Author: Ellen Bell

The sun is out. It lifts me. A cliche, I know. But it’s not just my spirits, my sense of something like contentment (not happiness, that is too much), but it’s soulful stuff too. Something settles inside me and begins to accept what is. I start to look around, detaching myself from the heavy greyness, that waterlogging that keeps me trudging on but not loving where I am and what I am doing. The sun makes a difference. It always has. Even this liquidy sun that we get here. Though how I long to be under the hot, yellow sun of Spain and Italy. Against that blue.

Brave women. She came to the group spiky. I could see it, sense it. I knew last week that she’d been made uncomfortable. Unsafe. She came. She told me how she felt. Tears filled her eyes. She was brave. I listened, touched by how she cared. I hope I said enough. She laughed like the others while making drawings. I hope it was enough. And that she will return.

She told us she walked out into the corridor on her own. We thought her ‘tootling’ was merely in her room. But no, she’s been ought, unaided. She came such a long way. She is a marvel. Every step is a movement requiring so much concentration and effort. No one can know. I saw it on her face. I am lost in admiration as I am of the other woman. They teach me. And I have so much to learn.

We call him ‘Wrong John’. He’s an avatar of John Kettley, the Weatherman. And apparently he communicates with him every early evening so that he can write down a forecast for me to find in the early hours on the steps leading up to the kitchen. This forecast is invariably wrong, hence the moniker. Take this morning, for instance. It was supposed to be heavy rain. It wasn’t. And there was snow. Yes, snow. Not a peep about snow. Not a sniffing. Nothing. Nada. So what’ve you got to say about that, JK?

M. mentioned Palm Sunday when I went in to draw her last week. She couldn’t remember what they gave you at the end. Palm crosses, we reminded her. Oh, yes, she said, I used to have loads of them. She also recounted how they used to bring the donkeys from Borth and lead them through the streets of the town. We keep trying to remember the exact word she used for the unholiness of the fact that the beasts shat as they processed. Someone followed behind, she said, collecting the detritus. It made us laugh. It still does. Her turn of phrase is delightful and so brusque, so unsentimental.

We walked together just before lunch on Sunday, as is our wont. Turning up the little hill beside the town’s library we saw a woman carrying a large palm frond in against her chest. There was a toy donkey under her other arm. It was a stiff, rigid, stuffed little thing. It was all most incongruous. I got the connection straight away. He didn’t and must’ve stared. She noticed him looking. It’s for Palm Sunday, she said, I’m taking them to church. I did wonder, he said. She laughed, then and so did he.

She raised the reading out of the Home’s entertainment itinerary. Usually we prompt her. She’s clearly entered into the spirit of it. “Presumably you’ll be going to that,” he says, after she’s read out some event or other, such as a recital from Banjo Brian or a display of traditional folk dancing from Lithuania. “No,” she replies. He laughs. As do I. This week it’s all about Easter, naturally. There’s an Easter Bonnet making craft session, followed by a parade where the best one will win a prize. And the ubiquitious Easter Egg Hunt, which no doubt will involve those residents that are less mobile being wheeled about in search of them. I hope she gets it, that we are laughing with her, not at her. We know the stasis of her now-life. We see and feel it. But we also know and see her bravery at accepting it. She seems a little happier, though we cannot know how she is in the early waking hours when her before-life must taunt with its ghosts. Poor love. Still so bright, so sharp, so funny, just like him. They are close. And I am glad.

I am tired. More tired than usual. Doing the chores this morning has wearied me. Now there is writing to do. I try to write authentically, to not posture. Sometimes it flows, other times not. I begun reading Edmund de Waal’s The Hare with the Amber Eyes. I began it years ago in A’s house and then again last week in Yorkshire. I am enjoying it. He writes well, and with ease. A bright man, I think.

I was away too long. It takes so much time to get back. To return. To find my way again. My head is still mushy with not enough sleep. It will improve. I will sharpen. I hope. Trust. It always comes down to that. Trust.

She kept saying the word to herself. Hiccough. At least I think that was what she said.

I am still slightly out of it. Whoosy. Drowsy. In need of sleep. I got through yesterday and it was OK. But I am not yet myself. Not yet. Soon.

Yesterday was a challenging day. The rain kept on coming. Tiredness made up sniping and sharp-edged. We hurt each other. We are home now. Let today be better.

I’d only had three hours sleep. We’d got back in decent time from the airport but there was so much to do just to get the flat back to the way we like it. And warm. Three hours. It isn’t enough. I felt ragged. My mouth was dry, my lips too. I was shaky, uncertain in my feet. Ragged. I had seven hours last night. The world seems better. And Spring is coming. The birdsong is louder, more insistent. And tomorrow we are off again.