The rain came down steadily. I took an umbrella and avoided the Prom. Students were out, coatless as per. Three girls ran in tight vests and high heels down the slippery paving stones of Great Darkgate Street, shouting and screaming. The rain is stinging my eyes, shouted one.
What do you think this is? I asked the nurse who was to give me a smear. It’s a skin tag apparently. Quite harmless, as cell gone wrong. Oh, how our bodies continually surprise us, thinking up such things. It’s a mercy it’s not on my face. Heigh ho.
My first interview in weeks. She seems lovely. A gentle return, I hope.
I wore two coats today, one on top of another. It was mostly to protect me from the rain that was promised (and came). Though I was still cold. The wind bit through the fabric. Ah, that’s because it was a north wester, he said later. It’s funny how obsessed we have become with the weather now that we take our daily walks. And it does dominate here. One is so exposed.
I dreamt I was naked and about to set off on a journey. I’m often naked in my dreams, not a shamefaced nakedness but a matter-a-fact, this is what I am kind. I was about to set off and then I thought, I don’t have to do this, I don’t have walk about so open, so exposed and so vulnerable and have people stare at me. So I went and got a dressing gown. It wasn’t quite correct and people might still stare but I was covered, and warm. I told him about it at breakfast. I think it was good to realise that I had a choice and took it. I don’t feel so under the weather today. Is it passing, this thing, this mystery dis-ease? Dentist now and then a smear later. Both are so unpleasant, the soft warmth of my body shrinks from such intrusions (all that cold metal) but it must be done, mustn’t it?
I meant to write about him yesterday but only remembered it as I got into bed – so it is with an ageing brain, I fear. It had happened when I was walking in the rain yesterday and getting soaked. I’d decided to turn back as my gloves were sodden and rain was getting into my boots, so I’d taken a left into Pier Street. He was standing outside Chickin’ Lickin’. I heard him before I saw him. Fuck off, he was shouting, you just fuck off. My heart fell. I sneaked a quick glance at him. He was alone. Who was he talking to? Did you just tell me to fuck off? he said. No answer. Well, you can fuck off, he continued, just FUCK OFF! By then I was almost running.
It’s Fresher’s Week, or as the banners around town would have it, FRESSURE. They are everywhere, poor loves, looking lost and wide-eyed, making friends where they may. Pairs of girls wander around. I heard two yesterday, as I walked back from drawing in the bus station. It was definitely beyond Premier, one said, no doubt trying to remember where their digs were. I drew outside the SPAR and tried to sketch a boy, much-tattooed and sporting a bright pink quiff underneath his black beanie, and then listened to a group of school kids trying to work out where to go now that school was ‘out’.
Pier Pressure night club has clearly opened its doors again in celebration of the students’ return for they can be seen making their way back up the hill in the early hours or sitting on the Prom’s benches, coatless and in the rain. I saw one sleeping standing up in the doorway of Godwins Solicitors.
He leaves me notes for when I wake in the morning, purportedly from John Kettley, the weather man. Ketters here, he writes. I love seeing them on the stairs. He got it wrong this morning. Some light shower! So be it. It is only weather.
Not feeling 100% today. It will pass. It always does. Meanwhile there are things to do, things to do…..
It was chucking it down when I woke. My heart sank. I need to walk. Should I or shouldn’t I? I went. And got drenched. I did 50 minutes of it and then gave up. I was a pool of water standing on our door mat. I tried to savour it. It is just rain after all. And there were the inevitable students about, coatless and running. The sea looked wild.
We talked about fear and vulnerability (mine mostly) at breakfast, in between my reading about Dorothea’s cold marriage and his reading the news. It all melds together into one, I cannot extricate one from t’other.
It had rained just before I went out for my walk and when I got out the air smelled fresh and cleaned through, despite the warmth. It is always good to get out no matter how reluctant I feel beforehand. My legs are still cranky. Perhaps all will be explained on Monday. Rain is forecast for the whole week, so today may be my last drawing day for a bit. I went do to the harbour again yesterday to try out my new dip pen. Some days it doesn’t flow. I know it but I keep going. I stood for a while by the mouth of the bridge watching a woman. She was leaning against the wall and a downpipe, her stick resting against her arm. She appeared to be nodding off. Should I help her? Is she distressed? She didn’t seem to be. Is she drunk? I thought and then felt guilty for thinking so. Her attire was a little garish – snazzy shorts topped with a pink cardi. I couldn’t work out her age – 60 or 70 or maybe younger. I left her in the end, my uncertainty and fear of unwonted intimacy making me passive. It turned the day. I didn’t like myself and consequently my drawings.
Notions of the Taliban and their intentions come through via the news bulletins. So dark. What is to be done? Oh, to be child again, blind to such chaos. Though not all are, are they, Ellen? Think again.
Returning home the sky, behind the National Library was purple. Is that a man-made phenomenon or is it natural?
The sun is trying to come out through the clouds. It isn’t as grey and bleak as they promised. Might there be sun?
