Author: Ellen Bell

The radio today is all about Mother’s Day. All about mothers. Perfect mothers. Fairy tale mothers. The wisdom of mothers. Mothers. I just don’t know, do you? It is what it is. They are what they are. She is, was, what she was. Mine. My mother. And me? Like her, am doing the best I can.

The radio. My joy. Truly. The other day, was it Thursday, there was a programme about the song Mr Bojangles. The presenter was trying to prove whether the lyrics were based on the real Mr Bojangles Robinson. It wasn’t it turned out. Bojangles was just the character’s moniker, borrowed while in prison to protect his identity, and he was white. Amazing what you learn. Just think what we could learn if we listened a while. One of the contributors knew the real Bojangles and she talked about how elegant he had been. Everything just so. All his clothes in his closet, she said, were hung three inches apart so that they didn’t crease. I aspire to that. That sartorial elegance.

What else? Watching. Watching life play out before me. Not walking, sitting. Sitting in the car, watching a vicar scuttling out of the 24 hour Spar with 4 tins of dog food under his arm. He is wearing a grey-green mackintosh and his hair, long and straight, hangs over one eye. He is youngish man but already has a stoop. The next day I watch the ‘litter man’. He told me about him. He lives in a flat over a closed-down café in Pier Street. He spends all day rooting through litter bins, filling two plastic bags with his finds. This particular day he has a lime green satchel hanging across his chest. He looks relatively clean in his patchwork-style cardigan and beige cotton trousers. His face is shaven but clumps of white hairs nestle forgotten under his chin. In his left hand he is clasping a bundle of twigs. He is always focussed on his task, never interacting with anyone.

The day is quiet. A cloudy sky presses down. A rook caws, a wood pigeon coos. It is not yet 9 am and only the occasional car drives by. One, then two, then silence. I have begun to write something. I don’t know what it will become. Just write, he says. Just write. OK. I will

There goes the toy man, he said as we got out of the car. The toy man owns a toy shop on Pier Street. Its window is crammed full with boxes of airfix models, jigsaws and train sets. Most of the time he stands at the door, smoking. He must be in his late fifties or even early sixties, it is hard to say. He never seems to have any customers. His clothes are unkempt, his hair, greasy and lank, flaps in his eyes. He never smiles.

The gym was quiet this morning. No boys loping round the weight machines. Just me, the other middle-aged woman in the lilac tee-shirt stretching on a mat and the round, pudding-like one on the sitting bicycle. She is there the same mornings as I am. Perhaps she goes everyday. She reminds me of a Christmas Pudding. A Christmas Pudding with little legs poking out. She wears navy tracksuit bottoms, an anorak and carries an enormous handbag. Her hair is cut in a blonde page-boy. Climbing aboard the bike, she fidgets her bottom into a comfortable position and then hauls her bag onto her lap. Taking out glasses and book, she then proceeds to start up the machine. She never rides particularly fast. No sweat is broken. But she stays on it for half an hour, rhythmically and methodically, like a cow chewing cud, turning the pedals. I caught sight of the front cover of her book the other day. The How To Slim Fast Diet Book, it read.

The downstairs flat has been let. We’d seen them going in to hang shelves. He was put out. They didn’t hang shelves for us, he said. We met them yesterday. Hugo and Hettie. They must be in their eighties. A tiny couple. You like it here? Hugo asked him. We shook hands. She seemed pleased. We’ve already met our neighbours, she said to a young woman bringing in a vegetable carton of newspaper-wrapped crockery. That’s nice, isn’t it? she said. Bye, we said. See you soon. Bye.

I said I would write about it, here in my journal. I promised. It seems odd though. I usually work things out in private, in my head. To articulate the process in this way will take some getting used to, I think.

I don’t have a studio, at least not at present. I work in my kitchen and store everything in a white plan chest in my bedroom. It is an odd system. It changes how I respond to my work. Much becomes internalised or is contained in sketchbooks. My work is clean, ordered. It has to be. I wondered how I would manage this project – particularly the testing part – with such a severe lack of space.

