Category: Writings

It was a crossword answer. The clue was something like ‘the perspective of non-interference’ or was it ‘practice’? My memory is so elusive these days. I have something in there and in a flicker it is gone. I write little notes for myself all the time, little yellow post-it notes litter my notebooks. Laissez-faire the art of letting things be. A kind of graceful detachment. Well, that is how I interpret it, others might see it as not caring. I try to let things be. To not change what is. And yet, there is so much that I cannot agree with. But who am I to interfere? The rubbish strewn across the road from the early morning gulls ransacking. I leave it. Is that indolence or is a wish to live lightly in this world? When should one interfere? When another is in danger or hurt? Of course. Detachment is an interesting state. Like the young seagulls I see about the town and up at the University. One was hovering by the door at work yesterday. They look so lost, so abandoned, letting out little squeals and squawks in the hope of rescue. We must just leave them. Leave them. Nature will take care of them or not, as the case will be.

I was woken by a call. An early morning booking. And then I couldn’t sleep. As a consequence I am sleepy and jaded today. It worked out in the end though fretting about it in my bed was what kept me from sleep. She helped me. In her usual flurryingly-busy way she helped me out. And I was grateful, genuinely. People are rarely unkind, but they can be incautious or clumsy, as I can be, all too often. How do I come across? Am I a little sharp at times?

I read voraciously these days. It helps. I am learning about how to tell a story, how to keep a pace going. I have been fascinated, drawn in, may I know the same skill.

Our geraniums grow ragged, leggy and parched. I long to prune, to start again. But there are still a few buds yet to open. I must give them a chance to see out their role, their potential before cutting.

It was barely lapping when I walked along the Prom this morning. A vague whooshing as it rolled gently over rocks, that is all. The air didn’t move either. The clouds hung heavy. No one was stirring. My legs are moving better, my hips are less stiff. I do feel old. Older at least. But that is OK. A fishing boat was all lit up ready to go. Oh, it does gladden my heart to see it. Those bright traffic light lights shining out of the dark. I wanted to see it take to sea but it was stalling, no doubt awaiting its crew.

He is wobbly again. His confidence is so brittle. He will see the Doc today. I hope it helps. He seems a nice man, patient and compassionate.

I need to be prepared to listen, to pay attention, to be steady for him. To keep the momentum of our life going. For as long as he needs me to do so. It is enough. Some days it is absolutely enough.

And an American company reacted positively to make request to forge a new brass ball for my bedstead. I am so pleased. Cock-a-hoop. I love their ‘can do’ attitude. Fingers crossed, eh? x

The acrid smell of smoke from our downstairs neighbour’s cigarette had snaked its way through my open bedroom window. It was there when my alarm woke me. There is no escaping the odours generated by other people. Sometimes it is his bacon, that he, a keeper of ungodly times like me,  fries in the early hours. Or it is the sweet sticky stink of Chinese food from the family who live on the corner next to him. I don’t mind. I am used to it. And I like to been amongst, though not amidst, other people. We keep to ourselves but we are there if needed. As he was, so kindly, when he fell. Though there are more preferable smells – freshly brewed coffee or baked bread. The Hot Bread Shop is my current favourite – it never lets me down with its aromas though I have to walk out of my way to get them.

I see the woman with the ‘for life’ bag regularly these mornings. The last two she has tried to avoid passing me. I think she is shy or depressed and wants to avoid eye contact. She turns into what we call ‘the ship’, a kind of prow-like shape on the corner of the Castle end of the Prom, or the little circle-like shape further along. She pretends that she’s looking out to sea or onto the beach. I am sorry that she feels the need for this rather pathetic subterfuge, I would never force an intimacy, however small, on her. She is like a mole, a night time creature. She always wears the same clothes. Though yesterday she’d swapped her pink sweatshirt top for a burgundy one. Her hair is dark and lank and her leggings are tucked into socks and large walking boots. She rolls from side to side as she walks, a fag always in her hand and a Tesco bag in the other. Sometimes I catch her on the way to the 24hr garage, her empty bag swinging in the wind. Other times she is walking back, her bag full of provisions. What does she buy there?

The Shoreline guest house on South Marine had the ‘no vacancies’ sign up on Saturday night. Today it has been changed back to ‘vacancies’.