I dreamt of a man, he had a big white face with barely any distinguishable features. I think he was married to a woman that I’d met on an Arvon course. She told me how he’d put together a kind of family tree for his grandchildren but it involved heavy precious stones which I was concerned about carrying as I had such a long way to travel. I tried to do the same but worried about what I had brought them with all those familial complications. Don’t worry, he said to me oh so kindly, you are good and kind and beautiful and will be forgiven. (I paraphrase what I believe he meant to say for the words weren’t spoken but made tacitly manifest. Either way I felt beloved.)
I just planted some hyacinth bulbs. So our few pots are now, seemingly barren but awaiting spring. Will they sprout (along with the crocuses)?
I think too much. I think too much in the mornings. They are bleak times for me. But I have my mother’s genes and I keep going on.
It isn’t exactly pain. It is more of an ache, a discomfort. But it is constant. I thought it might be muscular, or worse skeletal. It’s been there for over 3 months and it hampers my walking and my yoga practice. I went to see the physio yesterday, a kind woman who is sensitive to my oddities, I think. She looked bemused, got me to stand and stretch. It’s not your muscles, she said, it’s your glands.
It scared him. He panics. I saw the same with him and his mother. I understand. I need you, he said. It may be nothing, I say in return, just a long-standing bladder infection, probably. And it probably is, just that. But he still dashed over to the surgery and booked me in. Nothing till Monday, and that will only be a phone call. Diagnosis at a distance is clearly the way forward. We shall see.
I did still draw, though the tiredness dogs me. I need to keep pushing at my safety. I want to find my line, my way of expressing what I see (and feel) and I’m a long way off. I drew in the boatyard and then the harbour. I wanted to be alone but two blokes sat in a van across from me talking and running the engine. Then I sat and drew a boat on blocks. I love all the paraphernalia of harbours. But they are still static things. I need to manage movement. I did draw a little outside the station. You get some rum characters there, and outside Wetherspoons. I watched as three elderly ladies mounted their bus in a glut of shopping and jaunty hats. It was a dial-a-bus kind of affair – clearly they live in the sticks and have come for their weekly shop. Will I have the nerve to ask someone to sit for me soon?
I often see him, particularly now that I am out around town drawing. I think he must be a rough sleeper. There are the usual signs, such as the wearing of a thick heavy coat no matter the weather. He was the one I saw on the beach scavenging stones and putting them in his pockets. I wonder if he is the one sleeping under the castle. He was ahead of me as I walked up the little incline by the side of Rummers. He stopped by a small bollard and taking a tiny paper bag out of his pocket proceeded to empty its entire contents of peanuts on top of it. He did it carefully and turned back a few times to check on his handiwork. Were they for the pigeons, or the gulls or was it some sort of ritual?
It was hard going drawing yesterday. It is always tougher in the mornings. But I did it. First I drew the health food shop building on Baker Street with its statue of Queen Victoria and then I went back to the boatyards. I’m fascinated by all the paraphernalia of boats. But, as I say it was hard and I grew cold and stiff. And so went home to sleep. Which made me grumpy. He has to put up with so much from me. Poor love.
Town is quiet these mornings. The tide is out and the light is soft and muted. I can almost hear the town breathing. Down by the harbour there is the usual hum of generators. It is a special time, a liminal time. Mine. And broken only by a man I can see walking towards me on the other side of the road and the inevitable clog of drunken students loitering on benches opposite Gwesty Cymru. One has no shirt on and is shouting, rather loudly, at his companion. I cross the road. I’d seen two others when I walked along Mill Street. The man was wielding a bottle and swigging from it in a rather exaggerated fashion. His female companion, whose substantial bottom had been squeezed into a very tight denim mini skirt, was huffing and puffing her way along, no doubt eager to be home. I crossed the road and only turned round to see what had become of them when I’d reached the end of the street. He was sitting on a wall and she was still breathing heavily. I think they then went into the block of flats there.
I sat out yesterday afternoon for half and hour after my Norwegian lesson. They always exhaust me. So much concentration. But good. They are good. And she is a warm woman. So alive. I sat there trying to read a book of essays and watched as a wasp landed on my thigh. They come so lightly. They are curious. Is it the smell of body cream? It is like a kiss. I feel no fear. Not anymore.
Some days I just am, a crosspatch that is. Don’t be a crosspatch, my mother would say. I don’t know why or perhaps I do but the investigation is too uncomfortable. I just am cross. Cross with myself, so much so that nothing ends up feeling right. Poor love, and he has to put up with it. Stop frowning, he says.
We had a row at breakfast. Well, it’s never a full-blown fracas, more of a falling-out. It doesn’t last. We talk about it, but the residue is there. It is me. What do I want? I don’t know. To feel better about myself?
We went into town early so that I could draw before my appointment. It is never the same. It is too safe really, with him. I prefer to be out and exposed and free.
I am scared, that is the nub of it. The work, the real work, the earn money and feel better about oneself kind of work, has dried up and I am adrift. Yes, I have lots to do there is my drawing, my sewing, my writing, my reading and all those domestic chores that pay my way, but nothing from outside of me that will put money in my dwindling bank account. And I don’t know what to do about it. Beg? He says not to worry, that we have enough. But I don’t believe him, am scared to rest too heavy on his resources. Will anything come? Will it?
