Author: Ellen Bell

It’s not real, he says whenever I get too caught up in a drama that we are watching. I know, I know this but I cannot help being sucked in. As I have been with Sanditon 2. It’s a terrible mish-mash of Austen-esque melodrama, flying off into ludicrous plot-lines but I am still caught up, particularly in Esther’s plight with the threat of Edward’s attempt to gaslight her. He is too much. A real arch-villain with his raised right eyebrow and smirks. And then there’s the artist – a beautiful man but again stretching the bounds of reality. Ah me. What a show. I want to end but I also don’t. Rather like life after all.

They’ve fixed the water leak on Llanbadarn Road, finally.

I endeavour each morning, when that darkness is most heavy, to concentrate on the small, the sensual and the pleasurable. There’s the rather saccharine but not unpleasant smell of my banana-scented bubble bath; there’s the bath itself, slightly hot as it thaws away the cold of me; there’s the music from Radio 3, sometimes divine other times not so, and the warm sweetness of my breakfast baked apple. Yesterday it was the taste of Assam tea. I usually drink Lapsang Souchong – I love that hint of smoke – but yesterday I tried the Assam. It was dark, rich and strong. Lovely. I thought of her and the pot she usually has of it in her garden first thing. She takes such care of things – in her slow, measured way. She isn’t a rusher like me. I think of her often when I want to be more mindful. I fall short, always.

There’s no doubt that my exterior world (and indeed, my exterior self) has shrunk, contracted, become smaller. And I don’t really know how I feel about this. Have I made it happen? Do I feel happier for it? There is much that I miss. Like travel or should I say escape? And the joy that comes with that – like those first steps on the Millennium Bridge as we make our way towards the Tate Modern and London in all its murk and glory pans out on both sides. Or being in the hot sun of Italy and Spain and lazing on chairs or sunbeds like lizards. Or just being on the move anywhere but here where all my fears and dreads live and flourish. And yet, here is where I have chosen to be and the grounding and my bed and my love are what keep me safe and sane. And I am grateful, profoundly so, to be fed, dry, warm and safe. And there are small joys, like that smell of toast yesterday morning when I went down to collect the parcel outside the front door, or the aroma of coconut from the tea lights I was burning at breakfast. I drink these in. I must and do. I know how fortunate I am and how sorrowful so many others are. I feel for them, always.

They’ve taken such a long time in coming that I wasn’t sure if we’d see any blooms, but they’ve started. A soft, white form is beginning to show on one and a tip of the same on another. I think you are supposed to grow them outside. I have them on the windowsill in the shared hallway downstairs. It was a blatant act of selfishnessness, I wanted to see them. The hyacinths have gone. What a pleasure they were while they lasted. The smell was luscious. I’m not sure if I will keep the bulbs for another year, though I do hate to discard anything with the potential for life. We shall see. For the mean time I will leave them where they are.

That poor child. May she rest in peace now.

I’m struggling to work out why it is that I find her difficult. I suppose it is something to do with her lack of acknowledgement when I send her what she requires and the hoops I have to go through to get her to respond. Is is just about ego though? Is there more to my struggles with her than feeling like I am unimportant to her? After all, do I really care what she thinks? There’s a sharpness to her that challenged me from the start. She blows hot and cold. It’s a microcosm of that other relationship in which I was also an outsider. I tried too hard, I suspect, but there was no script. As there isn’t with this woman. Must I just accept that we do things differently? Is that the way toward grace?

Life, I’ve come to realise is mostly a cobbled-together affair. There is nothing clean, neat or orderly about it. Ah, we make grand plans when we are younger, imagining that everything will be seamless and smooth and oh, so beautiful. It is not, and can never be so. We are messy beings, internally and externally and we encounter others who are equally so. It makes me sad. I cannot make it all better. I cannot solve things. I cannot make peace with her, or with her or her, or indeed, him. I don’t have any answers just this day to day trying, of picking up dust and fluff and trying to make it all pristine. He is the only thing that makes sense, that sometimes can be pure beauty to me. The rest makes me want to weep. I don’t understand why there has to be so much pain, so much despair, so much conflict. Do we all carry the germs of it all inside and the outer world is just a reflection of that inner fighting? I don’t know. I know less and less. We do what we can, fail and then fail better.

Forgive us for we know not what we do.

It was a word she used to describe the clearing up of a mystery. He said it was the wrong word. I think it might be the right word to describe what seems to be happening to Smoker (2). Or so it seems to me as I catch glimpses of him through his venetian blinds. I try not to snoop. I look for his light to come on, in his bedroom first and then his kitchen downstairs. It’s usually about 6.30am. I see him stretched across, or on the edge, of his unmade bed (usually black sheets) reading his phone. He doesn’t seem to smoke out of the window anymore. Perhaps he has given up and my appellation for him is no longer apposite. Anyway, his room, and indeed his clothes and hair are becoming distinctly disorderly. There are dirty clothes left on the floor, the clothes rack is still up and still heavy with those perpetually drying clothes. Is it all a sign of unhappiness? Is he missing his children, or is he just lost? Or is it all none of my business? I feel an affinity with him, though I don’t know him at all. And the narrative I spin for him is all mine. I hope I am wrong. Truly.

He is an elusive character. Is it real, or a bluff? I find him intriguing. It’s a kind of seesawing. Not unlike trying to coax a fox or even a rabbit out of its lair. He gives something, a little teasing thing and then silence. And then something more comes, out of the ether. Is he interested, will he respond…. I am tired. Tired of tricksy people and trying to walk on tippy toes. I just want to do my work and move on, and back to my drawing….. And yet, I want to be kind and support and celebrate my fellow artists, always. Oh, can it be simpler, please?

The astrology guru had warned that there might be something coming on the tail end of the full moon. And she wasn’t wrong. Oh, how it throws me. And she was all sweetness when we met that day. Or maybe that was just my take on it. I cannot understand what she is so upset about. I had tried so hard to be sensitive to her, her work, her mother’s practice and their shared grief. My head spins with reasons. I cannot know. Just like I cannot know how my own one thinks. And she is certainly lost to me, if she was ever mine. The editor is being kind but for how long she will be so I don’t know. But I must just pick myself up and carry on. I have four pieces to write and still so much to do. Onward.

She is beginning to sound more like her old self. Her voice is still relatively quiet but she is starting to respond to the usual banter that she and he usually engage in, even going so far as to ask: “What’s the goss from the coffee shop?”. And she is reading again. “I started Ruth but the introduction got a bit hard going, so I’m back with Lucy Worsley.” It’s something. “Did you walk at all?” he asked. “Yes,” she said, “with the Sarah Steady.” Apparently the frame is called Sarah because the designer made it for his wife, or was it his sister. I love it. God bless her. Let her find her will again. For it is tremendous.