Some words are toxic. It wasn’t his. He was just repeating what the fisherman had said. And he related it verbatim to the policeman. No wonder he wasn’t sympathetic. I would’ve been the same. It wasn’t his word. It didn’t sit comfortably.

I struggle to like her and her. Can I love them instead? Love is different. Love can come from an inexhaustible source of humanity of compassion of care of attention. Liking is ego-driven and so often much more about how that person treats you. I can let it go. I can love them. Yes.

I was walking down the hill from the Arts Centre after visiting the Ceramics Festival and feeling a little unwell when I saw him. He looked like something from the Victorian times, a Dickens character from the streets of London. He was shuffling, no more like rolling, down the road ahead of me. I could only see his back. He was hunched over, his back like a hump and he wore a mid-length black coat and dirty khaki trousers that bunched around his ankles. There was a large circular urine stain down the legs of his trousers. When I did catch sight of his head which I could now see was almost covered in a black woolen hat, I saw his long grey beard and hair. He stopped sometimes to reach down to the ground to pick up something. Was this the man that he told he sees frequently picking up dog-ends from the ground? Where does he live? Who looks after him? How is it he has got to this state of degradation? Does he have a place to live? Does he have food to eat? Can it be that people still live this way in our so-called civilised society?

I’m English, said one of the so-named ISIS brides from the camp in Syria that the BBC correspondent was reporting from, and we don’t have enough food. The report was harrowing. They are trapped. No one wants them. Dressed in black from head to toe, their eyes are the only thing you see. They do not communicate. Except for this one girl.

I am twice moved.

We are both out of sorts. I have a bug and he is fearful. It comes and goes, it always will. It only takes a flicker of something like anxiety and he, like Chicken Licken, thinks the sky will fall in. It won’t. It will pass. But I must be kind. I must listen to him, not try to bully him into wellness.

I saw them ahead of me before I turned to walk up through the Buarth. They must have turned around for suddenly they were behind me, crawling with their blue light flashing. Bugger, I whispered, knowing I’d have to unhook my headphones and speak to them. Anything wrong? I asked after they’d wound down the passenger window. There were two of them, a man and woman, though it was too dark for me to see their faces. You OK? the driver, the man, asked. I’m fine, I said, just walking, is that OK? Sure, he said. We just wondered what you had in your hand. A torch? I said, holding up the tiny silver torch I had in my right hand. And in the other hand? he asked. I haven’t got anything in my other hand, I said, trying not to sound defensive. What can they mean? We thought we saw something long and thin, he said. Do you want to search me? I asked. No, that’s OK, he said winding up the window before driving off. I felt irritated, somehow a little violated by the encounter. He was non-plussed when I told him of it. It’s  night time and it is odd to be walking about. They are just doing their job, he said. Maybe he is right. It’s more the feeling it engenders, that of defensiveness, I suppose. And I am odd. So there we are.

I need to rest today. After the washing is done. Take it easy. Sunday morning. Coffee first. I shouldn’t really. I just want the smell. Glorious.

There was a radio documentary on while I made breakfast about the letters of Vincent van Gogh. He really saw the world, said the presenter, whose name I have forgotten. But, it seems, there was a price to pay. He lived so passionately. Felt everything. It is too much, I think. It was all about colour. The yellow house, the pink blossom, the yellow sunflowers, the green absinthe, the blue light of night café. He was only an artist for ten years, the presenter said. And all self-taught. His early sketches, the egg-heads say, were terrible, pedestrian. A lesson to us all. But. What a price, eh? They talk about him being bi-polar. Perhaps. Perhaps just passionate, with no real outlet for it but his work and no one bought them, saw them, celebrated them. He wrote to make sense of it all. He wrote those 900 or so letters to Theo to make sense of it for himself when the evenings were too dark for him to paint. Apparently he resorted to fixing a candle on his head to enable him to continue work. Madcap. Glorious. He really saw the world. Do we really see him in his work anymore? Did we ever? All that money. Pah!

A murky day after all that sun yesterday. Tea on the lawn in Aberdovey. It was sublime. Got too much sun. C’est la vie. Off soon to the Ceramics Festival. I’m nervous and consequently I dreamt of it all night. It’s the supposed expectations. Can I remain anonymous? I just want to wander and observe. No article, as such, to write but I may tweet.

