Author: Ellen Bell

Hardeep Singh Kohli was hosting a programme about high wire walking. It mostly featured a famous French man who walked a tightrope across the Niagara Falls. During the half-hour programme Singh Kohli is himself learning to tightrope walk. Circus hurts, says his trainer, you have to trust your feet.

Trust your feet. Keep going. Forward.

I am walking home from my 5 am stride. Outside Cartref, one of the University’s Halls on Terrace Road, I can see a bulky figure in dark glasses and grey tracksuit. As I approach he blocks the way, removes his glasses and shouts HALT. He leans into my face. HALT, he says again. Pardon, I say. Gender, he says. G-E-N-D-E-R, he repeats, annunciating every letter. I look him straight in the face, then patting his arm, wish him goodnight and stride on. I hear a door close behind me.

Trust you feet. Keep going.

There are two skull and cross bones flags flying from Aberystwyth’s Public Library. Why?

There’s Lanky McBurney, he says. Hey, Lanky, how’d it go? Chances, he shouts, chances. Who’s Lanky McBurney, I ask when we get into the restaurant. He went to school with me, he says, you know, we saw him the other day on the Prom. He was going on a blind date, said he was shitting himself.

What’s that? he asks. What? I say. That mark on the picture. Just like my father, he says. What is? I say. Pointing out marks. We used to call them his ‘spot days’.

There is a tiny slither of a moon this morning. A ghost of white.

His light is often on when I sneak out first thing. Before it is light. 4.30 am. A yellow light behind the white slats of his venetian blind. Pete the Beast he calls him. Why? I ask. Oh, it was his nickname at school, something to do with a jumper he wore. It was all hairy. And it just stuck. God knows what  he is up to that time of night, his mother says. He thinks he is playing online poker. He always loved gambling, he said. In the pub he’d be straight on the machines. In the afternoon he is often leaning out of his window, smoking. Been for a walk? he asks.

I wanted to give blood, my one good thing for the day, the week, the month even. But I wasn’t allowed, nor was he. Next time, they said. You’re welcome to stay for a cup of tea and a biscuit. There’s custard creams.

A young mother jumping to her death from a bridge taking her four day old baby with her. An escape from misery. They told a similar story in Call the Midwife. She is saved, talked down from the bridge. She wanted to clean her baby in the river, rid it of germs. She is put in a sanatorium and given EST. The ending is happy enough. Happy enough. Though something has been lost. We expect to be happy but sometimes we just are not. No one is to blame. Are they?

The mother of the real-life mother spoke with such dignity outside the court hearing. She wants to understand, to encourage funding so that we all understand. How can a time with such potential for happiness bring such misery?

Driving home we pass an animal feed warehouse. A large sign advertising sheep food reads: FIT, FAT, FINISHED.

Granny Heather from The Archers has had a fatal stroke. My grandfather had a stroke when I was eight or maybe nine. It left him paralysed in both legs and one arm. I remember everyone talking about a stroke. I couldn’t understand why a stroke, a caress could harm him. He had always been a reserved, taciturn man, now he couldn’t help himself from breaking wind. We’d visit him in hospital and I’d see the shame flicker across his eyes. My father would keep talking, trying to smother the sound. My sister would fidget with suppressed giggles. I just wanted to leave, to save him further humiliation. He lived for another fifteen years.

He comes into my studio. That dreadful woman was in there again, he says. You know that nice couple we spoke to the other day at the till in Morrison’s. No. Yes, you do, she was sweet, laughed a lot. No. Never mind. Anyway, he says, they were sitting in our usual seat when she accosted them. She’d asked if she could have one of the chairs and they’d answered her with a question. Big mistake, I thought, he said. She had them captive for twenty minutes, banging on. Shouting. In the end he had to put on his coat and get up to leave. Dreadful. She’s dreadful.

I dreamt I was to take a plane ride. The runway was grass, an open space in full sun. We all stood in a line, waiting, eyes trained to the sky. It is strange to wake to darkness from a dream in the sun.

I was walking up the steps from the Quad. A young man was helping a girl up the steps ahead of me. You go ahead, he said turning to me, we may be some time. The girl was wearing flip flops with both her big toes encased in big swathes of bandage. Oh, that looks sore, I said. Oh, she said, I’m OK the anesthetic is still working.

They allowed her to bring him his washing to the prison. She sewed different coloured threads into his socks. A code to tell him how the children were.

