Category: Writings

It’s that time of the year when I start to see the morning rise as I walk home – a kind of blue behind the clouds. It is a hopeful sight.

I managed to swing my right arm a little as I walked today. Small steps but they are meaningful. Sometimes it is just a case of trying to make it feel normal. And my body doesn’t forget. I thought about all the people who are afflicted with a stroke and have to relearn how to walk, talk and move. It must be so hard. My discomfort is nothing by comparison. I thought about the man with his wife whom he used to see in Tesco’s, the one he calls Mr & Mrs Baldie (he is without hair and she, bless her, is losing hers). He has had a stroke, his wife told him. I wonder how he is managing. Poor love.

We sat out in the sun last night before bed. It was lovely. The wild flowers have taken over the waste ground once more – such a range of varieties – I saw buttercups, daisies, clover, ragwort, dandelions, forget-me-nots and loads more that I don’t know the names for. What a colourful mess of life. And for the moment it is ours.

Someone had left a pair of blue binoculars on the little wooden bench on the small rise leading into North Road. They were plastic and of no intrinsic value but perhaps they will be missed nevertheless. It didn’t rain as I walked and it was warm. I saw the Sikh gentleman (he wears a turban so I am assuming he is a Sikh, but a gentleman he assuredly is) again on the Prom, though I usually see him on Llanbadarn Road. He’s as thin as a rake and walks with a purposeful stride, his arms raised and fists clenched. He had a rather natty quilted coat over his white trousers and shirt on today. He never acknowledges me. Why should he?

It is a constant aspiration, its acquisition a deep desire in me – but it is elusive. Always. I lay in bed last night, wide awake at 1am from the throbbing in my arm trying to detach myself from it. I wasn’t distressed, just too alert for sleep. Give me grace. It may take 6 months she told me. And she was kind and gentle and she did help but it was a shock. She thinks I’ve fractured possibly both my shoulder and elbow, small breaks but breaks after all. It needs rest but also I must move so that the muscles don’t stiffen. It’s a hard one, that, the balance. I try to do what I can and to not allow the self pity to unsettle me. Onward, Ellen. It is nothing compared to the pain some must endure, often for a lifetime. Small steps, he used to say.

That flat along South Marine still has its window covered in signs telling us to WEAR MASKS, WASH HANDS and so on. I feel rather like I am being shouted at when I pass by. Will it always be so?

The council have erected two huge yellow signs down by the harbour stating that no mobile home, motor homes or caravans are to be parked there. I thought he’d be more pleased when I told him of this when I went in to wake him. Yeh, but they need to police it, was all he said.

It rained again this morning as I walked, my arm in the sling carrying my umbrella. My walking boots squeaked along the wet pavements. I felt better yesterday. I was busy. But I’ve come down a bit, perhaps it is the physio appointment today. Will it hurt?

I am mending. I am on the mend, as they say. But it is slow and I still can’t raise my arm fully. I must be patient and let the wisdom of it permeate through. What can I learn from this?

The rain continues to fall. A grey day. There is much to do but I am frustrated by others lack of response. Heigh ho. I shall continue until I am told otherwise. And perhaps it may be just what they are looking for.

Flickers of pleasure. I begin to mend though I am still much reduced. Work is coming through and I’m pleased but my confidence in my ability to meet deadlines wobbles me. I can do it. I can. I will. My dreams were dense and convoluted (no doubt as result of fitful sleeping). Damian Lewis was hugging me every time I cried while I thought that he had far more genuine reasons for grief. The soles of my shoes were coming away and I was due to do an impression of Cliff Richard for a talent show. Are you ready for it? a man asked me and I told him that I’d decided in the end to tell stories about meeting him rather than trying to sing like him. Then I was trying to pack all my things into bags and they were everywhere. And then I was in my favourite coffee shop in Oslo with a woman ( I used to love this place, I told her) and I ordered in Norwegian (I watched the man’s face change as I did so) though I couldn’t think of the word for Vegan. Small flickers of pleasure. As was seeing the lit up fishing boat as I walked this morning. Enough. I must work. And thank you.

It has thrown me more than I’d have thought possible. It’s just an injury, he says, it’s not an existential thing. And it isn’t and many people are in pain and incapacitated by it their livelong day, but I am thrown. I cannot do the work I usually do, and if I can I am not sharp, not efficient. I am slow. Slow, slow, slow. I fight it. I fight what is and give myself pain by doing so. This is not wise. I know this. But there are good things. It arrived. She got it. I hope it gave her joy.

I didn’t hear my alarm. You needed the sleep, he said when he woke me. Yes, probably. I wake and wake shifting this way and that to get my shoulder comfortable. And its the grief that tires me too. There is so much. So no walk this morning. We will walk together later up to the top. I like that.

I wasn’t expecting it. It came with such a force. A remembered thing from long ago – that neediness that embarrasses me so and which I try to smother with an often too abrupt capable-ness. I am not capable, not in those situations. I have no confidence in what I know, what I can offer and yet the desire and joy of learning, of grasping things and making sense of them is such a potent thing for me. I cried because I was shamed by my need to be praised, to be recognised as good enough. It has always been there, far, far back when a gold star in my exercise book was a prize indeed. I made myself mouse-ish then, not now. He tried to show me that it is normal, that we all act up in company – Symbolic Interactionism, he called it. And he is right. With my teacher’s hat on I can see this. But oh, the ache of it. I want to learn, let that be enough, the rest, the wanting to be noticed can be let go. Can’t it?

There is some joy, always, if you look for it. The discomfort of my arm, pain sometimes, has taught me much. Expect less, accept more, he says. I want to do what I could do before but I cannot, not totally, not yet, and if I can do some things it is slow. So I am learning patience, and to let some things go. Like the ironing, and perhaps the weekly mopping of all the floors. The joy. Yes, let’s get back to that. That came yesterday when I managed to put one of my text pieces in a small frame I’d bought ages ago for that purpose. It took a lot to do it, both the sewing and cutting, but it is done and I placed it next to the postcard of Gwen John’s Self Portrait. It’s all about juxtapositions. I like that. It is a light thing, a trial, I told him when he asked about it. It gave me joy. Something of mine, not driven by anything but a curiosity to see what works and what it sparks.

Did you shout at it? he often asks when he knows that my walk has been a windy one. I did today. That’s enough, now, I said, loudly as once too often it tried to wrench the umbrella from my hand. (My left hand I might add, as my right is still feeble, bless it.) It was a grit your teeth kind of walk, I told him. And it was, though I did smell the earth, newly wet, and hear the blackbirds (they still sing even in the relentless rain, which as the yesterday’s Nature Diary advised us (he read it out at breakfast) we need it, Nature needs it). And I tried to encourage the delights of such sensations to cancel out the irritation of the wind and rain and the aching in my shoulder. Ah, I’ve had enough of moaning. It is improving.

A quiet day today, reading and sleeping. I hope. Along with washing and ironing. The sun yesterday was glorious again as I sat reading S&S. It feels like another season today.