Author: Ellen Bell

I lost last night’s dream but the one from the night before has stayed with me. I worked at remembering it, willing myself to catch it in my mind’s eye for those first few moments of waking. There were lots of elements to it, that fact that he and I had been living in someone else’s house and, on leaving, and packing all our things together I kept finding objects I knew in their cupboards, like my little white milk jug. Then we were on some sort of train that had no roof. We could see the sky. It was light, though we were going under a kind of tunnel. No, it was an arch, an arch of art. Anthony Gormley’s art. I even managed to just about find his name in the dream. I could see the Angel in the distance but overhead were zinc-coloured clouds with cherubim-like figures within them. As we sped by I saw the artist himself, on show, in a tableau, crouching and wearing a khaki army coat. I pointed him out to P. On arriving at a depot we were travelling down an escalator when I woke.

The town’s students’ windows are a mass of plastic cobwebs, ghouls, witches and ghosts. Pumpkins with their hacked-out smiles litter every step and front garden. One house’s various entrances has quasi Police Aware tape, stretched across each door, blocking entry and warning of what’s within. I like it. All of it. It makes me smile. Setting off on my walk this morning I encountered a pair evidently walking home after a pre-halloween club night. He was in a suit, though was jacketless. She wore a black corset with a skirt hitched up at the hips. On her feet were a pair of Doc Marten’s. I remember such dressing-up. Halcyon days.

They disappear too quickly. I wake from them and I have them and then another, living thought comes in and they are gone. Vanished. Vanquished by a lesser, existing reality. I rue the loss of them. I like to try to unpick them, to relive the hyper-reality of their landscapes and vistas. Perhaps they will return in those flickers of something other that mist through my thoughts from time to time, unbidden and unfamiliar. I hope so.

After two dry days, the rain has returned. It’s an autumnal rain that drizzles down the windows. And it comes with the murk of darker mornings. Not yet November it feels like it. So be it. Down into the tunnel we go to wait for Spring. My desire to sleep, to hide, to hibernate is strong. Sometimes, it’s overwhelming.

I’ve always been, or at least, felt cowardly. I am not brave. I sense my fear daily. Life is too big for me. It always has been. And probably, always will be. But nevertheless, I do face my fears. Like now, sitting here at my desk getting ready to return to the article I began yesterday. It was a hacking-out piece of writing. I hated it. Today, after hours of mulling, I am ready to begin again, with, I hope, more authenticity, more openness. I may fail. But I will try to succeed. Is that courageous?

What can we do in the face of it? The early morning news speaks of Irael bombing Iran. Where will it end? War upon war. Such belligerence. Have we learnt nothing?

They disappear. I try to catch a hold of them, the dangling string of an idea of them, but it’s too soon gone. There are glimpses of something through the day, a smell, an outlook, a face but nothing concrete, nothing that holds together of that world I’ve inhabited so fully for – what was it? – a minute, a minute and half? I know that there is complexity, that I do remember. They always involve a deep, layering of experience of knowing of belonging, that often it is a wrench to leave. I want to know them more, know their wisdom. How?

I was listening to Radio 3 just before getting into my bath. John Shea had announced that he was to play Handel’s Gloria, the “famous one”, and it was just beginning to start when it went off, on both my radios (one in the bedroom, the other in the adjoining bathroom). It wasn’t silence that ensued but a high-pitched squeal. This was followed by a series of bleeping noises. I’d heard someone talk about radio signals being hijacked for naferious means. Was this what was happening? Surely the BBC protects itself against such things? I let it be for a couple of minutes, hoping that John Shea and Handel would return. They didn’t. I switched radios and channels. A mystery.

The Prom looked ravaged this morning as I walked. Shail, pebbles and stones were strewn across the road and pavements. ROAD CLOSED signs had been erected and sections cordoned off. The shelter seemed to still be in one piece. It hurts to see it so. Its wounded. And it will be left that way for some time now. For they know that other storms will follow. We all do.

She calls it ‘rat’. ‘It’ is rataouille. When he calls her each afternoon he asks what she had for lunch. This usually excites much mutual groaning. Oh, not again, he says, when she describes a mush of cheese and leeks or cheese and broccoli. Rat is the worst. A dish that seems to be the Home’s kitchen’s failsafe for the ‘vegetarian’ residents. She isn’t, vegetarian, that is, but isn’t partial to red meat so often opts for it. It rarely satifies. She doesn’t complain. A strong woman in other respects, it is hard to understand why. The complexity of living in and managing such an environment is beyond our knowing. We must respect her decision. She can air her complaints with us, however, and that is just fine. Yesterday it was turkey. And you never know next Friday it might just turn out to be lemon sole. There’s always hope, even in ‘prison’.