It was the Fresher’s Party last night. I remembered it this morning when I saw the massing of students descending Penglais Hill. They walked slowly. A messy huddle of t-shirted youngsters, mostly silent. It was 4.30 am. They were walking straight into town. I crossed the road, wading through the tide of them. Some were ahead of me on North Road. It changed the feel of my usual walk, having them there in front of me. There were more on the Prom. A chaotic, shambling collection of bodies, some barely conscious. The lights of the Pier Pressure nightclub were still ablaze. Litter dotted the pavement. Polystyrene burger containers, pizza  boxes, chips and cigarette stubs. The cast of my shadow along the seashore set the oystercatchers peeping. A boy was shouting, Everton, Everton. It was quiet again by the Castle and down to the harbour. A solitary car was parked by the Perygyl. It was empty. Later, walking down Great Darkgate Street, they were there again. En masse, they flooded out of the SPAR. I heard more shouting ahead of me. I looked up across the road to a third floor window. It was lit. Three lads were hanging out of it calling to someone further up the road from me. You fucking queer, one of them shouted, walk away. Walk away, he shouted, walk away. And then I saw him. A tall, scrawny young man in a sleeveless T-shirt and baseball cap. Just one of you come down, he shouted back, just one of you come down. He’s coming, someone shouted. You wait, he’s coming. I observed the young man before me. He looked lost, dejected, trying so hard to be brave. It is their rite of passage, all this. This bravado, this fighting. It is hard for them. I wanted to stay with him. Offer him support. But he didn’t see me. He was locked inside his head, finding his way. Defending himself, his what, his honour? No, that is too pompous. He was finding his way. He is finding his way. Is it right? I don’t know. How do I know?

The students take over the town at night. They scrap and fight like the seagulls, their shouting no different to the birds, indiscriminate screeching. They leave the same mess. The air changes. A frisson of anxiety. And yet, I am safe. They rarely notice me. They are locked into their world, their viewpoint. Finding their way.

In Morrisons yesterday for the weekend shop. Sandra is in the queue before us. Morning, both, she says. You not working today, I ask. Usually she is behind the till. No, she says, not today. Doing anything nice? Nothing special, she replies. It’s my neighbours birthday tomorrow, she says pointing to the box of Maltesers on the conveyor belt. Her shopping lies higgedly-piggedly on its rubber surface. There are boxes of iced ringed donuts decorated with hundreds of thousands, bags of crisps, a tub of butter and some chocolate. I’ve never seen her out of uniform, standing up. She is small in stature but wide of girth. She limps, carries a stick. The smell of her is pungent, a sickly acidy smell. I touch her arm. Have a nice weekend, I say. Oh, I’m back in tomorrow, she says. Cheers, both.

A little Asian boy is on the Prom beyond South Marine Terrace blowing bubbles through a little hoop. An elderly white woman looks on. I remember doing that, I say to him. I thought it was magic, I tell him. When I discovered that it was only like washing-up liquid I was so disappointed.

I hear a buzzing from the sky. It sounds like a hornet. Looking up I see a grasshopper-like thing. It has legs that remain suspended as it flies. What is it? Two girls are playing on scooters in the Quad. They also look up at the flying object. You stay here and keep track of it, one of them says to the other, and I’ll go and get Mummy so that she can tell us what it is.

Did you see the drone? he asked coming up the stairs. Oh, I said, is that what it is.

So that’s how it feels. There are people out there in the world who see them regularly and to them they mean death. Anonymous things, directed, manipulated remotely, facelessly. Death by remote control.  It is too easy. Isn’t it? I listen to Any Questions and some of them seem to talk so glibly. We’ll just bomb them and them and them. Then it will be alright. Will it? Aid workers, helpers from Medecin de Frontier killed by a strike. By Americans. It is madness. What are we doing? Have we lost the ability to talk, to face each other, eye to eye. To talk of peace. Is it just penis waving, one of the female contributors on Any Questions asks. Now hang on, another replies. Jeremy Corbyn says he wouldn’t press the button. His honesty is lauded by all. Clearly not Prime Minister material, one contributor says. Why not? Must governing mean killing? I wish him strength of purpose. He brings goodness in his wake. Liberality, fairness and a wish to be kind.