We found a plasterer. At least he did. A friend of a friend. That’s how it works in a small town, he said. I liked him. He was open and resourceful, though he did keep directing his answers to him rather than me. They’re all like it, he said afterwards, they’re just not used to dealing with women. We met him at lunchtime. Come to my house, I’ll be in the garage. He mixed up some plaster and I watched rapt as he deftly smeared it onto a plasterboard offcut. Plastering bores me now, he said, I’ve done it for so long. And it’s so messy. I pushed the template into the wet plaster. Gorgeous. It bit, just as I imagined it would. This isn’t so good, he said, it’s old plaster. But it works, I said, that’s the main thing, it works. We’ll have to work fast, with me following behind you, cleaning it up. (I think he used a particular word for the cleaning up bit but I forget it now.) I love working with craftsmen. I want to be them – roofers, plasterers, painters, dry stone wallers – its their dexterity, surety and confidence in their skill. Art is just trickery, mostly. A sleight of hand. I make facsimiles – they do it for real, without the ego and show. I liked him. And he said he would do it. I’ll even bring my laser thing to help with the lining up, he said. Fantastic, I said, fantastic.

There is still so much of the unknown about the project though. I mean its great that I’ve been awarded the grant by Arts Council Wales. I feel so fortunate but it is a responsibility. A big one. I mean there isn’t a right or wrong. It will be what it will be but I want it to be, to become the best it can. Jo, my friend and graphics-mentor has been teaching me about type. I’ve always loved it – though it was a love born of ignorance. She sent me home with two big tomes – type bibles. Don’t use serif, she said. Ok, I said. No twirls. The type needs to be straightforward, utilitarian. I need it to represent the voices, the conversations I overhear. I need a typeface that is universal such as Franklin Gothic Condensed – solid, dependable and weighty. Or there is News Gothic Bold. It needs to be legible. The plaster layer won’t be deep. And Gill Sans, designed by Eric Gill, is beautiful. But I am concerned about how much I will be able to press into the plaster before it sets. 10 sentences, 20, 30 ? It isn’t about the amount but how the dialogue interacts with each other. It is a small space. How much would the walls absorb?

Perhaps I should have introduced the project from the start, sorry. Yes. It’s called MORDANT and it is to be an installation in the TestBed space at the Oriel Davies Gallery in Newtown. It opens on Saturday 23rd May 2015. So what is it about? Well, its concerned with conversation. The kind of conversations that one overhears in galleries. It could be intellectual stuff or just plain chit chat. It doesn’t matter. It’s about the influence of space on the way human beings interact. My supposition is that walls absorb this chatter. I propose to spend a week at Oriel Davies recording what I hear and then using the transcribed discourses to create a piece of text that runs along the walls of the TestBed. A tiny little room. Intimate and cosy. The text won’t be large. This isn’t about shouting. People rarely shout in galleries. And it could end up being very prosaic. But you will be able to read, touch and perhaps talk back to it. That would be nice. Perhaps you will recognise something of yourself in what you see there. I hope so. As I say there as still many unknowns. Creating the templates is no mean feat – something which I hope a very nice man called Tom is going to help me with. Projects like this are all about stepping into the dark, the great unknown and asking for help. Help me learn. Help me to stretch my knowledge and become, better.

I love listening. I love recording what I hear. Usually in a wee Moleskine notebook I keep in my handbag. I wrote a blog for New Welsh Review recently about Shani Rhys James’ new show at the National Library – https://www.newwelshreview.com/article.php?id=962 . I spent two hours sitting and walking around the exhibition space, watching and listening to my fellow viewers. People often whisper when you get near – scared of appearing stupid perhaps, or maybe they are not talking about the work at all. There is often a hush to art spaces, a reverence that stultifies high spirits – even children seem more sedate. Is it the art or the space? It is often just simple statements such as, I like this one, or that looks like – that one hears. Perhaps talking is unnecessary, or perhaps good art makes any commentary seem banal. Its a bit like the current backlash against the taking of selfies in galleries – just LOOK at the work. Do people talk because they are uncomfortable with the silence of engaging, of really letting themselves be open to being captivated? Do we talk when we are not? I prefer to go alone. The most extraordinary things happen then. I am more open, more ready to be enthralled.

