Category: Writings

The town is profuse with wild flowers, about which neither of us know anything. I have a go at the names but they are wild guesses, so he bought a second-hand book so that we can learn. Valerian – common and red – is everywhere. They have tight florets of bloom and long, straggly leaves and stems. They seem to emerge in a clump. They are mostly down by the harbour, growing amidst wild poppies, Michaelmas daisies and Orange Gerbera. They are also blossoming among the graves in the Cemetery on Llanbadarn Road. They don’t seem to have a scent. (The book is a little disappointing, I would’ve liked a little more folklore. And isn’t Valerian taken to help you sleep?)

I saw two trails this morning. The first was left from when I saw the Asian woman carrying her recycling bag to the bins yesterday afternoon. An oozing of a white liquid (could’ve been milk) was leaving a line behind her. It leads all the way to the bins and was still there this morning. I watched her from our kitchen window with her daughter straggling behind her in a pink dress. The other was in the sky. A plane, off somewhere exotic or returning. It was a gorgeous white line against a pinkening sky. And then there was the little baby. A blackbird-let, I think. It was huddled against a low wall on North Road. I spoke to it. It didn’t look in distress, just bewildered. Did you pick it up? he asked at breakfast. No, I said, I wanted to but what would be the point and I would only terrify it.

Writing this morning. My writing. Is it easier? No. I ask even more of myself.

We talked about going to the circus.

It’s a total immersion thing, this interviewing and then writing about people. I don’t know any other way of doing it. And I’m drained afterwards, if also a little exhilarated at finishing it. I live what they tell me they have lived. And then, I forget them (though some not entirely), it has to be so, or there wouldn’t be room for the next one and the next. But no, perhaps it’s not a forgetting exactly more a squirrelling away.

I don’t like forgetting. It’s important to hold people, to keep them in sight. Even those who are strangers to us. We need to remember, to keep thinking of them. Like those men caught by the Russians, like all those in war-torn places like Ukraine, like Somalia, like Afghanistan and on and on. And those people who are threatened with being sent to Rwanda. My heartbreaks. Can it really be so?

I get it every couple of months or so. It passes. This time it hurts, no doubt compounded with the other thing, that I am loathe to name, that now resides in both my hips. Walking has been stripped of some of its pleasure. I like to be out, that is always good, but my legs are stiff hobbledehoys. Iron grinds against iron. I wait to hear the clanging. It is a graceless business. But, as I say to myself constantly now, at least I can still do it, get out there, be out there and on my own steam.

And now I must write…..

I stole a little time yesterday, after working, to sit out in it. The wind was strong so I slipped my body in between our car and our neighbours’ one. It still found me though and I froze a little. Between gusts I felt the warmth and was glad of it.

He is sad, and sometimes a little cross about the weather we are having this June. June, he says, it’s June and look at it! Nothing above 18 degrees and he is grieving. I am a little more sanguine. I have work to do and seeing the sun from my window fills me with too much longing. It will come, I tell him, perhaps in July.

I’ve been reading Simon Gray’s Coda. It wouldn’t have been a book I would’ve chosen but it was one of the one’s my online Writing Lives tutor recommended. It’s marvellous. And all those things it says on the front – witty, moving and so on. It’s about his dying, which gives it a sharpness, a residue of melancholy but he must’ve known that he was also being funny. But the thing is is it’s effortlessness. That is it’s marvel. I will seek out other books of his, especially The Smoking Diaries. I think about possibly doing something similar with my drawing outings during which I see much and think about much and people do interrupt or comment on what I am doing. It might make an amusing study. Doing it officially isn’t allowed, but why not informally? I could have a go, couldn’t I?

I find it hard not to work every day. My sense of self is bound up in what I do, whether it be writing or drawing. I feel better about myself if I am striving to do something – my day is fuller for it, richer. But as a result rest is rarely taken, and if it is it can make me grumpy, and more than a little dislodged. So I didn’t take the bank holiday off. I kept working. Though I did a brief 10 minute meditation and during it (and yes, I know that the mind is supposed to be emptying) I thought about how I could rest my mind while still doing. The word ‘play’ came through. And I remembered the Paul Spooner book I got a while ago. I could make playfully (I long to find time to sew but that is not play either – I am too serious about it), and an automaton in paper might be the answer. I like the flash bulb moment it gave me, that precious flicker of insight.