No to trident. Let us be another Sweden, or a Costa Rica where they spend the defence budget on education. And yet what do I know? What do I know? It seems that the older I get the less I do know. I couldn’t even protect that young boy from a potential fight. Is it in our make-up to fight? Must it be so? I seek peace. And yet, I believe it needs to come from the inside out. That willingness to be at peace, to accept oneself fully. I still fight with myself, that is my responsibility. Though now it is less and less. Thank god. Thank god. I shall wait then. Wait and see what it is I can do. About. It all. If anything. Meantime. I wait, watch and listen. Do you hear it? It’s coming. Be at peace, if you can, just be at peace. Be kind. Disarm. Disarm with love. They say that in our defenceless we are strong. Amen to that. Amen. Ah, men.

The sky is the colour of milk. There is no breeze. Will the sun emerge?

As I walk in the early morning I try to commit what I see, hear and smell to memory. Just until I get home. I chant sentences, phrases, rather like he does before we get to Morrisons. Coffee, olive, kitchen roll, coarse black pepper, he says. Have I forgotten anything? Was that it? Tip top.

It is morning but the dark makes it seem like night. Before 5 am. A nightscape. A theatre in the dark, in the round. The club on the pier will be just closing. Kids will spill out, leery. The fog makes the air cold. I walk through pockets of quiet. An odd bird. A robin, chirruping. On North Road taxi speeds past setting off the alarm of a grey sports car. There is no flashing lights just an insistent wah wah noise. Then it stops. Down the hill onto the promenade and I see a girl walking towards Alexandra Hall. She is in pyjamas dotted with what looks like santas and a large black cardigan. Silence. Nearing the new bandstand I hear voices. Three students, one of which is a black girl. I thought the orange fur was the hood of a parka but it is her hair. She is in shorts. Her voice is loud. Like, a FUCKING MILLION times, she shouts. Two bouncers stand in the doorway of Pier Pressure nightclub. They talk in hushed tones, something about identity cards. They wear bright yellow jackets. The odour of lukewarm pizza hangs heavy in the air around the old college. There is no wind. An oystercatcher pip-pips in the dark. A beetle scurries across the paving slabs towards the railing. The Hut is shut up. South Marine Terrace is still. There is a large black man standing in the lit inner entrance to the Serviced Apartments. He is standing asleep. His head lolls forward and his body jerks upright. He doesn’t make a sound. Has he lost his key? Beyond the harbour there is a sharp keening yell. Is it a cat or a sea bird? The Perygyl is wet with dew. The water below laps gently. The screeching echoes through the mist. I can still see some stars. Bunches of students are coming up Great Darkgate Street with plastic bags of food from the 24 hr SPAR. A boy is talking earnestly to a girl. They don’t wear coats. I forgot to smell the baking bread from Slater’s bakery but perhaps the door was closed. A lorry waits for TESCO to open, its lights ablaze. Yesterday there was a man waiting with his bike outside a house on Llanbadarn Road. A light in an upstairs window as on. Had he just thrown pebbles? This morning there is no one. I haven’t heard the owl for a while. The lights still aren’t on in St Davids Road. I am warm now. I shut the door behind me and breathe.

Oh, God it’s her, he says as a woman takes the table just beyond ours. I watch her. She has a handbag and a white shoulder bag. There are three silk flowers in her hair and she places what look like four dried wheat stalks on the table. She helps herself to water. Clearly she has not ordered any coffee. From where I am sitting I can see that she has a book that has been much written in. Lines have been drawn under most sentences. She hunches over it, scribbling. Both of her bags are bursting with notebooks, pens and tissues. She is distracted, worn.

Here we go, he says, as she stands up to leave, she’ll be in the loo now for about 20 minutes. That’s what she used to do in Starbucks. Up and down, up and down. And all that shouting. And that strange laughter. I know, I know she’s anxious, and I am kind to her. She just irritates me, that’s all. I just wanted to read the paper.

I watch her from the window. She pats her hair, pushes the strap of her handbag further down her arm and shuffles into the White Lion.

In NATWEST the staff are wearing Welsh rugby shirts over their uniforms. Do you have to wear them? I ask Dion. Oh, we want to, he says, though there aren’t enough to go around. I shall have to give mine up when Rhiannon comes in. She has better claim on it than me, I was born in England.

You know that the English rugby team sing Swing Low Sweet Chariot as part of their anthem? he says. Yes, I say. Well, apparently Rob Rattray the butcher is selling sausages called Burnt Chariots. Do you get it?

I was ambitious, once. My ego still is. What is that about? All that need for acknowledgment. I want to shrug it off, like dead skin. To let loose its hold. It has nothing to offer me anymore. Not now.