Let’s hope you will be.

He called them ‘tacits’, those gaps on records. Breathing spaces. Silences. I liked that. Something is tacit, unspoken, an understood silence. A comfortable silence.

A friend has been visiting over the last few days. She didn’t stay with us, our flat is too small. A neat but tiny cupboard. She stayed in a hotel on the prom. She loved it. We drove out into the landscape, sweeping along those winding roads. I was in the back, concertinaed up. I didn’t mind. We both suffer with car sickness. Sitting on newspaper was suggested. She tried it but wasn’t convinced. We lunched in hotels, lounged on sofas, drank copious cups of Lapsang Souchong, Earl Grey and Green tea from shiny metal teapots. Just lovely. Just perfect. We talked and talked, of literature, of mothers, of daughters and of mutual friends. What a joy. I was filled up with love. An enriching time.

I woke from an angry dream last night. I was trying to find something and going down and down these circuitous steps. It was a class, a class about poetry and we hadn’t been told how to find it. I got there eventually but the class was ending. I was fuming. The class members left but the teacher, a beautiful, calm, generous woman stayed behind. I began to cook and we talked as I cooked. You’ll want to go, I said and stopped cooking. She didn’t reply but I understood that she intended to stay and share what I had missed. I returned to my cooking. Just before my alarm, I heard myself saying, it was about the metaphysical poets, wasn’t it?

I feel so little anger these days. Sometimes rage leaks out into my dreams.

Radio 4 Extra has been running a feature on Somerset Maugham this morning. He always makes me think of being an au pair in Norway. My employer had a small library in the upstairs of the house. I used to do the ironing in there. Mountains of white linen napkins. As I ironed my eyes would read the titles of his books. There were books on Homeopathy, Radionics, Philosophy, Law, Religion, Art but very little fiction. Though a well-read man, he found it relaxing to read Crime and Science Fiction. Neither were my cup of tea but I did find an anthology of Somerset Maugham’s short stories. It felt odd to spend a cold Norwegian winter reading tales set in Malaysia and Thailand. Nevertheless, the association is forever fixed in my mind. When I returned to work in Oslo almost thirty years later, they too had a Maugham anthology. Is it peculiar to Norwegians, this love of Maugham – that quintessentially British writer?

She didn’t call. I didn’t think she would. It is OK. It is hard for her. I am learning to forgive. No. There is nothing to forgive. There never was and never is. It is just people doing the best they can. She and I. Always. Let it be. Be at peace with what is. It was painful to talk of her but good to. She wanted to understand, to know how I felt. That was a gift. A loving gift. A gift of loving.

Thank you.

I’ve said it before and I will say it again. I love the radio. I love listening to its voices while I work, clean, cook or just think. Ideas, phrases, words and music permeate through, touching everything I do. Last week, a programme was on, I was half-listening. Suggs was presenting it. It was about Soho, the old Soho, the seedy Soho. He was interviewing Paul Raymond. They were talking about the prostitutes that used to walk up and down the streets or lean against walls, one foot hitched up. ‘Pavement flowers’, Raymond called them.

Then there was one about the salt mines of Cheshire. They are disused now and act as storage space for the Civil Service. I had no idea. The presenter was told about the foals of pit ponies who were taken down there to pull the wagons. They kept them down there, never to return to the surface, never to see daylight again. They grew too big to get them out and had to be shot. Poor things. Poor things. Perpetual darkness. An underground life. I am made still by the thought of such cruelty and by such noble acquiescence.

My leg recovers so slowly. Am I still doing too much? We go to the prom for just fifteen minutes or so – to sit and breathe in the air. The sea is wild today, as high as a mountain. I notice other hobblers – on sticks, using walkers (just like his mother’s, her ‘pram’ he used to call it) – and the runners. They flash by, free spirits, pain-free. And yet, it is good this being made slow. It makes me think, weigh up and be grateful. It is good. I will be patient. I will acquiesce.

