Category: Writings

I rarely see them. Sometimes a few can be seen scuttling on the shore but it is too dark to make them out distinctly. But I hear them. They call out through the night. Their call is a kind of peep, a high-pitched peeping, that shatters the black, breaking it. I feel an affinity with them, I don’t really know why. They are odd creatures, a little ungainly and their cry is imploring, feeble, ghostly. I like to see them en masse in the daylight, a gathering of black and white bodies, bobbing.

I heard the clang of bottles being dropped into a bin. Two people were ahead of me. One, a long-haired man, was sliding empty wine bottles into the mouth of the wastebin and the other, a girl in a hippy-esque patterned jacket was standing by the railing with a wine glass in her hand. A third man was on the beach below them putting what was obviously the remains of their meal into a plastic bag. I couldn’t catch their speech but they sounded foreign, possibly Scandinavian. It was the wine glass that stuck out. An elegant detail. She waved it about, dancing with it.

Tuesday is bin day and all along Llanbadarn Road recycle food and bin bags have been put out, most in neat rows tied up with a crisp knot. In town it is different. The gulls have got at these bags already and food spills onto pavements. The gulls shouting out warnings to other gulls. A screeching that tears at the still air. I see half a bread roll, an unopened salad cream sachet and a white plastic fork.

But I want to do it, I tell myself on waking as I wait for the inevitable grey, heaviness to descend. But is it worthwhile enough? Does it have meaning enough? But I want to do it, to see it through, to see what it will become. Isn’t that reason enough?

I have a drawer full of such projects. All on the go but what energy, what talking-to it takes to get them continuing. What is there? A cross-stitched beginning to Proust’s Swann’s Way in English, then one in French. Then there is the piece I want to return to today, a list of drama recordings that I have listened to while I’ve sewn. A kind of written negative space. Then there are the three van Gogh’s Sunflowers cross-stitch kits. One is nearing the end, another mid-way and the other just started. And then there is the tapestry of the same painting. All on the go. Going somewhere, feeling like nowhere. And yet, to not see them through, aagh, therein lies the pain. I feel like I should concentrate on the Sunflowers because they have a distinct purpose, they are to be used for my performance next month, and yet, they are a trial to me. Intellectually I can stand back and smile at the cheek of it, the subversion of all that is creative, that they represent. But when I’m in it, doing it, I am lost in the stultifying inwardness of copying, of rendering ‘wild’ painting into ‘docile’ stitch. And yet, writing about it excites me. Yes, I think there is more to explore there.

Just accept. Remember that word. Accept. Live it. Live the frustration, the uncertainty, the indignity, the stuck-ness. It will come right, he said. It will all come right.

I remembered. I remembered the last dream I had before waking. I love preserving my dream worlds, they are visionary states to me, full of wisdom. And often, though not over the last week or so, it is the last one that stays with me, the one I have usually between 12.30 and 1 am. The worlds are familiar. Time and time again it is that hill, outside, a street, a busy street, a foreign street. The road is white, like the marbled pavements of Spain. The sun is shining and either side of the street is flanked with coffee houses and shops. There is bustle, noise and clamour. In this particular dream I was walking with him down a busy inside corridor and we passed a dear friend of mine. She was talking to someone and I thought she hadn’t recognised me. I wasn’t sure what to do so greeted her and moved on. Then we were in her flat. A one room apartment. She was inside with us but had also posted a letter for me under her door. I could see it being pushed under. Inside was a ten pound note, a present for my birthday and a note about where to go for a massage and a reading (things we have done together in the past) with names and prices. She talked about her plans for a business making cakes and handed me a leaflet. Then she talked about getting some birds and how she would hang their cages from the ceiling. I asked her about how she could afford to live in London. Then she told us of a huge Council Tax she’d had to pay, over £52 K and the depression that set on a result, but that the mistake had been rectified and that she was living on the rebate.

I felt good when I woke. It had been a dream of lightness, of friendship, of being loved, of opportunities and possibilities.

