Author: Ellen Bell

I don’t know what a tenterhook is. Something to do with tents? I am edgy. I threw a wobbly just now. A tantrum. I banged the kitchen surface with my fist because the tumble dryer keeps turning itself off. A safety mechanism, no doubt, but it does it without warning. and besides I wanted to shout. The news bulletin at 7.00 am talked of one day rail strikes and that’s my safety valve if the car isn’t fixed stymied. I know. I know it isn’t all about me. And I will pull myself together and come up with another strategy. But it’s how to get over those mountains. It feels such a long way from anywhere when you want to escape….

I worry about doing it, as I worry about most things. It’s mostly about my interaction with others, particularly those that I am endeavouring to draw. Am I abusing them? Asking too much? Hurting or using them? I give little credence in their ability to say no, to exercise autonomy. They have it and presumably would use it if the situation called for it. I am not that powerful. I know this. So why worry?

I am growing to care for her deeply. I see her vulnerability but also her spirit. She is a force. Frightening at times and yet she is old, frail and disintegrating. Her body is failing, her will remains strong. I relish this chance she and her family have given me to witness her last years, for that they must be. I asked to much yesterday. She was unfazed. I suppose so, she said, adding, What am I supposed to think?

Yesterday was a challenge. I slept fitfully. I don’t know why. Too much tea? My head was a fog when I woke and throughout the day. I kept dropping things. And hurting myself. I bit my tongue and my upper lip. I was tired. Too tired. Nothing worked. I was ragged. I made a drawing and began the process of teasing out my question but that was it. It. Enough but not really enough. Some days are like that, I suppose.

My clock has stopped ticking.

I had a restless night. A particular drawing and the act of drawing haunted my sleeping visions. I woke and woke. And this morning, intent on doing a touch-up wall job that I’d been putting off for too long, I am also stymied by the wrong paint. We joke, he and I, that it’s ‘The Mercury’. It probably is. I give in, submit, and leave it all be.

My clock meanwhile, I’ve discovered by default, ticks if I turn it upside down.

I am out of practice with being alone. And yet I see it as my natural state, I always have, even though I come from a largish family and I’ve been with someone for most of my adult life. But I do see myself as a solitary. He and I do spend time alone. We have our own rooms. We need it, both of us. But I’m out of the habit of being without him near for long periods of time. I both welcome the opportunity to be apart and shrink from it. I lack courage. At least I think I do. We shall see. I must submit. And be brave.

He called from town. I knew it was about the car. There was another big bang, he said. Poor love. He sounded so jaded by it all. There’s been a catalogue of things. One after another. It’s the other side this time. They should’ve done both sides, apparently. We must manage it. And, if I have to, I will go to London alone and by train. Trust. All will be well.

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.