Category: Writings

I could hear them from quite a distance away. The morning air was mild and warm with no wind and voices tend to carry, so much so that as I walk the Prom I can’t always tell the direction. They weren’t shouting but talking loudly. They pronounced, there was no conversation, no melding of subject, no real interaction. I’m IRA, announced a female voice. I’m IRA, she repeated in a soft, definitely Northern Irish twang. I was getting closer now. They were in the shelter on the Prom. Normally there are two or three men sleeping there when I walk past. This time they were wide awake. I didn’t see the girl, she was shielded from my view from a man in what looked like off-white pyjamas, standing akimbo. Jackass, said the same woman’s voice. You’re a jackass. Then a man’s voice. Woman, he said in what sounded like an Eastern European brogue.

The students have gone and the people I see milling around are all strangers, mostly men. I don’t feel as safe, as cocooned. There were 10 or 12 mobile-home-cum-caravans parked up down by the harbour. I wondered whether I should say anything to him about it. It will make him angry, I thought. I took the chance, and it did. I suppose if I were them I’d like to sleep by the sea too. It feels different though with all those vehicles. Crammed-in, the spaciousness stolen.

We went to sit in the sun on North Road. I sat and waited for him while he drove off to find a parking place. I watched two men below mowing and neatening up the bowling green. He mowed the grass in diagonals. Phew, it’s hot work, he said to his colleague. I could see two other men sitting in the pavilion entrance, in the shade, with coats on out of the sun. I love sitting on that bench. My tension drains away. I closed my eyes when he went off to collect the car and let the sounds of people’s chatter drift around and over me. A little boy’s voice. I don’t want it, I don’t want any. He was near me, his parents were further away. They were cajoling him, not pleading, negotiating. It was about sun tan lotion. He didn’t want any sun tan lotion on. He gave in, reluctantly. I heard him walk back towards them. Not on my nose, he shouted. Minutes later they all trooped past me. I could smell the lotion, sweet, chemical. The little boy dragged behind. I took a peek. His shoulders were hunched. He wasn’t happy. Anyway, he shouted, it’s going to be cold soon.

He bought me a coffee pot, those Italian ones that screw in half. I’ve been off coffee, but I made some in Denmark and my hankering for it has returned. What a pleasure and now the house smells of it.

The dream came fast, almost immediately I closed my eyes. I was in a garden, I’d dug some trenches. I had a wheelbarrow. My children lay in it. Docile, passive, quite content. And I took them one by one and laid them in the soil. They were not dead but alive. There was no violence, no struggle. And now for my beautiful baby, I said to the youngest as I carefully laid it down. The sun shone. Was it about planting something? Planting ideas, hopes, possibilities? It felt like the best of me.

I’ve found something. It’s a start. It felt good to know that there might be something. But I am tense with the fear of it. Keep steady. It will be an experiment, an essay in how to articulate a long-lived life. Keep steady.

It was just before I woke up. She came to me just before I woke up. She entered my space, my room. I offered her a chair. I asked if she needed light. She said she’d come to me because of the ‘meat-on-meat’ piece. In my dream I knew what she meant. I asked if she’d worked with DH, sensing he’d sent her. No, she said. But she wanted to work with me. It felt good that she’d come. But then when I looked back there was no woman, no chair, just me sitting on a blanket in the semi-half-light of a standard lamp and my room was a balcony looking out on an auditorium. I took the image of her on my walk. A short, rather cross-faced woman, with close-cropped hair. I liked the essence of her, but she gave little warmth. It felt prophetic. All of it. Even the bits I can no longer recall.

It isn’t heartburn. It may be a bruised rib, or a broken one, or a torn ligament. It is sharp-edged when I inhale. I breathe deeper now into my diaphragm.

The kitchen clock keeps stopping. I’ve told you of it before. It is radio-controlled, whatever that means. It stops then starts whirring, too fast round and round. It’s done it for the last three days. Then it stops at 12.00, thinks for a bit then starts to whirr round again till it finds the correct time. It is most disconcerting. What does it augur?

There is a Christmas tree in a room in a flat behind Alexandra Hall. It’s in the living room, unlit but still decorated. Is it just idleness or a longing for Christmas past or even Christmas future? The room was lit up but empty.

I could see a figure lurching towards me from town. A slim, tall figure. I could hear a voice. Where they on the phone? No, it was a woman, very thin with spindly legs talking to herself as she reeled about. I passed her and then heard a door slam.

Alan Ayckbourn’s mother was a writer of short stories and magazine articles. The typewriter would be going all day and all night, said the presenter of the radio programme about the playwright. Apparently she bought Alan a mini typewriter so he could sit next to her bashing the keys like her.