And yesterday was a good day. Work was fine. I was acknowledged, spoken too and engaged with. I practised making origami cranes and scotty dogs, even leaving them there, on the window sill, a gift. I don’t know where I am going with this but something, something may come of it. I was fired up with my conversation with her and was prompted to email some contacts just to see if they might be interested in my current work. Who knows? It’s about not being stuck. Seeing what is possible.

The sun shines. The house has been cleaned and after my second cup of tea I am positively buoyant.

All my troubles end tomorrow, at least as far as money is concerned, she says. All to do with Uranus apparently, and how it has been in the house of other people’s money (and surely, mine as well) for what seems like ages. We shall see, my noble soothsayer. I’m open to it. Let the abundance rain down on me. Then pass it on.

A jar of peanut butter. I wouldn’t eat it now, but if I was in their situation of need, as indeed I have been several times, I would. That gooey mass of crunchy sweetness and salt would be a comfort. Brown toast and peanut butter. Yes. The wire stand where the Food Bank items are stored at Morrison’s was piled high with bags of pasta and tins of tomatoes this morning. Sensible, yes and perfect for an easy meal but the cosy foods are nice too. Rice pudding, tins of custard, Bonne Maman strawberry jam, chocolate digestives and good coffee. At least one a week. Yes.

It was to be my way of sharing my good fortune. I’d given up my job to start life as a full-time, self-supporting artist (while also doing a part-time PhD.) and decided to donate a percentage of all my art work sales to charity. I did well for a couple of months. Then it all dried up. It was 2008. What a year to begin my adventure. I was sorry to renege on my intention. And now, well I count every penny. As I count every blessing.

Let’s see what we can do, eh?

I only have ten minutes before I have to leave for work. Ten minutes to check in, to say something, to let loose, to let go, to express. Town was busy with late night clubbers. Do they still call themselves that? Party people, perhaps? All young, well mostly. Many had paired-off. A couple stood on the beach. I saw them below me as I walked along the Prom to the bar. He was very tall with what looked like green hair. She was small with blonde tousled locks. They weren’t talking just standing slightly apart from each other, frozen like a tableau. Just before the Castle I passed another couple. They were sitting on the mini wall that leads up to the Pitch-and-Put. She had her head down and he was talking. I couldn’t catch what was being said. Sometimes I catch it sometimes I don’t.

It’s the Race for Life today. There has been signs warning of its arrival for weeks but there are still cars parked on its route. I saw three or four with yellow laminated signs asking their owners to politely ‘Remove this vehicle’. Will they? Do they care? At least the weather promises nice.

Accept, said a voice in my head as I stood at the end of the Perygyl. I stand there and close my eyes feeling the breeze from the sea on my face and I am content. I could stand there for hours. I could even sleep. I feel safe there. I like the emptiness of just the horizon and the line of the sea. Nothing to distract. Just black, a grey-black really, just before dawn. Liminal. What must I do? What am I meant to do? I ask. Accept. Just accept. Accept what is. What a brave thing. What a tremendously difficult thing. To fall into it, to submit, to embrace the nothingness, the uncertainty, the un-clarity, the stuck-ness, to accept what is.

My dreams are but shadows these last few days. I ask to remember them but they slip through my fingers like gossamer as soon as my alarm sounds. It is the moonless-ness? The dark side of the moon. The secretive, non-revealing side. If so, then so be it. I will wait. I will accept. I will acquiesce.

Certainty. There is no such thing of course. Not any longer, at least. There never really was. I just wanted to think there was. To believe it was achievable. I breathed it in. If I can only do that, I used to think, be with that person, earn that kind of money, acquire that thing, all will be well. It never was, I’d turn a corner and a whole new set of doubts would be there facing me. It isn’t the achieving, the getting there, the decision-making but the travelling toward. And what happens along the way. I know this, the sagacious me, knows this and welcomes it. It’s the learnt strength what counts. What have you learnt? What scar tissue have you developed? How much stronger are you? It isn’t romantic. It never was, I just made it so. It is humdrum mostly. An endless waiting. Yes, but how do you wait? Are you clenched-up like a fist or at ease like an oak tree, steady but open to the sun, the sky, the air and all that passes underneath and above it?