I walked out into the still damp air my face pushing through lines of gossamer. And my feet extra wary now of stepping on snails. There are hundreds about, particularly up that back lane. Large and small, they set off on their treks across paths, exposed and vulnerable and leaving their slimy trails. I hate that crunch under foot and that knowledge of taking an innocent life. I dodge them as best I can, performing a kind of dance as I do so.

He mentioned it a few days ago after saying that he’d bumped into our neighbour’s mother in M&S. She’d told him that someone had told her husband that it was going to happen. He didn’t believe it and said so to her. Then he met her husband the day before last and challenged him about it. He said he had it on good authority and mentioned part of a name, not being able to remember the rest. He knew who he meant and told him the whole double-barrelled name (she’s sometime big in the University, apparently). This is how small towns work. And I find myself caring more than I’d imagined I would. I love that space. I love hearing the cricket being played on it in the summer. I like seeing the young boys with their dads practicing kicking balls. I love hearing the groundsmen mowing it continually through the year, and the smell of the grass leavings. I like to walk into town along it’s paths. I like that fact that it is open to the sky. I don’t want them to sell it and build another block of flats on it. He doesn’t believe it will happen. And I must trust to that.

An angel arrived in our town the night before last. He was there when I turned the corner off the Prom. And what a magnificent being he is. All those blades that are now rusting in their exposure to the air and rain. He stops visitors and the townspeople in their tracks. They stand in silence as they read his story. Only one lad said anything in my hearing. ‘Fucking Hell,’ he said, ‘that’s different ain’t it?’ But he had just been passing and had not read about the knives being confiscated by constabularies from across the UK. He didn’t know that it took 4 years to construct. Nor had he seen the compassion in the angel’s eyes and his hands reaching to help, to save, to bless and to forgive.

Driving to Welshpool a young pheasant, as yet un-feathered, dull and pale, ran out into the road in front of us. I hid my eyes. No! I shouted. Did you hit it? I asked. Yes, he said. Silence. There was nothing I could do, he said, there was a car behind me. Poor love. I hope it was instant. He wasn’t so sure.

I’ve written about him before. His plight touches me. Though to be honest I don’t know that it is strictly a plight. I watch him, as I did last Friday or was it Saturday? He was coming up the stairs that lead to his block of flats, holding his little boy by the hand. Apparently his little girl followed behind. They both carried the same striped miniature overnight bag. They stay with him most weekends. His ex drops them off, her face rigid and shut. They seem happy enough, sometimes running into his block with raucous confidence. He looks sad. He smokes each morning his bottom resting on the barrier and his legs hanging, reading messages on his phone. How does he feel to be alone and without them? Does he stay here to be near them? There doesn’t seem to be a partner. Has she met someone new? Oh, the mess of it all.

She came into the coffee shop on her own yesterday and took a table next to ours. I like her. Yes, she is opinionated (Putin: ‘He should be shot’, Town: ‘It’s a disgrace’ and so on) but there is a something warm and motherly about her gruff indignation. She is a small-town woman. I asked if she was going away for the summer. ‘I’ve not been away for what 20 years,’ she replied, adding ‘Why would you want to? I’ve got everything I need here.’ She pronounces about the weather: ‘It’s going to rain this afternoon, and the weather is shocking. It’s so cold.’ He gets her onto the council office closure. Or was it me? We play with her a little, pushing buttons to see what she says. It is a gentle fun, and done with warmth. She never asks us anything. I don’t mind. She is the important one. They are opening at the beginning of the month, apparently. ‘But not the reception, ‘ she says, ‘that will still be closed to the general public. It’s shocking.’ Then its the Queen’s Jubilee. Any street parties planned here? I ask. ‘Nothing,’ she says, ‘it’s a disgrace. Aberaeron have got their bunting out and everything. And the town is so clean. Not like here. It’s a disgrace.’ She finishes her coffee. It’s a Sunday but she’s still got two holiday lets to clean. ‘It’s my busiest time, ‘ she says. She calls me ‘Bach’ before she leaves, and tries a smile. Bless her. I love her bluster, her neatness, the psychedelic sweatshirt hoodies she wears over her thigh-hugging leggings. And her voice, a smoker’s voice. She hasn’t mentioned her shoulder or her back for sometime, or how she still misses her cat. That will keep for next Sunday.