I want a fuller life. I want to open myself to other possibilities. I want something larger, more abundant. Is it doable? And if so, what can I do from here, from now? How can I open myself to all that I can be?

I think he was flirting with me. It’s been so long, I can no longer judge, if I ever could. Whatever it was it gave me a fillip. He didn’t have any decaff coffee. I asked why. It’s the same as me not selling non-alcoholic beer, he replied. I protested that it wasn’t, but to be fair I could see he was right. I just like the taste, I told him. I’ve got tea, he said smiling. Have you got a pot? I asked. He grinned. I have just the thing, he said, disappearing into the back room. He was young, intelligent, with excellent English. How’s you’re tea, darling? he asked later. I burst out laughing. Why, what have I said? he replied, looking flustered, shouldn’t I have said that? I explained the intimacy of the word. Don’t you have the same in word in Danish? I asked. We do, he said, but it means something completely different. Something had been crossed. I said goodbye when we left. He looked after me as I left. It was nice. I needed it. The awkwardness of spending time with new lovers had made me lonesome. My step was lighter as a consequence.

I still don’t know what to do for the best. I remain open. That is all I can do. Wait. Pay attention. And be kind.

I used to get it as a child whilst at boarding school. Their remedy was the enforced wearing of the school cloak, an antacid and if all else failed a night in the sanitorium watched over by matron. Something was hurting then, as it is now. Something that I cannot digest or swallow. It needs attending to. I’ve writing to do so I won’t linger. I have to enter my fear of it. As we journeyed we talked, raised our voices and I cried. It all helped. A boil was temporarily lanced. I’ve asked him to find me something if he can. Not milk of magnesia, I said, anything but that. Too many memories – the taste lingers even now.

It was good. I felt some joy. Thank you for that.

Thank you.

I find leaving home so hard. Even if, as in this case, the adventure is one that I have looked forward to. I have this sinking feeling, this fear of something unknown, unsaid – of perhaps liking being away too much. And this difficulty manifests itself in the fuss I make over packing, of readying the house for my departure. It is too much, I need to learn spontaneity. To travel light. I will travel light. Now. Today. See if I can.

We wanted to sit for a while in the sun. Just for ten or fifteen minutes. We have no garden, balcony or patio. We tried several spots. First we sat in what we call the ‘courtyard’, a kind of inner parking area that is enclosed by a fence but the wall we were sitting on was overhung with trees and a bramble was climbing its way along the brickwork. And besides it was still a little public. Anyone could come out of either the flats and houses and talk to us. And as he said, ‘We don’t want to talk to anyone.’ I wanted to sit along the lead flashing just up by the steps along the walkway that leads to our flat. But no, he thought it was too close to the other flats and would disturb people. He had something else in mind. Earlier he’d suggested we get some fold-up chairs for us to use on such an occasion, I been reluctant, for there is so little storage space. In the end we found some pavement slabs that did very nicely. It’s just by our car, he told me. He led me to the building site, one of many in this estate. Has it always been like this? I asked him, as we sat on the wasteland looking down on the College Fields and the backs of the houses along Llanbadarn Road. As far as he could remember it had been. The rocky path just below us used to be his route too and from school. He talked about the people who’d lived in the houses we looked down upon. One had an apple tree still in blossom and a line full of washing. Another had a dovecote. He talked about the tennis courts and the people he’d played with in his youth. I watched two ladybirds scaling a leaf as he talked, loving the sun and the sound of his voice made warm with nostalgia. It was nice. A gentle afternoon.

I saw his red pants first. They were sitting, his friends and he, on a bench just beyond the entrance to the Pier Pressure nightclub. I was walking and trying to capture, in my head, ways to describe the mingled stink of fast food that seemed to hang like a cloud over the pier. There’s a new fish and chips shop to the right of the club which must’ve accounted for the additional stink of vinegar, on top of fried chicken, pizza and beer. It wasn’t unpleasant. The sharply salty warmth, slightly fetid was actually comforting. It took the edge of my usually anxious thoughts that tend to reach a climax at that point of my walk. Excuse me, asked the boy with the red underwear showing under his jeans. Yes? I said, momentarily charmed by the fact that someone had spoken to me. Not invisible then? Would you like to come away on a Gap year with us? I’d been expecting a request for a match at most or the loan of some money, not that. I didn’t think. No thank you, I replied and walked on. Then kicked myself. I should’ve asked where, at least. They were taking the piss. They cannot know me, or even wished to do so. Was it a dare? I waited for the tittering. It didn’t come.