People ask what I am working on at the moment. Is it kindness or are they really interested? I say that I am writing. I talk quietly, for I am not sure how to deliver it. I am writing but what it is to become I do not yet know. Does that matter? It is all nothing. All of it. And yet, it is something. Something that matters to me, at least. I like the process of work. I like to work. I like to be immersed, involved in story. Whether that story reaches beyond my studio matters less than it did. Truly. It is for me. It is me trying to make sense of what’s gone before.

I want peace. I want to accept the littleness of me. I have made many things, done many things but they have brought little peace. The peace is something else, from something else. The space between. So I withdraw. To watch.

Two evacuees. The remaining brother tells their story. Such cruelty. No one cared. His brother beaten to death. The Mousetrap. Agatha Christie took the story. Did he know? No. Was he moved? Of course. His voice catching as he describes the beating. He made us wait. What do we do with such knowing? I didn’t know how to be a father, he says, with his soft Newport lilt. I didn’t know how to love. We are so proud of him, says his daughter, we didn’t know. Now we do. Now we do. Bless you.

He returned, by popular demand, to talk about chapels. He talks with an excitable breathlessness. I like him. He makes me smile. His voice is high, boyish. They had forgotten him. He had to call to remind them. Well done, I said. Good for you. Thank you for the offer of a drink, he said brandishing a half empty bottle of water, but I’ve brought my own again.

This time she answered the phone. She sounds full of cold. It’s the children from the school, she said, my daughter brought it home. We talk about flu jabs, her friend’s fig tree and the weather. She took four figs from the tree. They were rock hard but I thought I would put them on the windowsill in the sun. We sometimes have them with what’s it called? Parva ham? It’s a bit of a treat. I went to the Thanksgiving festival at my church. The sermon was short but lovely, she says. I stayed for a cup of tea. I don’t like too cause of the cakes. I’m tempted, see. And I know I shouldn’t, what with the allergies. Trifle’s my favourite. Oh, they had a lovely one in Mark’s. Strawberry trifle. I couldn’t resist it. My daughter said I shouldn’t. Oh, it was lovely. It gave me pain after, mind.

She’s been sitting in the sun. And the garden? I ask. How’s the garden? Ah, she says, the runner beans are coming lovely.

A young woman falls back into a chair opposite her partner in Starbucks, St Ann’s Square, Manchester. Where are we going to have lunch? She asks, sighing before leaning forward and saying, I’ve got three pairs of Levis but I need some more. The ones I tried on were dead tight.

He brings me my coffee and a plastic container of fruit salad. It’s all mango, I say. Give it here, I’ll get you another. No, it’s alright. Let me. Are you sure? Yes.

The woman is talking about her birthday, her body slumped in the chair. Don’t give me anything that’s a surprise, she says. I don’t want a surprise, that’s what I’m going to London for.

There are two lads sitting on packing cases in the sun painting the Bethel Chapel’s railings. They both sing along to the radio, wake me up before you go go……

Look, he says in the car on the way to the supermarket and pointing at the trees, it’s going over. Yep, I say, it’s starting.

We finished watching it last night. Oranges Aren’t the Only Fruit. It was brutal. Brutally sharp, brutally funny, bleak yet somehow hopeful. I’m going to go to University, she says. She survives it all, even the ‘ropes of love’. Oranges. I love them. Her mother arrives in hospital with a large string bag full of them. In the TV play Jess had a friend, Elsie, an 82 year-old woman from the congregation. I think Jeanette Winterson wrote in her autobiography that this was a fiction. I’m sorry for that.

Northern skies. Rain on cobbled streets. Outside lavs, best place for it, says Elsie, all that muck. Hair nets in bed. Silent husbands. I seem to know it and yet I don’t. The child making the best of it. Will I get a new hat in heaven? She scares the other children with her talk of the devil. Next door are fornicating, she tells the ice-cream man. Are they? he says.

It will stay with me for a long time. Just like The Crucible. Both distortions of love, in the name of God. And yet, within there is so much. So much.

I walk in the light of the moon. Silvery. In the light of the silvery moon, I love to spoon, I sing in my head as I walk. The students are back in force. They sat on benches this morning as I strode by, heads lolling forward. The sea was lapping. The Perygyl was lit up white. I listened to music, to stories, to Norwegian in my headphones. I missed the silence, the sound of the sea, the birds. Tomorrow I will leave them behind.

I write my 1,000 words. I don’t read them back. Not yet. Write 20,000, no 30,000 before you do so. Let it shape itself. Get it on the page and then go back. Give it life, breathe into it first. Give it a life of its own. And then what? Wait. Just wait.

