I don’t cry for effect. I can’t help them when they come. I’m full of water. And I’m not good with antagonistic situations, or dealing with shows of other peoples’ rage. I wind him up. Of course I do. We are close and share most of our waking hours. But yesterday I had not resolve and the coffee (he claimed) made him fight-y. In the end it was OK, it always is. We make it so.
Saying hello to the blow-up Santa helped to cheer me as did seeing a newly lit tree in the window of the insurance company on North Parade. The more the merrier. Give me light and lots of it, please.
There’s a mattress that has clearly been deposited on the Prom by the sea during last week’s storm that someone has propped up against a wall. I passed it this morning during my walk. The water has denuded it of all its stuffing and cloth and now it is just the wire skeleton – a mess of circles and lines all tangled with seaweed. A rather marvellous thing.
She is like her. She hurts me just the same. She doesn’t mean to but she does. I remember buying a present for the other her years ago while on a school trip to Chester Zoo. I spent what seemed like hours in the gift shop with my spending money clutched in my sticky hands trying to find something that would please her. In the end I decided on a little mustard pot and spoon. Looking back it was clearly a tacky thing but I thought it grown-up and I knew she loved mustard. I can’t remember how she received it. I never saw her use it or place it on the table. Did she even keep it?
It wasn’t worth it, she wrote. No, it probably wasn’t.
Things happen or I see or overhear things as I walk that I want to write about when I get home. But it is the remembering of them all that is the issue. A bit like that memory game where objects are placed on a tray that you have to memorise so that when some are removed you can recall what’s missing. I either chant them as I walk or try to put them all in a title. I dispensed with the latter option this time for it would’ve been too long (though intriguing).
It all began with the inflatable Santa I saw tethered to one of the terraced houses behind South Marine. He was quite large and lit up all smiling and pink-faced. What a joy in the dark! Silly I know, but I could feel my mouth begin to curve upwards in response. I continue with my tree and fairy light research as I trudge, trying to accept that I must walk slower now that my hips and thighs are as stiff as f**k. The string of lights down the whole length of the house on South Road where still flashing gloriously, and there was a tree up inside Yr Hafen, though it wasn’t lit.
Walking towards Great Darkgate Street I walked into a glut of boys just leaving The Angel. They were laughing and nudging and joshing each other. ‘Shall I mention Newcastle?’ said one. The others egged him on. ‘He was so fucking….’, he continued, but I’d walked on. The clock tower has been adorned with lines of lights but they, like the town’s hanging decorations, are not switched on during the night. Shame. Another bevy of boys were inside the Snakeroom. I’m not really sure what it is, a clothes shop or a tattoo parlour? Who knows? The door was wide open and about ten or more of them clustered around a table.
Making my way towards the Pelican Bakery and then home I saw the baker arrive. I often see his little black hatchback driving past the harbour on his way there. I love being part of the regularity, however small, of other’s lives. He’d gone in the shop by the time I walked past, just in time for me to see the girl with the thin ponytail who usually gets there first to open up and start the proving of the bread, kissing him. It was a peck on the cheek, nothing more but it got me thinking. I know that they are a family firm – so, is he her husband, or brother or even her Dad? I may never know.
I dreamt of the little ones. They were in our beds and restless but beautiful and insistent so that we had to vacate them to let them sleep in all their gorgeous sleepiness. I was told in the same dream that I was dying of cancer. The surgeon is in the other room, someone said. I didn’t mind but knew that I wanted to die with my family around me. I better go and tell my husband, I said.
She makes me feel small with her careless rejections.
A shortish walk (the weekend is my time for pre-breakfast domestic stuff) took me out into the rain and the meeting of the trickle of students returning home after the clubs. Predominantly un-coated, some skittered through the mizzly drizzle shouting, jostling while others just stood in it, seemingly unperturbed by the wet. A group of girls (and possibly one boy – who knows) stood outside Barclays talking and laughing. ‘She liked you from step one’, one of them was saying, which was met by a burst of laughter.
I had a quick look at North Prom. There’s much damage. A brick flower bed is demolished, some stone tiles outside the bandstand have been lifted up, some of the steps outside the hotels on the front have been chipped but worst of all is the shelter. It has been blown through, right through. He is truly homeless now. I hope he wasn’t there when the storm struck, he said this morning when I told him what I’d seen. No, surely not, I said. Was he?
Heading home I met another glut of the homeward-bounders, a group of maybe seven lads and one girl. They split in to two groups with the girl and three of the boys crossing the road. A robust figure in a fake fur bomber jacket, with fulsome legs encased in knee-high transparent socks, the girl began shouting out the names of the boys on the other side of the road and pointing at them as she did so. ‘Will, Elliot,’ she said, ‘Nick and…. and Leon.’ The name was followed by a great roar of recognition from her, to which she added, more softly, ‘my Leon’.