What a revelation. I can recycle it, chuck it, unplug it. Get rid. I’ve never liked it. A cheap, tacky thing that never worked properly and used an inordinate amount of batteries. The other phones seem to work fine without it. We shall see.

It’s going to be a lovely day. Such promise.

They’ve buggered up our pay. It had to happen sooner or later. And this is an example of uncertainty manifesting itself. How will I respond? Will I catastrophise – telling myself that this is it they will only pay the basic from now on? Or will I breathe and calmly wait for it to be resolved?

I get quite stressed at the thought of it. I’ve never responded well to them, they flummox me. Online forms. Yesterday it was for HMRC and today it is for a visa waiver for the US. Just be steady. It will make sense in the end.

It really unsettled him. Our neighbour parking his car in another bay really unsettled him. We all have our numbered slots. Ours is round the back. And how he hates it when someone takes our space. It winds him up like mad. He, my darling boy, does like rules. More than you’d think. He believes it is about respect, paying dues to what belongs to someone else. He can come in quite shaken. It’s the anger, he doesn’t want to lose control. So when our neighbours blue BMW was in another neighbours’ place he was truly flummoxed. His space is empty, he said, why has he done that? Perhaps he’s on holiday and their guest has parked it there in error. He wasn’t away. I saw the light on in his window this morning. Has he asked him yet? Has he solved the conundrum?

There is a plan, said the man with no teeth and the Siamese cat that miaowed all through the reading. There is a plan, I can tell you that, he said, and you won’t be disappointed. I expected, hoped for mastery. Mastery of something. It seems that this will not be. I must settle for a mistress of many things, a chatelaine of a many-roomed castle. Is that OK? It has to be, doesn’t it? How will I manage it, conduct myself with care, lightness and compassion?  Wait and see, I whisper, wait and see.

I thought she was talking to someone ahead of her. I was coming down Great Darkgate Street and she was crossing from Terrace Road. She had a hair band with white furry ears on her head. A plump little thing, she seemed to be singing and laughing at the same time. I turned to watch her as she continued along the road towards the station. I was just being curious. Was she OK? Did she have someone looking out for her? Then suddenly she wheeled round glaring at me. What are you staring at? she spat. What are you fucking looking at? Keep calm, I said to myself, hackles of fear or anxiety rippling across my back. It’s alright, sweetie, I said, I’m not looking at anything. I wanted to say, at you, I was worried, I wanted to see that you were safe. But her wall of aggression unsettled me. I kept my voice quiet, steady and kept on walking.

How horrid, he said at breakfast. And it was, though I’d forgotten it till I told him. I’d walked into a membrane of her making, it had nothing to do with me. Where had it come from? She could hardly see me, we were too far away. Perhaps she was scared, defensive at least. It was so unexpected. Usually I am unmolested, left to go my own way in the mornings.

Yesterday, I’d walked to the bar and been met with a figure all in white climbing up the stairs from the beach. A mermaid in a white, skin-tight sheath dress. She had flip flops on. She didn’t look at me but strode across the road to one of the Halls. Had she been swimming? A mermaid come from the water bent on mischief.

A crazy day yesterday, so much juggling, so many little things to do. And today. One thing at a time. Breathe. Just breathe. All will be done and if you are left with only an hour in which to write it is OK. Just do the best you can.

Another poignant morning at the Home. I will write of it soon. The woman hugging and seemingly defleaing a teddy bear and furry cat. The man picking his nose as he wandered about. The man who’d wet himself and refused to let the staff member change him. The tiny woman in the hoist. The other tiny one with the booming voice, what you doing, boy? And me, avoiding the other little man. Next time.

