Author: Ellen Bell

I’ve always felt other people’s lives acutely. That is, what I felt or understood to be their lives. Not the whole, obviously, but I enter into the spirit of that moment of their existence. It’s both a stimulating and exhausting habit. It makes me genuinely interested as an interviewer and as a friend and I hope wife and sibling. But I soak too much sometimes. I cannot detach. I often ponder on why I have acquired this habit. Was it my watchful child trying to read other’s emotions, particularly our mother’s, so as to protect myself, to be prepared for a change in them that might indicate danger? He says I am always asking questions of others when we are out together. He implies that its a kind of deflection and, to a certain extent, he is right. But I am genuinely interested in the people I encounter. I want to know them, and the lives they lead. I am curious but it is a kind curiousity not prurient. But there’s also an element of escape involved. I step out of my life and into theirs. It’s nice, relaxing for a time. I like to shrug mine off now and then. It’s a heavy thing, this carrying of self. Do they mind? I hope not. I don’t want intimacy, just to be able to stand in their shoes a while. That’s all.

Is it an obsession now? I don’t know. I certainly feel compelled to draw everyday. I want to get better though what that will feel like when, or if, I ever get there, again I am not sure. Instagram is part of it. I want to post each day. Or should I say need to? I began doing so for the GW project but now I think it has become more than that. I need validation, I always have. I cannot trust my own judgement when it comes to my drawing. And I respect that of many of those who ‘tick’ me or comment. They are kind souls but they have integrity too. Perhaps I just have to accept that this is the way it is for the time being at least. I think about drawing all the time. All the time.

I know that part of trying to live life in a state of grace is about acceptance and not taking things personally. Summer has not been what most of us expected, me included. The light has been gray, mostly and overcast with cloud, and it has rained and rained. I miss the sun. Can I admit that? I miss its energy and life-affirming warmth. Will it come again? Perhaps autumn will be brighter, or winter might be mild with clear days. We can only hope and remain open to it. This is what has been brought to us. And as a result there is still so much green. Be thankful. Water is precious.

When I saw him getting out of the van on Wednesday it felt a little like that scene in Amelie when she discovers that it’s the technician that keeps leaving the unwanted photos in the passport photo kiosk. As with Amelie it all fell into place. He was Smoker (2) and it turns out that he is the owner or user of the Openreach van that we see parked just beyond what we call the courtyard. I’ve often mused over what he did for a living. He seemed to be at home at lot, certainly when his two little boys get out of school. And there it is. He’s a spy. That’s what we call the Openreach brigade. They park up by the now derelict Tax Office. A clogging of vans, in which they can be seen sitting in the front eating their lunch or snacking on coffee and rolls. Men mostly, though there are some women, their work is a mystery. Hence the spy reference. Perhaps it’s true. Perhaps they listen in to our phone conversations. Who knows. Stranger things have happen. He never gives us eye contact. A self-contained man who I used to attribute unhappiness to. Perhaps I was wrong. I hope so.

I strode out onto Llanbadarn Road this morning in the still pitch dark and saw an object in the middle of the road. I thought it was a seagull chick. It had that nonedescript greyness to it. Was it sleeping? Or was it distressed or wounded? Before I had time to investigate I heard and saw a car. It was moving fast, its light shining a beam of white across the tarmac. The creature roused itself up onto its feet. Will it make it? I held my breath. It made it. The car zoomed past. I watched as it scurried off making a bee line for the wilderness of the garden belonging to the property developer who died a year or so ago. It wasn’t a seagull chick but a hedgehog. I’ve rarely seen one at large. It was a big one, clearly an adult. It moved quickly, it’s little back legs moving at a rapid pace. I was lifted by the sight. A wildness to treasure.

Two diggers on caterpillar feet are beginning to flatten our garden. I am made sad by it.