Excuse me mate, the man said after knocking on our car window, have you got a torch? A pheasant flew into me car, he said, and I think he might ‘ave damaged me radiator or it could be the air-conditioning. Do yer know anything about cars? It’s making a hissing noise, could that be the air-conditioning?

He shakes his head. Sorry, mate. The caravan up ahead might have a torch, he said, and there’s a garage about five miles up the road. Cheers, the man said, sorry to ‘ave troubled yer.

At the motorway service station there had been a cluster of starlings. They’d spun around chattering, shell-shocked, lost. They must be babies, I said, and scattered some seeds on the ground. It took awhile before they realised it was food. One of them pecked half-heartedly before the others followed suit, scrapping and flying up at each other.

Below my studio window there is a tiny apple tree in a pot. It is on a balcony and there are apples, six. The fruit looks fake upon the virtually leafless branches, pulling them down with their weight.

 
A large woman stood adjusting her apricot-coloured jumper in the mirror before asking a girl by the hand drier to help tie the bow at the back. Initially I’d thought that they knew each other. The girl looked wary, embarrassed. I don’t think she appreciated me asking her, the woman said to me afterwards. Is a special occasion? I asked. Very, she said and beamed revealing a missing front tooth. I’ve left me teeth in the car, she said, I’m going to put them in after.

The reviews kept talking about the water and the actors ‘sloshing’ about in it. I keep thinking about it. What do I think? It was meant to be a crucible, a vessel for turning base metal into gold. The circle of white light was fantastic and it remained lit throughout the performance. The water. The water was discomforting, and necessarily so, I think. What was it? A baptism, a baptism of what? So many symbols, too much to digest, to think about. Don’t think then, just feel. How did it make you feel? Moved. Deeply moved. And it is still so resonant. So resonant.

I heard them talking about the eclipse on the radio. I’d forgotten about it. And then I saw it, as I walked. It went pink. The moon was rosy. Then the black came and then slowly, ever so slowly the white returned. It was a while before I realised that the birds had stopped singing.

I am a maker of lists. I make lists, often hastily scribbled notes, of what I want to write about here. Just in case, just in case I forget. I’ve been away and came upon one such list. It begins with the line ‘spitting rain’. It must have been almost two weeks ago. Was it raining when I walked? Yes, I remember now. A Sunday morning, and the rain was coming down in a fine wet mist. I had my umbrella up. Walking past the Pier Pressure nightclub there was a man standing outside talking to a young woman. Neither wore coats. I’m from the valleys, the girl was saying, I’m not posh. The man saw me walk by. It’s not raining love, he shouted. I smiled at him and kept moving. You go for it, girl, he said.

I’ve been away. It seems like forever. There is much to write about but not yet, not yet. I want to bear witness. And I will, soon. Soon. Soon.

I often see her coming down Penglais Hill. She is a tiny, wee thing of a woman, always dressed in outlandish clothes. Sometimes it is a South American-Indian style cape or tartan stockings. Nothing fits and nothing matches. It is as if she has rifled through a dressing-up box and found various oddments she fancied. She likes crazy hats. The other day she had on a polka-dot skirt, a black anorak and a bright red woolen hat. I nod my head at her but she barely notices. She walks with purpose, without, it appears going anywhere specific. She wanders. She has a key on a chain around her neck.

A blood vessel has burst in my eye. I get them now and again. When I’m tired or overwrought. It must be from Thursday when I had three bookings, the last one being ten at night. Too late. I only four hours sleep. It takes its toll, that. And I shall be fifty-three next Wednesday. I feel fit but I need sleep. Good sleep. Deep sleep. I try to see the beauty in the spilling of red. Watching its shape.

A seagull flies past my window, wings taut in the window, wing tips like fingers spread against the breeze.

Earlier I caught a young wasp in a cloth and set it free through the window.

How I love Public Libraries. You walk in and come out with four new books to read. What a pleasure to choose. I don’t want to own them, to borrow is such pleasure. A dipping in. A lightness. No committal. Grahame Greene, Ali Smith, Tove Jansson and an author I’ve never heard of, Jim Grace. I wanted slim novels. Handbag-size with beautiful covers. White Noise will have to wait – it is too big to take with me. I suppose I should get a Kindle, I say to him. They’re not doing so well, he says, they haven’t taken off the way they expected. Are people going back to books then? I ask.

I never left them. It is all in the handling of them. The bookmarking. The things left inside them. The date stamps. The smell.

It is time. It is time for an adventure. Are you ready?