter? Just to know she is OK, still breathing, still here.

They were a tiring few days. It turns me inside out being with my family. It always has. I never feel good enough. My own doing I know. And yet, there is so much love and good will. The children are a delight. She smiles like a sun. A bright shining warm thing. I remember the holding of her, heavy, solid on my hip. And the way she counted the birds in the painting. She just began to do it. Stunning. And only two years old. And he too captivates. Beginning sentences he has no hope of completing just to be in the spotlight. I listen to him avidly. Watching him learn, develop before us. And her, a soft cat of a woman. Beautiful.

Sun and rain. Days of sun and rain. Autumn comes.

Butterflies all over them. Too hot, my heart beginning to race.

I must begin to write. I have to go back. I have forgotten the divorce. It is for the best, I need to find my stride once more. Always this disapproval. Take your time, he says, don’t expect too much.

I heard my name being called. A fellow writer from the MA. He looked well. He too is writing. A book, I ask, he nods. We talk of time. He snatches a few hours here and there. It needs our attention. This creating. So be it. And it is mine. No one else’s, I can do with it what I will. All is well. Just turn up at the page and let it happen.

I will. I will.

Busy, too busy to write this as much as I’d like. Applying for funding mostly. When is the work to be done? Yet, I’m grateful. Grateful for the possibilities. You have to be in it to win it, my ex-tutor’s mother used to say. So I put myself in it and wait.

I’ve been stopped by the police twice in the last week. They drive around in the early mornings, up and down the Prom. The first time they stopped me it was about a missing girl. Had I seen her? What does she look like? Long dark hair. No, I hadn’t, sorry. And I was. Poor girl, poor parents. The second time was this morning. I’d seen their van down by the harbour. That slow crawl. Lights on the ground. They called to me from their van just beyond the Castle. Was it me they’d seen earlier? Yes, I said. Why, are you looking for someone? I asked. Yes, the two police women answered in unison. Not me then, I replied. They laughed. Is it OK to make the police laugh?

A shopping trolley on the beach, it stands by the edge of a bonfire. Flames are fanned by the wind blowing smoke across South Marine. I walk into the smoke, eyes smarting.

I’ve worked hard this past week. Too many late nights, not enough sleep. But the evenings were beautiful, my senses heightened by being out beyond my usual bedtime. The headlights shining on the grass, lit up like a photogram.

And there has been such wind. The flags on the Prom are ripped ragged.

I watch a kite (bird) from my window. It lets something fall from its beak. The next day we find a dead shrew, blood oozing from its neck. Not a cat, he said, they rarely maim them.

I dreamt I was responsible for feeding a hoard of children. Symbolic of my work, too many projects requiring my attention, my nurturing, perhaps?

Finding debris the morning after the Carnival. A dark silence.

I heard a buzzing. He must’ve got into my coat somehow. He whirled around my bedroom floor, disorientated. A bee. I woke him. I need help. The buzzing alarms me. Don’t kill him. He’s on my bed. Seeking flowers, he’d flown onto my floral quilt. I’ve opened the window. Out he goes. Gone. Safe. He’s dying, of course, he said. Yes. He looked weary. World weary.

I’m tired. Eternal sleep would be nice. Soon. Very soon. Will you come?

No sun, just a grey sky. August soon. Need some heat. She rang up yesterday to say that there were blackcurrants. I’ve had some for breakfast all this week. No sugar, just cooked through. They stain the tongue. A tart, deep blue taste. And gooseberries. Even harder to find. Is it that we no longer preserve, make jams, bake pies, make crumbles? Tart fruits. Soft fruits. A sting on the tongue. It is the small things. All else is chaos.

There was a cat playing with a dead mouse, batting it with its paws and throwing it up in the air.

Two young men talking on a bench on the Prom at 3.30 am. I understand, one of them is saying. I understand Brian has his feelings.

It’s been a while, again. I’m busy, caught up in internal stuff. Not at peace, yet longing to be. It is in my gift, I know this. And there was a brief moment, as we sat on those sofas in the hotel in Aberdovey in the sleeping lounge. Peace then. Lovely nothingness. I can call on it any time. I know this.

So, the notes have stacked up. The unicycle I saw chained to a lamp post. The snail I stepped on in the dark. I heard its crunch. I’m sorry. Rest in peace little thing. Then, his meeting John in the supermarket and them talking about my knee and other stories. He tells him what I do. Oh, said John, I thought she was a business woman. La di da. A business woman. Well I never. Whatever next. Me?

Our estate (for want of a better word. It is actually an old school) is full of cats. There is Betty, Ronnie and Reg (the Krays) and various others. All good mousers, it appears, except perhaps for Betty who seems to spend her time greeting people as they drive up. There was a dead shrew on the step the other morning.

Work, real work, paid work, has been busy. L.A. was a highlight. Reality TV star complete with face-lift bandages. What a sweetie. Outer skin tough but such a soft one. I ached for her. Don’t give so much away. Keep something back. She came with dog. Hackles were raised but, I’m here on holiday, I’ve no one to leave him with. A few days before there was Jack, the newly trained steam engine driver. Chuffed with his own success.

I’ve kept walking, even though she told me to cut it down. I can’t, won’t. I need the air, the space, the freedom. I hobble and try to act normal. The stick has been left behind the door though. That’s something. The rain has kept the Prom quiet except for one morning – a figure down by the harbour. I saw the red circle of her cigarette first, then the furry edged lining of her parka.