I listened to the last instalment of A Provincial Lady Goes Further by A. M. Delafield read by Claire Skinner. It is very amusing particularly when she talks about all her procrastinating over writing an article for a newspaper about freedom in modern marriage. Excruciatingly familiar, especially coming up with pithy first line and how she plans to spend the money way before it has been written.

Off I go.

It looks like we shall finally have our day out. No bookings so far. The sun is out and it’s not yet seven. There are clouds but they are those lovely dappled ones with lots of blue in between. The mornings are taking a little longer to come and I am sad for it. The summer has reached its peak and it will soon begin to fall into autumn. I heard the cries of the oystercatchers again as I walked through the dark, way over the sea. There is a sweet smell that I always catch when I begin that small ascent onto North Road. It smells like confectionery, something sticky, like those red licorice shoelaces. Is it from the pizza take away shop?

He was a little wobbly yesterday. It can come and go. He gets unsettled.

We couldn’t sit on the cricket field yesterday afternoon as the primary school next door was having its sports day. We ambled towards the cemetery instead in search of peace and quiet and a bench. We found a bench but not the quiet that he would have desired. Well, really, he said, furious that two women chose to sit behind us on the circular bench. And people kept coming, using the path as a way into town via The Avenue. It didn’t discomfort me, I was happy to sit in the sun and dream. The graveyard was over grown and blooming, rather beautifully.

It will be good to be off. To drink tea in the sun out of a heavy metal pot and let the day slide into dreaminess. I’m tired. Too many dreams last night.

He liked it. I am buoyed up to continue.

It was her coat that first caught my eye. It was bright, a cherry red. I was looking down on the estate from our upstairs window and saw her returning home from town, a small string bag in her hand and her stick in the other. She turned to walk up the steps and was temporarily lost from my view. I stood at the window waiting to see her reappear but she didn’t. Is something wrong? Is she OK? There are only 5 or 6 steps surely she’d be up them by now. And then she appeared, slowly pulling herself up the final two. She’s over a hundred now and still walks into town everyday, even though she is virtually blind and very deaf. Her gait has a slight roll and she is slow but she still does it and with such style. What a coat. I don’t want to live to a hundred, I tell him. And I don’t. But I cannot help but admire her tenacity. She is a believer, one of the faithful, a regular churchgoer. And I suspect her quality of life both outer and inner is still rich. And she has her family who visit frequently and besides her son lives with her so she has company. I hear her radio in the morning and her TV at night, very loud. But that’s OK, it is comforting, regular. I like them living beneath us.

I had an early yesterday morning, a paper review. I wanted to let him enjoy his breakfast out so I suggested I walk home afterwards. It was a real pleasure, the sun was out and the birds in full song. I walk down past the National Library on the hill and see the town spreading out before me. I took my time, relishing the oncoming warmth and the promise of the day not yet spent.

We sat on the cricket field again in the afternoon and he watched a group of primary school children having a sports session. There were races and mini assault courses with blankets they had to crawl under. They all had sun hats on. I lay down and listened to him commenting on their progress. One of the groundsmen watered the wicket with a hose.

It was a crossword clue that sparked the memory. It was from years ago when I was not yet eighteen. I’d gone to Oslo with Mum to see her father who was dying in hospital. It was an image of chemist or Apotek in the city. We’d gone in side to get some medication perhaps for him or for Mum, I can’t remember. But what I do remember, at least I did last night was the shops layout, its counter and the old apothacery jars on a shelf behind. Many were blue, a lapis lazuli blue with the light from the window shining through them. It felt so antiquated and calm. It was a brief source of happiness for me. I’d never thought of it since till yesterday. Isn’t memory, the mind, the brain whatever is responsible for recall amazing?

I woke from a dream in which I was in a kind of town or city hall – a great ornate edifice of civic splendour. However, to get to its main room full of gold and light and magnificent paintings and mural one had to slide through a tiny slit of gap. I hated doing it, though I’d done it many times. It was almost to narrow for my head. I woke instructing a young woman how to reach it.

She wrote saying she’d send some soft fruit from her garden, gooseberries and blackcurrants. How lovely. I look forward to receiving them, still warm from the sun as they were last year, or so I liked to think.