There is a new boy at the Indian restaurant. His name is Schubert. We ask glibly if he is a musician. Ah, yes, says Wellington (the new stand-in boss since Ronaldo has gone) he plays for weddings sometimes. Schubert, Wellington, Melvyn, Cruz and Mohammed (also known as John). They are a joy. Wellington particularly, he smiles like a new-born. You are family, Melvyn said.

They planted snowdrops for him. It was cold up there, she said. Yes. I cried for him yesterday. Just a year, seems like a decade. What do I miss? Just him being there, somewhere. Blood of my blood. He did his best. He always came, except once. Was that the beginning of the end? I found one of his postcards, yesterday. Funny that. They were visiting Vienna and I’d asked for a Klimt. He sent one. His writing is scribbled, some in capital letters. It hadn’t been a good holiday. They visited us shortly afterwards. He was distant. Had it begun then, that insidious creature eating its way through his brain? Probably. He wasn’t himself. And yet at the end there was such grace. I miss you. I miss the you that you had the possibility to be and just briefly, became. Rest in peace.

He came home with a birdfeeder (essentially a plastic tray that suckers onto a window) and a bag of seeds called ‘peckish ‘. I’d seen them a few days ago. Blue tits. Hundreds of them. I hear them daily, with their metallic, clicking call. And I wanted to feed them, to please them. So I filled the tray with seed and fixed it to the kitchen window and waited. And waited. Nothing yet. Each morning I look to see if the seed has been disturbed. Nothing. Nothing yet. They won’t come, he says, not if they can see you there. Perhaps not. We’ll see. I’ll wait a little while longer.

I remember her holding a sparrow. It was in Spain. They are everywhere, nipping in an out of bushes, pecking at crumbs. It was injured, a broken wing. She held it with such tenderness, its heart fit to burst. I can’t remember what happened to it. Did it die? She used to do the same with the ducklings on the farm. I recall several in the kitchen being fed bread soaked in milk. She’d kneel down and get up close. Small things. She felt safe with small, dumb things.

The muscles in one of my legs have gone again. What is that about? Am I meant to slow down? I felt it go, in the gym. A tearing, almost a snapping. I try to walk through it, hoping it will just heal. On its own. It won’t. I need to rest it. And each morning I walk a little less. Just to the sea this morning. Just a mile, not much more. I need to go out – I need the fresh air. Just a little, then I will rest. I promise.

My phone went wrong. Not sure why. Mercury playing its tricks. Its OK. I was secretly glad. I stiffen when it rings. I always have. What is that about, this dislike of phones? Even when it is him. There is a separation, a distance – a face that I cannot read. And yet, they fascinate me too. I’m even making a piece of work about them. The things people say. You can hide behind them – become someone else. Become kind. Yes. It is possible to do that. Become kind.

God, you were beautiful. I miss you. No, I miss the possibility of you. And that is something to be lost. Yes.

She was there again the other day, standing looking out to sea. I remembered her name and called it out. She turned to face us, slightly bemused. How are you? she asked him in Welsh. She’d married a Breton. Do you remember? He is dead now. I think of Lucy Snow and Monsieur Paul in Vilette. Is it cold enough for you? he asks her. She hugs her oversized red coat to her. At least it’s not raining, she replies, do you know I’m ninety-three?

Norman Wisdom on the radio. He is dead now too, I think. A thick, treacly voice. A voice that smiles. He is talking about his life. His parents had divorced when he was young. He was sent from orphanage to orphanage. He survived, joined the army and learnt to perform. He remembered reaching third on the bill and during a curtain call hearing a woman’s voice shouting his name. The voice got louder and louder, so much so that the manager brought him to the front of the stage. Later, in his dressing room a porter announced there was someone to see him. It was his mother. She was the one who had been shouting his name. I never let her out of my sight again, he said, never.

Take a photo of him, she said over the phone, holding a piece of white paper. Yes, that’s it. He’s going to write down a word that encapsulates how he feels about the coming election. He was left-handed and I watched as he slowly formed the letters. What’s it mean, I asked. It’s Welsh for ‘excited’ he said, smiling for the camera.