I am distrait. All a wobble. My confidence is so brittle. Longing to hide to run away like the painter in the French film we’ve watched over the last couple of nights. A gentle one. They explain little the French. But how I delight in the details.

I am low. I know this. It erodes all that I try to do. And then I walk and see the homeless man and his dog sleeping in the Prom shelter. Last week it was so hot he was in his boxer shorts. Good morning, I called. Hello darling, he replied.

It’s an opportunity not something to be frightened of. Just try it. Try it all. There is much to be learnt in the process. It’s an avoidance of decisions, so much nicer to be in the middle of something, flanked either side by something done, something concrete. This hurling oneself out into the blue into that white space of nothing is sometimes so terrifying. Everything must come from me and sometimes, just sometimes I have nothing to give. It will pass. I know this too. Until it does I must remember to be kind. Good and kind. It is the least I can do.

Rain, rain and rain. And the washing machine, despite Andrew the mender best efforts, continues to sound like a helicopter taking off. Just when you need everything to be alright. So be it. Little inconveniences. I think of that German girl on the front of the Times yesterday. Caught, trapped, her fingers playing with her scarf. All sadness, all fear in that gesture. I hope that will be kind to her. We know not what we do.

I fell. Well first I flew. High in the air and then landed hard on my right knee and then my left. I cried out from shock and pain. There was no one around. Should I limp home or continue? I wanted it to be OK, to be as normal so I went on and walked my three miles. And then? Then I was spent and wept behind my dark glasses in the supermarket.

And now? He bought me a stick. A wooden one from Craft. Four pounds. A bargain. I can walk without it but my right knee is still very swollen and stiff and it gives me confidence. I am back to doing my early walk and getting a little faster each morning. The stick seems to attract attention. Those early hour kids out cavorting notice me. Hi, they say, you a’right? I like it. I feel warmed by their care. A little thing, but normally I am overlooked. Perhaps I am different. I’m glad I persist in walking, the air these last few mornings has been beautiful. Keep moving, said the physio. She had been kind and reassuring but I hadn’t managed to warm to her. I wanted to. Truly. She chattered away trying to put me at my ease. I just felt awkward, clumsy, exposed and vulnerable. She is so cheery. Sometimes you just have to let the dis-ease be. I touched her arm at the end. It was all I could do. Was it enough?

A brutish group sitting on the Prom bench. Two lads play fighting and a couple drinking. My hackles twitch. The stick again. Hello, lovely, the older man said, lovely morning. And it is. Stunning moon, I say. It is full. My words are lost on them. It is enough to make contact. To be responsive. Then up by the Pier Pressure nightclub a couple are deep in conversation. They stand slightly apart. She is crying, holding her handbag up to her eyes. Her dress, a gaudy-patterned silk, is riding up her thighs. You’ve got to be strong, he is saying to her. You’ve got to be strong. She continues to cry. He stands back, his hands in his jeans pockets. You’ve got to be strong. No matter what comes between us, you’ve got to be strong.

He calls it our cwtch. We see him most days. He’s got a PhD., he says. Tried various jobs, had a shop, don’t know what he does now. He’s always cheery and brown, from walking as he does, up and down the Prom. Our cwtch. Other people comment on it too. The man with the lump on his neck in the supermarket. Saw you today, he says, like two lovebirds. Our place. Our little nook.

I heard a noise upstairs in the kitchen. A banging, a tapping. The fridge? I went up and it was a bird, a rook bashing his beak against one of the skylight windows. When he saw he flew off. Then two days later there were two of them. Why do they do it? he asks. Search me.

She was ahead of me. 3.15 am in the morning and she was wearing a ribbon-trimmed, wide-brimmed straw hat, a cotton skirt and ankle socks. An incongruous attire for such an hour. As I turned into North Road she began to talk to herself, her left arm making jerking gestures.

They were gathered in a cluster just by the Bar. The kicking Bar at the north end of the Prom. Wearing high vis jackets, some on walkie talkies, they all stood staring at the sea beyond Constitution Hill. One of them, a woman, turned to look at me as I walked down the hill. Their cars and vans had been parked in a line on the turning circle. Some had HM Coastguard emblazoned on them, others read HM Revenue and Customs. Was that right? My mind doubts it now. It was still dark. The light was only the yellow light of the street lamps. It felt officious. Was it a training exercise? Was a boat lost? Was it smugglers? A suicide? A drowning? I said nothing. Kicked the Bar and walked by.

By the station five lads were bundling themselves into a taxi, one was being sick in a corner. I heard his yell and then the retching. A man with a heavy rucksack on his back called out to me. You alright? he shouted. I’m fine, I said trying to smile. I strode on, hackles raised, walking too fast in case he followed, avoiding those pockets of dark.

Earlier another boy had called to me. Got any credit? he said. Pardon? I replied. Look him in the face, be gracious. Pardon? His voice was slurring. Got any credit on your phone, love? he asked. Sorry, I said, I’ve no phone on me. Love. That made it alright. That’s OK, he said. Goodnight, love. Goodnight.

Rain kept me off the Perygyl yesterday. This morning it was dry. The sunrise was a joy – a sharp pink turning to orange. See what we’d miss if we’d slept in. See what we’d miss.