I was waiting outside our front door waiting for him to lock up and slam the back door shut when I heard singing. It began with someone humming a tune. It was clearly directed at someone else so as to remind them of a melody. Then the same voice began singing what sounded like a hymn. It was again a singing that was aimed at encouraging another to join in, when she did. I stood and listened. The female voice was frail, wavering, the younger one, a man was strong though perhaps not delivered at full strength. It was our neighbour, of course. I was standing outside her bedroom window which was slightly ajar, and the voices, carried through from the open plan living room/kitchen of her flat, were coming from her and her youngest son. He is her latest visitor. They come thick and fast these days. Do they anticipate her death soon? Can they know? Or is it that they want to be with her as much as they can before she does go? I hope so. He seems fond of her, her jokes with her, much of which she misses no doubt. Nor does he seem to shout. She hears him. Is that significant? Anyway, it was lovely to hear them sing together. He would take her to church later and play the organ for them. Nice.

The falling tomatoes have been righted. The new owners of Elephant’s House are back. All is well.

The fury of the wind on Thursday night upended the new owners of Elephant’s House’s tomatoes. They’ve capsized onto each other, their stalks and canes a mess of spillikins. Poor loves. By contrast the perfect couple nextdoor’s tomatoes are still in tact and also riper.

I’ve been discombobulated too. Technology and my rather too urgent desire to make all safe with LBU. Mercury is retrograde and all is a tangle. I have to let it be. As I do all my other failings and fallings. It is life. And an easy, charmed life compared to others. This I try to remember. Always.

We often talk outside the coffee shop while we wait for it to open. He is usually there before us, with his headphones clamped to his ears. He’s talked of the lack of bakeries before. It clearly rattles him. “Who’s going to do something about the fact that there’s no bakery anymore?” he asked. I suggest that he tries Medina, though I don’t hold out much hope that he will like what they have to offer. He is very specific about what he is after. “White rolls,” he says, “soft white rolls.” I suspect that what they sell will be ultra healthy, crusty and smelling divine. Heigh ho.

I chipped a bit off my tooth last Sunday evening. I went to the dentist and I’m now booked in for a filling. My heart sinks. It is so expensive, but it has to be done. While I was there he mentioned my wisdom tooth again. He’s been talking about it for the whole time I’ve been going to see him. Ten years now. This time he looked grave. (He always stands with his back against the wall, one of his legs raised up behind him, when he delivers the prognosis). What will that cost? I shudder to think. I don’t want to lose it. He says that I won’t notice it. I have to trust, to yield.

She looked the same. She was full of good spirits, as was he. Their garden was a joy. Her skin was the only revealer of unwellness. It smelt acrid and was bone-dry. Her eyes filled with water at every emotion. They were the same azure blue.

He read out Rod Liddle’s article last night while I made supper. His is usually rather caustic, leaning towards the right, journalism but this time it was more thoughtful, even rather derisive towards himself. He wrote about an incident from his past when he was working in London, and how, like crowds of others, he’d stepped over a man who’d collapsed so as to get on the tube in time for work. He had cause to remember it when he heard about the Norwegian mountaineerer who has been accused of leaving one of her sherpas to die alone on the mountain side. We all have such stains on our consciences. I am certain of it. I have them, though I can’t remember the specifics in the way that Liddle can. All those things we have done or not done that scar our sense of self. The unkind, the selfish acts that make us in-humane rather than human. I’ve been unbrave. I’ve avoided reaching out to comfort a stranger. I know I have. Was it fear of intimacy, of boundaries broken? Who knows. We are all guilty of it. Look at the way we behave as a nation over the refugees who come here across dangerous waters for safety. We turn away, we castigate and label them and then put them on insanitary barges or worse ship them off to Rwanda. We do not see human beings. I am ashamed of myself, of all of us. Let us do better. Let us know better. Let us be kind.

I woke from a dream the other morning struggling to settle upon which word he’d used. I was on a journey. I was to meet her and we were to go somewhere together. I had an address. She didn’t come. I knew this even before I got to where we were supposed to meet. I wanted to send her my phone number but I couldn’t remember it. The numbers wouldn’t come. Nor would the address. I was in a huge terminus. I was on the top floor looking down on thousands of people milling around below me. Then he was there. We looked up to the roof. There were faux clouds that looked like they were made from kapok or cotton wool. There was no sky. I could see dust in the corners. “We can see the beginning of the clouds here,” he said. But I think he meant to say birth. The birth of the clouds.