Big J K had promised big winds in my weather report note and he was right. I pushed my poor post-massage-bruised body into it, double-coated and double water-proof trouser-ed, gritting my teeth and longing to return home. Hordes of tiny bambi-legged girls in miniscule skirts seemed to pour down Great Darkgate Street exiting from the late-night clubs and bars at the top of town. Boys in chinos, ties and jackets jostled with each other, like cocks mock-fighting, the noise of them swallowed up by the wind swinging shop signs and making the town Christmas tree sway. I wish they’d leave all the lights on but they don’t. The shops are less parsimonious, their windows are a-light with all sorts, some flashing, some still, most rather haphazard, but I like it, need it. The students are equally celebratory with many of their shared houses ablaze with festive illumination. The house next door to the one with a billiard table in the front room had a string of multi-coloured fairy lights stretching down from its top window to the ground. It looked fabulous in the dark. It made me smile. And the ‘billiard house’ had a huge lit Christmas tree in the first floor window, begging the question of how did they get it up there?
I’ve not seen him at his window smoking for over a week now. It is dark and the blinds are down. Nor have I heard the TV on in their living room in the early hours when I leave for my walk. Is he failing? My heart aches for him. He was a force, mental if not physical. The nurses don’t seem to coming any more either.
Storm Bara (or is it Barra?) has taken its toll on our Prom. I haven’t yet seen it in the flesh, so to speak, but he showed me a video on of the hoteliers along the front made in the midst of it. It looked terrifying. One of the shelters is smashed up and the concrete blocks along the edge of the Prom have been lifted up. I walked along South Marine and down to the Harbour and the road and pavements are scattered with stones and branches. Poor love. Poor Aber, it doesn’t half take a hammering. And from what I did see of North Prom it is deep in shale. And they will not shift it all till the storm season is done. There will be a lot of walking in the road. I hope no one was hurt. No doubt the BBC will send some poor bugger from Cardiff to report on it, he’d said the night before. Did they?
One of the flats in the building opposite has had its ground floor light on for the last few days. I sneaked a look in this morning as I returned home. It was a kitchen and it looked so cosy. Everything neat and just so. I saw what looked like a black cat sitting upright on its haunches, seemingly immobile. It was staring at me as I stared at it waiting to see if it would move. It did.
If you’re living in Aberdeen, said Petroc Trelawney at 6.50 am, you’ll have to wait another hour and a quarter for sunrise.
It’s too dangerous, he wrote on the weather report note that he leaves for me each morning, c/o John Kettley. I went out anyway. And it was. I got soaked. I tell him at breakfast that the storm scares me. Why do you go out in it then? he asks. I don’t know, I say. I think it’s because if I face it I may diminish it’s power over me. I walked into the village and caught the smell of pine needles. That helped. There was a large snowman light in someone’s garden and I noticed that it had been tethered to a fence. Was this in expectation of the storm? He looked so cheerful in that bleak light.
I walked stiffly (‘We’re a couple of old crocs, he said at breakfast.) but was grateful for the relative stillness and quiet. I anticipate the storm with some anxiety. This house takes it full force, the windows feel as it they are go to blow in and the bath on the landing rattles. He is far more sanguine but then he’s had over seventy years experience of living in this sometime sea-battered town. I like and relish the wildness of the sea, but I am also in awe of its possibilities. But the wind is a different matter. What can I say except it isn’t and never should be all about us? It has its role, its place and it will do as it must. It makes me feel vulnerable. But that is as it ought to be. The birds are strangely quiet too, they know what is coming, though I did hear the pip-pipping of a lone oystercatcher from the dark that was the sea this morning.
Oh, keep us safe. Let there be no lives loss, no injuries or more loss of power. We are at your mercy. Be kind.
I lit the second purple advent candle last night. It’s still pitch outside, oh, how we need lights in December. I notice every new Christmas tree that has been put up and lit in the terrace houses I pass on my walk. There was a new one this morning on South Marine. I whisper a thank you and walk on a little gladdened. And there was a fishing boat in the harbour with a garland of lights. How lovely it was too. The wind had died down since yesterday and my walk, though cold, was pleasant. The man who sleeps, or perhaps lives, under the castle now has a small tent. I am so pleased. I mean it’s not a home but there is at least some protection for the wind. Tomorrow I’m to have another new trial with a Norwegian teacher. She appears to be from Brazil. How will that be? I’m sure the fault is mine not theirs. What am I looking for exactly? I will do a little more this morning, or perhaps listen to NRK instead. It is still ingesting, after all. But now I must get on, all those little niggly bits to do before getting down to the form again tomorrow. Perhaps I should christen the form and make it less of a bureaucratic thing. Any suggestions – Fiona, or Fenella perhaps? Or is it a male thing – Fred maybe?
Writing this funding application has meant I’ve not been to the café or indeed outside drawing. I went for a brief spell on Thursday afternoon when the sun came out and then again yesterday. My hands, wrists and indeed my ability to communicate what I see stiffen up. I become too self-conscious and aware of what I’m doing or not doing. But I need to remind myself that this is practice – that off and on sort of stuff and the carrying on whatever the result. But it is hard to see the tentative marks and pedestrian attempts. So be it. Talent has little to do with it, persistence is all. And I shall have another go tomorrow.
We walked afterwards in the wind. The sea raged and looked magnificent.
