Category: Writings

Warm nights seem to make people of certain age in this town a little crazy. Perhaps its an inability to sleep. Bodies were abroad. I did not have the Promenade to myself. There was noise. A group of kids were scampering across the wet sand beneath the harbour quay. Two of them, girls, were giggling. At every thing. It sounded like they intended to steal or borrow one of the boats that were moored up. A dingy perhaps or a rowing boat. As I was walking back I saw them driving a small red car further along the Prom and parking up. All with the maximum amount of noise and screeching of tyres. They all piled out. The girls, after a short whispered conference between themselves, resumed giggling. I don’t know where they went after that, maybe the beach. The boat rustling was clearly a failure. Two figures were already on the beach, lit up yellow by a fire. Prior to this I’d seen a man in a pair of shorts, his chest bare leave the house on the corner of South Marine and walk round to the one next door. He then walked into the road and appeared to throw something up to the top window. The narrative, his narrative sound became clear. The top flat was ablaze with light. I could see a young man either dancing or throwing his hands up into the air. There were sounds of music and shouting. So that was it. The man (I could now see he was grey-haired) had clearly been woken by the noise and was trying to get them to stop by ringing doorbells or throwing stones at their window. Neither were being successful. I hope he got some sleep eventually.

I find it all so frenetic. Too much, when silence is what one wants. But as The Stones memorably sang, you can’t always get what you want. I’m off drawing today, a new tactic in response to the sun. I will go armed with my flask of tea and see what I can see. The Norwegian class left me high. That was nice. We sparked each other. It felt good after my dark Monday. You see, he said, it always passes.

It’s still there, bless it. We’ve just passed it this morning, it’s rigor-ed body yet in tact. It must have missed its timings leaping across the road, as they do, and been hit by a car. Death has frozen it in a flying posture, its tail and paws aloft.

A low day yesterday, brought about by all and nothing, as it usually is. Walking and being out drawing yesterday helped. The drawing was up and down but all those men sleeping in the sun, their bellies full of fish and chips helped. I need to still myself, to breathe and to take time to look before the marks are made.

Today is better. I am better. The glorious sun helps. And already it is warm. As did the break in routine, our going out for coffee so that I could draw before getting my hair cut. I like her. We talk about her mobile home. She’s to go to Jersey soon. I love the cosiness of her chat, the way her life with W and their dog is offered up as warm as a currant bun. Bless her for her cheerfulness, when she can’t always feel it. And him, so jaunty in his new jacket.

Two students were sitting in the middle of the Promenade pavement, just beneath the War Memorial as I walked this morning. They were in deep conversation. He sat cross-legged and she kneeled, facing him. I think he might have been crying.

The echo of an oystercatcher’s pip pipping was carried across the sea, while gulls ripped open bin bags on Chalybeate Street a day early.

My body aches and I fantasise about a massage. She writes of her pain and I think of another in hospital and another newly placed in a nursing home.

There are so many things going on with my current drawing practice. (My whole life is a practice – and that’s OK, isn’t it?) I mean there isn’t just the challenge of observing better, of preserving my stamina, of paying attention, of composition and quality of line but my engagement with those whom I draw. I feel such warmth for those I watch (such as this old man, who had clearly had a stroke. His friend had to help him off the bench and kind of shift his legs for him. They spoke in Welsh, with soft, reminiscing voices). It is a kind of love, certainly. And often what I feel is not in the drawings. Ah, I have such a way to go.

It was an unexpected joy. For they are utterly joyous. The way in which they curve into an arc as they fly out of the water is quite marvellous. We were all enraptured. For people had gathered, stopping their cars and rolling down windows, or leaning over the Promenade railing, or rushing onto the beach cameras and phones in hand. Some were even on the water, paddling or standing on surf boards. I felt lifted and stopped still. Thank you.

What are you doing? People kept asking me questions. I felt a little invaded. First it was the lad who we’d see in Caffe Nero on Wednesday, whom I’d tried to draw. What are you working on? he asked. I’d been drawing in the harbour and he’d made his way down from the house he’d been working in to ask me that question. A nice lad. A pleasant open face. I didn’t take offence. He was genuinely interested. Unlike the landowner (‘I own several properties around here’) who interrupted my drawing of the digger outside his derelict property with its sparkling white fence to ask me what I was doing. Apparently his tenant (he has a tenant in that ramshackle house – I thought I’d seen a light on some mornings) who had ‘bad Asperger’s) had seen a masked and hooded figure looking suspicious. I showed him my drawings (not a flicker) and said I was only interested in the machinery.

My drawing goes up and down. I can feel when it is slipping from me and when I make back compositional decisions. It all goes in the bank, he says.

The sun is trying to come out, though a liquidy cloud persists. The cleaning is done for today.

She had Covid-19. Her daughter rang me to tell me she was going into hospital. She has it too and with a young babe to care for. Poor loves. How helpless we are with other people’s pain.

The town jeweller has died. He took over the business from his father, so he and his shop have been part of the town’s architecture for a long time. A woman he knows in M&S told him about it yesterday. I questioned how she had heard about it, being from Aberaeron. Oh, everyone will know, he said. When I walked past his shop this morning (all boarded up) I saw that someone had placed a small pot of mauve chrysanthemums on the step.

