Author: Ellen Bell

The colours in Amelie scintillate.

I wanted to write about his speech, the marvel of it and its kindness, his kindness. But instead I need to acknowledge my grief. My dream made it visible, though in my fleeing through an apocalyptic landscape, it was more like a vision of fear than pain. I am brought low. And yet, what they said yesterday was nothing too bad. They judged and gave their opinions, one softly the other no so. Why did it floor me? And why, oh why, does it take me so long to recover? It was the last one, three, possibly four, more episodes of judgement then it is is over. Over.

He read out an article to me about a convent retreat in Whitby as I prepared supper yesterday. It sparked a longing in me that I spent part of my morning walk trying to decipher. I have always had to suppress a need to be saved, to be protected, wrapped up, and mothered. She couldn’t do it, well not when I became sentient and thought beyond her. It wasn’t her fault. Her mothering had been absent. And in turn I have been absent too. But hearing of those nuns, of that ritual of silence of routine and quietude got to the core of me. I’ll take you, he says, and stay somewhere nearby. That’s kind, I say. But it wouldn’t work. I need to be away from it all, and you, my love, would bring it all with you. One day. One day I will find it. That mothering.

It has set in. Is it my work? Or is it the menopause? He describes me as pessimistic. I don’t remember being so when I was young. For then, there was always something, even in the darkest of times, and there have been dark times, there was always something to reach out towards. A glint, of something. Now? I don’t know. I fulfil my tasks, go to my desk every day. But I am empty. That’s all. That’s all there is.

I was lying on the grass reading when the old school estate’s gardener arrived pushing his lawnmower along the road. Standing up, I offered to move. Oh, you’re alright my lovely, he said, I can do that bit next week. He looks rather like one of Santa’s elves, though man-size, obviously. A warm-hearted soul, I think. After hearing him huff and puff while lugging several bags of garden waste back to his van, I suggested that he shouldn’t work too hard. Oh, I never do, he said.

I don’t know how to do them. Or at least write them. For the moment they are clunky, self-conscious. I mean, am I expected to write some sort of overview of what has gone before and then conclude it with a platitude? No, please no. No school girl essays. I want to make this mine. But how?

They are beautiful things, simple and elegant. I just wish I could love the drawings inside them more. I try, but I see their hiccups, their mishaps. But they do sit well on the page.

I caught it once before it was subsumed by clouds. The full moon is coming soon. I feel it in my dreams, and in my dreamy days. It is always so. We talk of post-modernism at breakfast. He becomes wistful. It was so long ago.

We are watching it again. I know its sadness, its deep melancholy but also its beauty. Julie Christie is achingly beautiful in her lostness but it is Gordon Pinsent, and indeed, Olympia Dukasis that outshine, for they are the ones that are feeling and are trying not to. His watching, that endless endless watching, of her is remarkable. And then there is the snow, surrounding and closing them in. It invades my days and my dreams.

According to BBC weather sunrise today isn’t until 7.31am. Too much dark. It is closing in. What can be done about it?