He was shouting across the road to him. I heard it before I’d left the Castle grounds. Ethan, he was shouting. Eh, Ethan any problems, mate call me. Eh, Ethan. Ethan, a tall, scrawny lad with a baseball cap on his head and ill-fitting jeans, was just crossing from the town clock to begin walking down Great Darkgate Street. I’m OK, mate, he replied. Eh, Ethan, his friend kept calling, any time, any time. Such a display of amiability. Was it booze talking or something deeper? I’d like to think so. It was sweet. That endless repetition of affiliation.  

I knew it was coming but it threw me. And she didn’t want to get involved. And yet, when she does it comes with a warning. It feels heavy, uncomfortable – too complicated for a simple mind like mine. Will he need more? Probably. Just breathe and take one step after another.

A clear morning. No idea what to wear. I had to wear thick woollen socks for my walk and yet I long to pretend it is warm and wear sandals. We lay on the grass in front of the cricket field yesterday and he got all nostalgic. It is all there before us, his past. He was, is happy here. And that is good.

Another dead seagull. The white of them up close is startling. Such power.

I am cross. I woke up cross. I don’t know why. Is it something that happens in sleep, a residue from a dream? I try to fight it, to keep it in check, to contain it but it leaks out. Should I just let it be? Should I allow it room like other more pleasing emotions? Did you know that anger was one of the seven deadly sins? I didn’t, at least not until it came up as a crossword solution yesterday. These days anger is not seen as a purely negative force but a source of energy that can be tapped and put to good use. However, I’m not angry merely irritable, which isn’t attractive or useful. If I let it be will it dissipate sooner? Or should I spend time trying to find its reason?

He has gone out already. He says he will walk before his coffee.

I think I am cross about what is happening to my body. Pockets, pouches of water keep building in odd areas. Is it age? Is it the menopause? But I’m also cross about having to write today. You don’t have to, he says. And he’s right, I don’t but if I don’t I will be less at ease with myself then I am now. It has to be written, all of it. When I’m in it it is not so bad. I’m encompassed by it, lost in it. Trying to find a way of saying what I want to say. It is interesting reading another author’s work when one is writing, for one’s critical faculties are heightened. I finished one book and went straight onto another. And I’ve been so immersed in Ann Tyler’s writing after having read two in quick succession that to move onto another, so entirely different, was a challenge.

There was a dead seagull just off the pavement along Mill Road. It was lying on its back, its wings splayed out as if crucified and blood, a deep red, had oozed from its nether regions. What had killed it? The red against the white of its plumage was stark, almost beautiful.

I saw something move from the corner of my eye. It was still a little dark, the gloom of night had not yet risen to allow the blue of morning. It looked like a piece of clothing, a clump of fabric, something dark that seemed to roll of the edge of the kerb then stop. It was by the entrance to our estate just by one of the gateposts. I bent down. It was a hedgehog. A large hedgehog. Was it dead? It was perfectly still. I spoke to it. A soft voice. I’d never seen an adult one before. Are they nocturnal creatures? Then it seemed to raise itself. It snuffled and snorted, tiny pig like noises, then trundled off around the bottom of the post and down the road. Such encounters feel like gifts. Our paths have crossed. Like the female blackbird yesterday on the path up to work just hopping ahead of me, refusing to fly off. And the scattering of bunnies when I turned the corner. And the two elderly magpies (well they look elderly, a trifle ragged, seen better days) sitting in the sun outside my bedroom window. They make me feel part of something other, something that rolls on parallel to my petty concerns, all inward and dank. Their view of the world must be so different to mine.

A windy walk. The three bakeries in town did me proud. Utterly gorgeous bread smells. Ta.

I wanted to talk it out and he wanted to watch the cricket. But he acquiesced, he always does, perching his bottom on the edge of my bed. I just needed to hear myself talk it out. I didn’t want advice, just clarity. You might even end up making it untrue, he said. What like a piece of fiction? I asked. Yes, that might make sense. That might happen. I felt better for that possibility. I just know I have to keep writing. The process is almost as important as the content. I’m working myself out of the gloom. And yet, as I walked I thought about all the richness I wish to ‘speak’ about. It is enough. It is project enough, even if its destination in a drawer. It will be out, it will be formed, made sense of, articulated.