We sat on the bench watching the four men playing bowls. The wind was cold but the sun was warm. I love to be there with him. At least we had that, that quiet time. At peace. It’s always there, if you want it. It is, truly.

He writes about the longue duree of craft. The time taken to make something, to learn something, to become something. A lifetime. A long life. A long duration. The next chapter is about hands. He quotes William Carlos Williams and about how he is tired of ‘soul talk’ that there should be ‘no ideas but in things’ – ‘things touched by hand during the day’. Ah, me and here I am trying to get rid of things. And yet, the desire to make is continual.

I made a start. It makes me feel tired, weary. So many decisions to make – do I need this? Do I need two of these? And then it’s all those journeys, back and back. Photographs are the worst. My work? Well, initially it feels good to chuck it. But then I get seduced but what was. All those trannies – some are really good photos. I was lucky with photographers. They were so kind. I was prolific, then. But there was so much stuff. I like to slough it off, as much as I can. I didn’t open his envelope of stuff. He likes this process less. Not at all, in fact. He’ll get rid of clothes, making room for new. But memories, no not those, they must be kept even if they are never looked at or visited.

We looked his name up on Google and found a match for a photographer and someone who works in Ancient Monuments. Neither was correct. He’s a biker, arriving at the studio with a helmet on his arm.

I did what she told me she did. Bought the cardboard bobbins and wrapped the silks around them. I wanted to sit too but there wasn’t time. Did it make me feel good? It used to as a child. Neatening, ordering, and making room, making space. It did briefly but then tiredness comes in – a weariness that makes everything grey.

I feel unused. And yet, in this emptiness there is a richness that is new – a trace of something important that I cannot yet articulate. I need to follow this. It has not worked out the way I expected but that doesn’t necessarily mean it is wrong. Perhaps this space, this unknowing-ness is important, significant.

She replied. And I will go. I look forward to it, deeply. There is a connection.

And so did she, with the number. I think about what I will say. It has been a long time. I need to complete a circle. I belonged to something once, a loving thing. Is it still there?

I’ve got an early. A paper review. So this will have to be quick. I don’t feel quite right if I don’t write something. It isn’t just the recording of what I’ve encountered, seen or thought about, it’s the physical act of writing. It steadies me. Grounds me. So it will have to be a list, of sorts.

Jay. I saw it yesterday afternoon, well almost night for me. It flew onto one of the trees opposite his window. That square of white on its wing. I called out. Where is it? he asked but it was gone. Portentous a colleague at work used to call them. Are they? I’ve seen maybe five in my life. It feels good, I like to think something is going to happen. I always do. Life is always moving, I know that but sometimes it can feel stagnant. What will you bring?

The dolphin I saw yesterday morning as I walked. It wasn’t a real one. It was an inflatable one, left by a wall below the Prom. Abandoned or forgotten, I know not. Was it bought as a bank holiday treat from Stars or another of the tourist shops along the front? Was it too big to put in the car? Or had it been lost at sea and then brought in again on the tide. It was a clear blue plastic. A dolphin with a smiling face.

The tricycle I saw today. It too seemed to have been abandoned. A young child’s trike, clearly. Highly painted but a little shabby with masking tape wrapped around it’s seat. It was resting against a lamppost along South Road.

The helicopter whirred in the sky for hours last night. Our neighbour was at his window smoking when I returned and he said he’d heard it too. It was over the golf course at first, he said. I heard it about half past twelve. I had too. And then seen its lights over the sea. It was hovering, clearly. Heat-seeking, like the London helicopter that the Liverpuddlian poet Paul Morley went on for that radio programme Night Vision. It was fascinating and amazing what they can detect from up there. Was someone lost at sea? It is an ominous sound, making me think of Kate Bush’s song on Hounds of Love – with its noise of helicopter blades and a voice shouting, Get out of the water, get out of the waves…

A good day yesterday. A peaceful day. I kept it at bay.

Sleep well, I said opening the door. Cheers now, he said.