We took the day off. It was nice. The sun shone and we drove slowly, climbing the hill to the hotel. The sleepy hotel with its lounges flooded with warm sunlight. The guests hobble about with sticks or loll on sofas doing crosswords and pouring tea from heavy silver pots. I listen to their gentle babbling more than content. In the corner a man is talking across a divide of sofas to another guest. Tanner’s claret is the only red wine I will drink, he is saying, though I am not connoisseur. (He pronounces connoisseur as ‘connis-sewer’.) They know I won’t drink anything else so they get it in specially.  An elderly man sits down at a table next to us. He nods his head in greeting. Lovely day. I’m coming up again tonight for a meal, but I thought I’d still come up for lunch. For my tongue sandwich, he says. He nods again and asks if we would mind if he opens the window before settling down to his crossword.

Sitting on a bench in the sun, by the flagpole, watching two robins, I felt happy. Then a party of delegates from the Welsh Ambulance Service disgorged onto the tarmac through the French windows, laughing and cat-calling as they posed for a photograph. Time to go, he said. Time to go home. Come on. Come on, poppet.

I’ve never liked the telephone. I prefer to see peoples’ faces, to read them, to watch them. She didn’t like them either. She’d never call us. We would have to call her. Those Sunday morning calls; stomach sinking waiting for her to shuffle her way to the phone. I’d listen intently an intonation in her voice. A clue, any clue as to her state of mind. At the end there was just the sound of her crying. No words. Just the weeping.

She is going too. She doesn’t cry but yesterday when I called she was still in bed. I’m so sleepy, she said. My eyes keep falling shut. She hadn’t even got out of bed for breakfast. Try, please try, I want to say. Try to be normal, don’t give in. Rage. Fight. It is too much. Let her be. Let it come if it must. She has had enough. Her voice has become small. I say I am coming soon. We will go to The Grand for lunch. That will be nice, she says. I’m tired now. We will talk another day. Yes. We will.

I have become a befriender. To befriend. I telephone strangers. I listen. One pours forth such a catalogue of woes, another is brave in the face of illness. Disjointed voices. I try to find a foothold. To be of use. Is it enough just to listen? Help me, she wrote. How can I? How can I?

Three days of long journeys to conduct interviews. To listen to stories. I am proposing the making of a film. The germs of an idea that begins to take hold, to take shape. Four women. Such brave, articulate women. I am humbled by their stories – somewhat akin to mine. I recognise the shame, the fear, the loss of self and the slow re-building of something like courage. Let it happen. Let it come about, somehow.

At home the wind rages. Rain pricking hard against my face. Walks of endurance. Cold and wet. My leg is injured. Referred pain from the sciatic nerve. I walk through it, feeling every step. An iron hand grips my buttock and groin. The discomfort makes me crabby. Let it be, let me walk a while in the shoes of others who are in constant pain. Just to know it. I take my speed, my strength, my strides for granted.

Yesterday, the wind was master. Dustbins lolled in the gutters. Seabirds congregated on the promenade, lifting as one like a sail as I approached. White air jetsam floating, held, caught in the wind like confetti. A slow marvel. I walked under them, momentarily crowned by the fluttering white. The sea baptised me with spray – lashing far along the prom. Just to the hut, no further. I’ve had enough. For today.

We began the film ‘Dark Matter’ last night. I didn’t know what to expect. Why had I chosen it? Not sure. Its story centres upon a group of Chinese students studying Astrophysics in the US. The main character is so captivating in his earnestness. He writes letters home – dear Babba, Mamma – enclosing food and dollar bills. They return the favour sending food parcels. He and his fellow students are always eating. Encouraged to mix they attend a church service stuffing their pockets with cakes and biscuits. Always hungry. Take some while you can. You never know. A Pause for Thought on Radio 2 given by a rabbi who runs a centre for concentration camp survivors. We never wear uniforms, or stripes or serve thin soup, she says, so as not to trigger memories. There is always food, she says, and we pretend not to notice when they fill their pockets with it. It is a habit, she says, born out of necessity.