There were too many people. I didn’t get a chance to be alone with the work. He asked if I wanted to meet her, gave me too much of her story. I didn’t want it but I couldn’t say that, could I? She was delicate, self-effacing, a little mousy. Her power is in the work. What shall I write? It was too much. Just that? It was too much.

He isn’t a stoic. His eye is hurting him and he is scared. It is the same eye, the bad one. And we are supposed to go on a trip today, to see an exhibition that I am to review. I hold my breath. I don’t know what he wants to do. And, as yet, I haven’t asked him. And I have to go into work. It is one thing after another, or at least that is how it seems. They could be side-effects, but how can you tell for sure?

Tea and cake across the road was nice. I felt safe with them, or with her at least. He is slightly more tricky, I think. Unhappy, he seems unhappy with this new choice of home, of place. She is friendly, open, all smiles. A light room with lots of pink. It was pleasant to be invited in to someone else’s home for a while, though tea, so late, played havoc with my sleeping.

The students were out for their last spree before heading home. I tried to catch conversations as I walked past. It’s because I love you that I can tell you, a girl was saying to a boy, on a bench, as he ate pizza from a cardboard pizza box. Profanities were being shouted and then repeated from the shelter. You fuck me, you bitch. It wasn’t being exclaimed in anger, there was laughter, was it from a film?

They were talking about it on a podcast on Radio 4 Extra’s podcast hour. A ‘Shirley Card’ designed to help calibrate colour in photographs, a mid twentieth century phenomenon. Their concern, the talking heads in the cast, was that it was a calibration based upon white-skinned subjects, not black. As a result, photographs of black people left them featureless and indistinct. The card was of a woman in a white dress with primary-coloured cushions around her. They talked about the intermission images we always used to see on TV, you know the girl with the Alice band. When I was little I was convinced it was my elder sister.

Will he be OK? Am I to lose him?

We talked about going there last night. I fantasise about it. It isn’t a flash hotel. There are few facilities, and those that are there are a little tired, lost in a seventies time-warp. I don’t mind. We don’t mind. We go for the lounges, in particular the adult lounge. We go for the pots of tea in stainless steel pots, brought on trays with paper doilies. We go for the quiet (there is no piped muzak). We go for the clientele – almost all over seventy if they’re a day. We go for the warm rooms, the sun on the terrace, the view of the sea. And there is always a puzzle on the go. I love that. A group puzzle – residents amble past and get distracted and sit for a moment, a piece in their hand trying to find its home. We talk about getting a suite, mid-week just for a few days, to sleep when we feel like, to read, to stare, to do nothing.

Town was quiet this morning. Have all the students migrated home now? The sea is a steel blue. The rain comes in showers and it is cold. That book has taken me over, it is insidious, potent, unforgettable. Jack overwhelmed by his introduction to the ‘Outside’ and Ma (will we ever learn her name?) struggling to maintain a hold. Both so inured to life in the Room – how will they fare? I’ve almost done. Book endings are always an anti-climax, I am so in them that to come out is a wrench, a discomfort.

The row of pearly lights, like those around a theatre dressing room mirror, were still alight when I passed the Hot Dumplings Chinese Take Away. I’ve never seen it open. Wrong timings. Another life.

Flat cleaned. To work now.

It was his fortieth birthday, she told me, and he was clearly leading up to something. She was convinced he was going to propose. And then, over dinner, he’d said, I’ve been thinking. Yes? she’d said. I think we should get a dog, he’d answered. And that was ten years ago, she said, and I haven’t looked back. What kind? I asked. A chocolate lab, she said, grinning. He wanted a real dog’s name for him, you know, proper. So we called him Bruce.

It’s easier going in there. I feel no connection with it, with her, particularly. She is all smiles, all affability. A consummate professional. It is never busy in there, usually just one other woman under one of those old industrial-looking hair dryers, or having her roots done. She is always ready for me, even when I am early. I like her chat. I let it roll over me, around me. Its mostly about holidays, her late mother, her father, her family, her boyfriend, a builder who takes Bruce in the van with him. He loves it. I am happy to listen. I like it. It is easier than the one before. She gave off such troublesome sensations. This one is less complicated, I think. This weekend it is to be Aberdovey and the ‘bearded walk’ for them and Bruce, and for Easter it is Barmouth and an air B&B. She seemed a little put out when I said where I was going. Did she? Or am I imagining it? I can be too sensitive to these things. To like her is enough. A good woman, I think.

I must be off soon, a walk up the hill to work for an early paper review. I don’t anticipate it with pleasure but I try to reign that in. There is always something to relish. Isn’t there?