There’s a spot of blood on your duvet cover, I said to him at breakfast, is it from your shin?. Yeh, I know, he said, I saw it last night but I can’t work out where it is from. It’s the pills he takes, they thin the blood, so if he cuts or scratches himself he just bleeds and bleeds. Mind you, he always has, ever since I’ve known him. We’re not big bleeders, he says, mimicking one of his mother’s saws. It always makes us laugh. It’s such a preposterous thing to say. As if a family bleeds alike. Perhaps they do. We’re not big bleeders could also be referring to size, to stature, of course. I never heard her say it. Did she do it tongue in cheek? That little person, that definitely not ‘big bleeder’. Shall I wash the duvet again? I ask. No, just leave it, he says. It doesn’t matter to him, these things don’t. To me it does, but perhaps it is a good thing to let loose a little. Sponge it off, they use to say. Come here and I’ll sponge it off. Just like the face being wiped by a bit of your mother’s spittle. Come here, let me see. Rough love.

I woke to the smell of curry coming through my bedroom window. It was so strong, the cooking process have just begun. Was it from our neighbour below? Like me, he is often up in the early hours, though unlike me he then sleeps through most of the morning. I temper my irritation. He means no harm, the fact that I feel assaulted by such strong smells is not his fault.

My waking dream stayed with me for the first time in days. I’d asked that I remember it but was less rigid about it and it seemed to have worked. I was in a small chapel or church. It was of domestic proportions, a busy, rather cluttered environment. I was trying to reach for something and climbed up onto two tables, straddling them, one foot on each. It was precarious. They each had a table cloth on top of them. Beneath me women were starting to come in sorting out hymnbooks, flowers possibly for the service. Jenny Agutter as Sister Julienne from Midwife was there officiating. I thought I would be told to get down, or at least asked what I was doing. But no one troubled me. The women were active, engaged in their tasks, their faces looked strained, stressed, cross even. I felt high above them, separate and now steady.

The morning light was smoky with mist. A fine rain dusted my face though there was no real evidence of wetness. There were more people about than I expected. Down by Alexandra Hall the air smelt sweet, like new mown-grass and ice lollies. Towards South Marine it smelt of last night’s barbecues. On Northgate Terrace a seagull ripped at a dustbin bag.

Another neighbour, Betty the cat’s owner, has planted some herbs in the planter that she hooks on the railing opposite her window. There is thyme, basil, oregano and parsley. It’s the nearest I can get to a garden, she’d said to me last year. Perhaps I can branch out too. There’s a little shelf on the roof below us. I’d love to grow sweet peas. Would they climb the fence? Perhaps it is too late to plant them now. Maybe next year. The geraniums give at least three people joy. Myself, him and our neighbour’s ninety-nine year old mother. I can’t see them very well, she says, but they give me such pleasure as I come out of my door. It is worth it for that. I think of her as I water them. We don’t really own anything out right. It is shared. A shared ownership, a shared joy.

To work. I keep thinking about emptying myself. There are no shoulds, he says, over and over again. I’ve allowed work to define me, working hard makes me believe that I am a good person, worthwhile. I need to be in the spaces in-between. What am I then? Am I more myself then? I think of being abroad, on holiday sitting in the sun. I let it the space come in then. I let it become blank. Wait and see. Make the space and an answer will come.

It’s coming off the sea, he said. Now it’s hanging over Pen Dinas. It’s strange. I don’t understand why it does it. It looks otherworldly. A dirty looking mist, a little brown. Like smoke.

Town was mayhem this morning. Lots of noise. Lots of drinkers.

Two lads with Swansea accents walking towards me, their shirts wide open revealing pink skin from the sun. They are eating pizza from a box as they walk. The way to resolve it, one is saying to the other, is you go that way and I go this way. Later four or five lads can be heard shouting and singing in the Aldi car park. First they chant the name Cardiff City and then they sing a traditional Welsh Folk song which I know but can’t spell. My back tenses up. A not unusual phenomenon but this time perfectly natural. They could do anything those boys. I need to be on my guard. But all is fine. I am invisible in my boots, hat and waterproofs. Electronic music thumped out of Pier Pressure night club. A woman stood next to a man, the word OBEY written three times on the back of her bomber jacket.

