Author: Ellen Bell

I’ve got an all day writing retreat today. From home. In front of my screen. I don’t mind. I like the idea of staying at home with my hot water bottles, pot of tea and silence. That is, except for the birds singing outside. He’s been sent out. He grumbles about it, but it’s fine. I know it is. He likes to be off and out to the town’s coffee shops to read papers and mull away time. I don’t know what the day will bring but it is good to dedicate it to writing. I need the thinking and the getting down on paper – albeit virtually. We shall see. Yesterday was chaotic. I did my best but it was a bit like marshalling cats, well trying to and failing. Oh, the first wood pigeon has just begun cooing. I have to let it be, re the teaching. Do my best to guide but to not bully. All will be well.

I confess I am very weary. I miss my sleep. I miss the falling into nothingness followed by a morning wakefulness with nothing particular to do. I wake these days and immediately search in my head for my responsibilities. Today I must teach. And yet I am dog-tired. Can I find the energy? Yes. I always do. I want to facilitate their learning, their endeavours. I care about this but I am spent. Is there more at the very bottom of me to find? Yes. Always.

It pissed down this morning. Shall I or shan’t I walk? I did.

It’s become a kind of tradition that she reads out, over the phone, the Home’s entertainment itinerary for the week. Last week’s was particularly spectacular, including darts in the lounge. As she explained, this is a seated version in which the carer on duty brings the dart board to the player who then, thrusts a plastic dart in its direction. We laughed rather uncontrollably at this not really taking into account the fact that, when she first became a resident she attended one of these sessions herself. “It is actually quite hard,” she said, leaving us a little shame-faced at our rather noisy ridicule. We have to be more careful. There is an assumption that she is laughing along with us when we gently dig at the Institution’s attempt at distraction, such as Banjo Barry, Bingo and the various folk singers and memory artists they rope in. And she does join in, but there’s a underlying pathos to this, she is there, stuck, incarcerated for the rest of her life, she has to make the best of it, we don’t. He texted her an apology. I hope she understood and accepted it. For I do love and care what she thinks and feels.

And there is yet more horror in R. A woman is to be imprisoned, possibly for 20 years, for treason. She’s lives in America but went home to see her family. Her crime was to pay money into a charity in support of Ukraine. How did they find this out? Poor love. Keep her safe. Please.

I stopped my walking to make a quick drawing of the student house on the corner of North Road whose windows are always lit up in the early hours. The bird song around me was deafening. I exaggerate, of course. But it is remarkably loud at that junction of the road. I don’t know why. Some of the birds, probably the blackbirds whistle. Well, it sounds like a whistle. Layers and layers of sounds, never discordant. It is a choir, a choral composition. They call out to each other, marking territory or trying to attract a mate, whatever it is I feel privileged to be a part of it. The drawing, by the way, didn’t work. I’d brought a thick stick of graphite in my almost constant attempt to get beyond my preciousness but it was too clumpy, too awkward a tool for such a small book. Heigh ho. Try again tomorrow.

The boiler is f**ked again. Bless it. It’s on its last legs, I suspect. This time the symbols on the dial read EA – well, when I say read it actually flashed rather alarmingly. Anyway, I found the instruction booklet and located the list of symbols and it apparently means that it can’t ‘find the flame’. I know the feeling. My flame is, some days, beyond finding. So we are without heating and hot water. It could be worse. Of course. I think of Alexei’s family and him (I don’t know how to spell his surname). Such a brave giant of man. I cannot waste more time complaining on the little things that test me. It is enough. I am chastened. May he truly rest in peace. And keep his wife and loved ones and supporters safe.

The birdsong I hear in the early morning when I set out for my walk is getting noticeably louder. It is almost as if the blackbirds, and they are predominantly blackbirds are right outside our front door, overhead, on roofs and in the trees just by the house. And the volume had been turned up. It is the approach of Spring. It must be. They are feeling it. I don’t. Not yet, however much I want to. I never want to walk out into the dark but when I do the experience of being out there in that bleak black and among the bird noise and chatter is a rich one. I feel part of that ‘family of things’ that Mary Oliver writes about. I do.

I like entering other people’s worlds and lives, if only briefly. My interest isn’t prurient but compassionate. I enjoy the escape too. And the belief that there are simpler, less convoluted ways of living all carrying on parallel to mine. I listen to her as she cuts my hair. I ask her questions and explore the way she makes her life, her loves, her hates, her disappointments. They are going to Lanzarote. Her partner asked if she could fit in a ‘cheeky five days’ away in the sun. She could. They will stay on a yacht. She doesn’t want to be around people and to feel constrained to play the social game that she does every day of the week. I understand. It looks like a nice existence from here. And I love her seeming lightness but with that touch of caustic-ness. Bless her.

And then there are the news stories. Another killing and shooting in the US. And for Gaza the terror and horror continues. Seventeen thousand orphans. What do you do with that image? How can it be ingested, made sense of and acted on? My heart is with them. All of them. May their hell end. Soon.

When I walk in the mornings I often think about what I might write about in these pages when I get home. The strident bird song that rang through my ears along North Road was an option. I wanted to mark the power of it. Blackbird song mostly, a kind of whistling, almost tinkling sound that was echoed across the rooftops of the town by others of the same species. It was glorious, and so uplifting, to me at least, not being party to their territorial wars. However, as I began to scale the hill behind Alexandra Hall I saw something flicker across the outcrop just before the road that leads up to the golf club. It was light blue. A series of moving lines. I stood still and watched it become a bird, then an ostrich, then Winnie-the-Pooh with a butterfly on his nose. It was a delight. A light-show projected from one of the windows in the modern halls next to Alex. A gift. It cheered me, made me smile. That’s two things and it’s still night. Thank you, whoever you are.

I am tired. Work is relentless at the moment. I complete one job only to have another waiting to be dealt with. It takes its toll. My legs were weary walking this morning. I gee them on. I try to distract myself, noticing the feel of the cold air in face, through my nostril, listening to bird song and generally paying attention. The walk helps. I find a thrust of energy. Help me to keep going. Today will be a long one.

I look forward to our calls to her each evening (well, afternoon really, but to early risers like me it feels like evening). Her voice differs in strength, some days she is clearly tired, but there is always that humour, that wryness, unexpected in one so reticent to push herself forward. She tells us the latest Bertie tales, reads from the Home’s weekly itinerary (is Banjo Brian on this week? we ask), talks about sport – be it rugby, cricket or football – reports on her walks and what she fell asleep to the night before, (was it Edwardian or Victorian Farm? ), reports on what she had for lunch (rat or something cheesy?) and whether it will be ham on brown that evening. She’s getting stronger on her legs and is managing to, as she says, ‘tootle’ around her room, meaning she can look in her drawers, rearrange and sort things. It is good. It allows her to have a little more control, to survey her treasures. I am so proud of her. She has never given up, never imploded though she had just cause to. She still laughs, makes us laugh – and clearly is a valued member of the Home. Sweet love.