Food. I dream of eating meat. I remember the taste of meat, distinctly, though I have not eaten it for over 25 years. Metal in your mouth. The smell of cooking mince oozes its way into our bathroom from the flat below. It makes me feel nauseous. Too sweet. They are Slovakian. A mother, a little girl and the nanny. The nanny is a delight. Probably about my age and well-rounded of hip. Her husband is back home. How she must miss him. Her face beams with joy at the prospect of going home. She is proud to be learning English. Each day another word to try out on us. Good mournink, she says, with her slow sticky voice. New car, she said a month ago, pointing at a white bubble car. New car very nice. Yesterday, I saw her clutching a parking ticket. The little girl was with her, hair in plaits under a bright pink bobble hat. Her English is perfect and the nanny waits patiently as she answers his questions. No, she says, no school today I am unwell and Mummy says I must stay at home until I am 100% well. The nanny nods at us and ushers her upstairs. Last week an empty fresh fish tray had been left outside their door. It reeked. I thought it was Copydex. On Sundays they fry onions. It makes us laugh. Heigh ho. Heigh ho.

I went for a breast screening. My first. A little portable van in a supermarket car park. No men allowed, the receptionist said, he can wait outside. Into the cubicle, take off your bra and put your top back on. Flowery curtains, a shiny chintz and a pile of Woman magazines. I sit next to a woman flicking through one, licking her fingers as she turns the pages. In out. Very quick. The machine is cold. A plastic foot comes down on one breast pressing, squeezing it hard against the radio-active plate. Relax, she says, twisting my body to face the other way. Down it comes again. I grit my teeth, hating the loss of control. Enough. Enough now.

Did I do the right thing in saying no? Follow your instincts. Listen. I did. I did. You won’t need to stress and strain, he’d said. Such a long time ago. Steven Speed. I was twenty-eight. He forgot to take the money, running after me. I like your trousers, he’d said. A soigne presence, she’d said. Back then. Back then. All I can do is my best. Try to be true, to be honest. It wasn’t for me. The money would’ve been nice but it wasn’t for me. So be it. So be it. Enough, now. Amen.

Yesterday, early evening. A young man walks along the pavement beneath our kitchen window. He is carrying a large cardboard box. Slowly the box breaks open and a small kitten escapes. It scrabbles up a high wall, slinks under a fence, pauses and then scurries into an area of trees and undergrowth. The man stops walking. Standing completely still he stares after the kitten, the box still in his hands.

Why was he carrying a kitten in a box? Had he just bought it? Was it a present for someone else? The kitten was petrified. Their was clearly no relationship between the two of them. I waited to see if he would dash up to the path that lies just beneath the little wooded area to see if he could find it. But no, nothing. He just walked away.

Later, on the radio news bulletin, a dog owner defends her hiring of a helicopter to search out her missing dog. She’s a member of the family, she said, wouldn’t you do all you could to find a family member? She will be lost and scared and hungry. I will do what I can to get her back.

All night long I thought I heard mewing. My heart breaking at the sound.

This morning, another kitten, a tortoiseshell, dashes across the main road.

Driving back from Birmingham he tells me to look out for the lorry. Are you awake, he asks. We’re nearly there. There, he says, see it? And I do. First a clutch of police vans around a line of mangled barriers. The blinking of orange lights in the gloom. Then the row of tyres, upended in the air. It’s in the canal, like an enormous beetle, unable to right itself. You can barely see the cab, just the tyres. Are they still turning? It’s sunk deep into the water. It’s a shock to see such a beast, defeated. Sunk. Drowning in the mud. And then it is gone. We pass. My head craning. Was he hurt? What a shock. Was it ice? He must have skidded right across the two lanes. Too fast. Too fast.

Might he be set free soon? His lovely gentle face, laughing with his children on the front of The Independent. I have thought of you. They say, he says, that the punishment will have stopped. No more lashes. I pray that it is so. I have thought of you. Is it enough?