More serendipity. Abi Morgan on DID yesterday morning talking about meeting Margaret Thatcher when she was waitressing at an event at the NPG. Then recalling how eight years later (or so) she was writing Iron Lady. We talked about it, he and I as we walked back from North Road. She said she was small, I said. Was she? he asked. Apparently, I said. Then lo and behold it was a cross word clue that evening. Coincidence again? Methinks that academic protests too much.

It seemed to work. I got pictures of them all, my current panel of judges, stuck them in my book and put speech bubbles coming out of their mouths. Though I struggled to really decide what it is they are saying to me. More today. Some supporters – others hindrances. And yet, it isn’t that clear cut. Not really. It held off. I did work without so much tension but it came later. As if it waits. It feels like that sometimes.

He sat on my bed. Budge up, he said. He soothed me, as he always does. We are in this together. He is my witness as I am his. Nothing matters, not really. Except this that we have. This precious thing, this kindness, this love. Love that is kindness, kindness that is love. I am made good by it. He makes me good. It doesn’t matter what I do. I am proud of you, he says. And I know that. But sometimes this falling away of all that I’d hoped for, vague though it is when I examine it, breaks my heart. I am become so small and yet inside I am immense. How that can be I don’t know. Will never know. I don’t think.

Be kind. May the sun shine through the mist. x

They were there yesterday and today, though this time they were lying in the gutter rather than on the pavement. The reminded me of the kind of knickers my mother bought me to wear for tennis. Big pants with a row of frilly lace on the back. They looked ridiculous. I felt reduced by wearing them, as if I’d somehow regressed back to childhood, to babyhood. A fluff of saccharine sugary-ness under my simple white, functional tennis skirt. It was what was done in those days. Not now, the female players wear shorts under their skirts or dresses. These pants clearly belonged to a child, though. They were white with a broderie anglaise-d bottom. Had they just be dropped and forgotten? Or had they fallen out of a pram?

He was at his window again this morning. I do prefer it when he isn’t. It isn’t that I don’t like him, for I do. It is just that I would rather not have to talk at that time in the morning. It is my thinking time, my solitary time (for all the people I see and encounter on my walks, I am still alone). I’m sure he feels the same way. Our conversation seems to be just as awkward for him as it is for me. He wants to stand there and smoke. And contemplate and stare. Cheers now, he says as I make my way down the steps. What did I say? Something inane. My mouth struggles to form words. Sometimes I wait in the hallway until I think he is gone.

The Shoreline Guest House is full. The first one this year. Congratulations.

Two bonfires were still burning on South Beach.

The fog felt wet. Was that rain? A real pea-souper. I couldn’t see the Pier from the Bar.

Would he still call it a coincidence, that Cambridge academic that I heard on the radio? Would he? Shall I tell you of it? I was trying to think of an artist’s name. As I always am these days. Joseph Beuys, I was trying to remember his name. I thought I would look it up in a book on Performance Art that I bought second-hand a while ago. I knew that he was something to do with the Fluxus movement. So I thought I would start but looking up references to that word in the index. It was there. I found it easily because it was highlighted in pink. What are the chances eh? No other marks in the book, it is pristine. And yet, there it was in the one place I need to find. A gentle nudging portent, perhaps.

I’ve agreed to write something down, to have statements there in my book ready to challenge the doubters. Those critics that I’ve invested with knowledge way beyond their years or experience. But it is hard to start. My sense of my own foolishness being exacerbated by the articulation of it. But I will preserve. I am looking for clarity. The fog is apt. A thick whiteness.

I thought of her last night. Thirty years ago. An age and yet a brief flicker.

Happy birthday, my love.