The geraniums been looking so tired, and knotty and gnarled. It was time. So I pulled them out this morning before my work. It was a violent act. They’d put in such roots. Soil went everywhere and the hall light, being a push in timer switch kept going off. It was almost comical. I didn’t like doing it. I don’t like killing things. And it felt like a murder. I will plant hyacinths in their stead. But for now I want the blankness. The sweet peas are still flowering. I took one of the seed pods (wait until they are papery, the website said) and, not being sure what to do with it I placed it on a dish in the kitchen. Eating breakfast I heard a noise, a kind of ripping, but couldn’t work out where it came from. He didn’t notice it. When I looked it was the pod, it had split open of it own accord. Six seeds. I will keep them in a bag and plant them next year. Who knows?

Drew again yesterday afternoon, though the wind in the harbour was unrelenting. I will return today and perhaps with some crayons.

Sometimes life is inordinately strange, and that’s not to say that I don’t like it being so, for I do. Like the other day when I was walking beneath the war memorial and I saw something flashing from inside a wastebin. I was loathe to stick my head inside to see what it was, so I just left musing upon whether it was a torch that someone had chucked in there or a mobile or something less logical. And then yesterday afternoon my alarm clock went off without prompting, just once, just one urgent ring then it stopped.

The spiders are coming in. Or that is how it seems. There is one huge one that is always scurrying over Bryan our sausage dog draught excluder behind the front door when I return from my walk. And then there is the moth that has taken up residence on one of our geraniums on the windowsill. It flaps about a bit when I water them but then returns to its perfect camouflage when the spraying stops.

We went to see the picture. I was a little disappointed. Not in the image but in the cramped space it had been hung it (a kind of corridor of flats). But it was nice to be at the gallery, though the café is a sad demise.

He dropped me by the Prom on our way home and drew and redrew the little coffee van. A young lad told his mother to get out of the way so that I could see properly. She hadn’t noticed me but he had and he kept watching me out of the side of his eye, wary but interested. The drawing came better……I think.

(Oh, and here is the digger I spoke off. I love watching it in use. It is a dinosaur-like being, ever hungry, and slow and heavy in movement, lumbering even. I shall return to draw it.)

Should we interfere with Nature? Or what we call Nature? In cases like these, I always think of L. P. Hartley’s Shrimp and the Anemone. I did it anyway. There was a cat, a small black one that I saw on the other side of the road, just below the rock under the castle. It was teasing something with its paw. I walked over and saw that it was a tiny field mouse. I raised my stick (I walk with one sometimes as my hips are a little stiff in the mornings) not to hit out at it but to scare, the cat that is, away. The cat was most reluctant and the mouse seemed too much in shock to move. When I looked back it had gone. You won’t eat it, I told the cat, nor do you need to (though it did look a little skinny). It looked at me with what I read as scorn. It was certainly cross. I had denied it it’s plaything. I walked on.

The sea was a gentle lapping and I could see the lights of two boats in the distance. The lights were still but strong, where they collecting lobster or crab pots? Two men were outside the Marine Hotel, one stood, the other sat. The sitting one called out Good Morning to me. And I replied in kind.

She walks everyday, breaking her tour of the estate with a sit on her seat (that is, a pile of railings and bricks on the, so far, abandoned building site). Sometimes she sleeps and other times she stares, or thinks or prays, who knows? She is locked inside herself, deafness and virtual blindness must do that. But I don’t think she is unhappy, merely waiting out her days (it cannot be long, she is 103 this year).

I keep drawing. I ask much of myself. I know when they work and when they don’t even in the doing of them. It’s a life, an energy, sometimes it just isn’t there. Yesterday was a challenge, I’d grown out of the habit of drawing things and people in motion. And I was self-conscious. Will I improve? Practice makes perfect, someone said in my head.

Was it listening to Northanger Abbey and Catherine Morland with all her wide-eyed wonder at Bath and the Abbey? I mean I am content. I love him. And it is marvellous to be so cherished and understood and respected. It’s just sometimes I long for an adventure, to be taken out of this, this known life and somewhere different. Just to be somewhere, someone different for a little while.

We are off to see The House of Cards on Wednesday, so that will be an adventure of sorts. And later I will go and draw. I’ve missed it. And it is enough. It is.

I heard him before I saw him, running towards me down St David’s Road. I couldn’t make out his face it was too dark, but his hair was black, he was tall and thin and didn’t wear a coat. Excuse me, he called. Hello, can you help me? Oh, no, I thought (hating to talk to people when out walking , lost in my selfish bubble of thoughts) what can he want? Can you tell me where I can find the Four Seasons Budget? It took me a while to orient myself. What and where is that? Oh, yes it’s that cheap hotel where my niece stayed once, though I’ve never heard it called ‘budget’ before. I managed to cobble together some directions, though I don’t think he heard. I’ve been man-handled, he said. What? I had no idea what he was talking about, though he did seem a little distressed. Had he been raped? I’ve been man-handled by a woman and now she has thrown me out. What could I say? I’m sorry. I gave him the directions again – don’t forget to turn turn right at the bakery – and he scuttled off.

One of the Kray twins have been killed. Ronnie, the hunter, has been run over. She stopped him to tell him yesterday. She must be devastated. She’s had them five years, he said.

She’s been moved to a local community hospital. She is getting better, though he’s not sure if she can walk yet. Her husband is deteriorating fast. They, her sons and his, are looking for a home for them both. I am sad for her and for him. They were so much in love, he said. And she is so private a person. And she loved her home. I am sorry.

I heard voices from the sea, disembodied voices. It’s really not so bad, said a woman. A couple of indistinct hunched figures sat by a fire on the beach. While the soft sounds of the end of summer came from the whispers of two boys on a bench at the end of North Road. No one shouted.

There is a mist this morning. The sun is trying to come out.