Category: Writings

It’s funny how the smallest change can alter one’s point of view.

I’ve moved my bed. Ever since it was dripped on I’ve not wanted to put it back where it was. My view is different. I now face the window full on. I have a face full of sky. I see less trees but more sky. It feels odd. My dreams have changed, I’m certain of it. Is it Feng Shui at work? And this morning I moved everything else in the room accordingly. I don’t have much in there, I don’t want it. A rack for my clothes, a table, a lamp, two alarm clocks (one for the time, the other for the tick) and a telephone. I like land line phones, though this one is a heavy, 1950’s Bakelite one that is useless when you’re put through to a numbering service. You know the kind, press 3 if you’d actually like to speak to someone. So I can’t use it for that. But I like the look of it. I like it’s ring. Yes, I feel different. Is it just my bed?

It’s fixed. We have heating and hot water. My bath this morning was glorious. Thank you. It has been so comfortless. The house has felt unloved, unwarmed-up. It is happier now. As indeed are we. They all came yesterday, big man after big man. Bang, bang went the door, lumber lumber up the stairs. But they were amazing, ingenious, creative and fast once they get going. And they don’t want tea, or water. Nothing. I am grateful. More than I can say.

I’m off now to my residency. It comes around so fast. Let us be kinder to each other this week. I make him nervous I think with my demands. He tries his best. I ask so much of him. But it is well. It is well.

I will carry Ming Ho’s play in my mind. Who are you? I want my mother. I want my mother.

He reminds me of a sloth, not in demeanour or action, he is not lazy or somnolent, far from it, it’s more something around the eyes. His eyes are heavy, doleful, sad. We were in the kitchen eating lunch. He was sitting with me, for company and as a shield against all the goings on. And he had just dashed up the stairs in his stocking feet to tell us of the latest in the catalogue of boiler disasters. It’s still not fixed. More parts have to be found. He’d spent the whole morning drilling into the wall. It rent through the walls, like a super-sonic dentist’s machine. A sound that seers one’s bones. It’s still not fixed. Another night, another day of warm-air blowing machines, thimble-full baths and making-do, we thought, catching each other’s eye. Can you make us a priority? I asked him. Then he got his camera out and scrolled to video, all the while listing the other jobs he’s got on the go. Burst pipes, kaput boilers, on and on, then he began describing a house he went to yesterday and handed him the camera. See, he said. All the ceilings have caved in. They’re living in a swimming pool. And he laughs bitterly, his eyes sadder than ever. I could hardly bear to look. The plaster hung from the ceiling, the wooden floor was a lake of water, sofa and chairs floating. A home. Someone’s home, utterly devastated. We were suitably chastened. I do feel for you, he said, in his hang-dog world-weary way. We’ve still got no water. The pipes have burst somewhere under the field. That will be my job over the weekend.

So we have to wait. Till whenever. Wait for parts to come in. Parts that he cannot yet identify. Meanwhile he has stuffed the hole with roof insulator. I cannot bear to clean. No, what would be the point? Whenever the pity comes in I think of that family. Such devastation. I didn’t want to see it. But I must. I must.

Am I too picky? My piece has been posted. A word changed and there’s a blaring typo. It hurts. The balance has been affected. Should I care less? Perhaps. But I was happy with it. It was OK.

He calls it a small life. I love our small life, he says. Is it small? Sometimes, terribly so. I felt it this morning. I feel closed in by the chaos of this coming and going of heavy-footed strangers. One of the boys kept letting the front door slam. Bang, bang, bang over and over. Can I say something? Where is the peace? Is there peace in the chaos? Is that the key? Find that and all will be well. I walked to my appointment yesterday. I was a little early so I sat on a bench in the sun for ten minutes and closed my eyes. Lovely. A gentle time. I shut my eyes and listened to the noise of the street, taking myself away from it. Away. And then this morning standing on the end of the Perygyl and listening to the sea. It is enough, sometimes. I try to take my consciousness down to my belly, my solar plexus away from the ranting, fretting chatter of my head. Out of it. Care but care less. Fancy free. What is that exactly?

If you had a proper job, he says. A throw away line that eats at me. I know he doesn’t mean it. Why do I let it eat me? Play after play of hardship, pain, loss and loneliness. They enter me, take me over. The woman with MS taking herself off to Switzerland, the stalker and the voyeur who films his wife, his child. They were my company yesterday as I worked, colouring the work, deepening that yellow.

I will sew. Sewing grounds me, settles me. A chance of work and I can’t do it. Will more come? I need to work, lots of work so that I can replenish my savings. A bit put by each month. What am I doing? Why do I feel so small? I have taken such journeys to expand my life, and there is another booked, and yet the smallness still dogs me. And yet, when I am out, when my eyes are closed in the sun, then, anything seems possible. For I am gone, I am out. Out of fear. Cancelled. Out.

We’ve both been wobbled by it all. We are home-birds. We need things just so. A flow, a pattern, a routine. It hasn’t always been so, for either of us. He had his wild moments and I too. Perhaps it’s an age thing. To be grounded, to feel the ground beneath my feet so that I can work, breathe and take cover. It’s gone on too long. I’m fed up with it now, he said.

They did come but it still hasn’t been fixed. They cut a hole in the wall and shook their heads. More work. And now there is scaffolding outside my bedroom. A makeshift balcony. A Juliet balcony. Come and sing to me. Anyone can stand on it and look in. Look in at me in bed. Who’d want to? I would, he said.

They will come again tomorrow. All those big feet up and down the stairs. They bring big hefty lads with them, shy and monosyllabic. I leave them to it. He oversees it. Do they want tea? No.

He lost it a bit yesterday. He gets stressed. And he doesn’t like him. Doesn’t want him here. He can’t just turn up, I say. Not without prior warning. He just wants to poke his nose in, he says.

The wobbling affects everything else. Colour it daunting. I’m daunted today. Keep it simple, keep it small. I have to book them. And what an expense. I’m always intimidated by big expenditure. I like to keep it small. And which one to choose? It’s a minefield. Trust. That is all I can do, trust that I am led to the right one. It’s a holiday. A chance to spend time with dear friends. Just the flight, they say. And yet, it isn’t is it? It’s the flight, the parking, the petrol, the insurance, the travel money and so on. But it’s just energy.

Is it all wrapped up in my sense of self? My belief that I can’t generate much income. Like I can’t generate heat? It floors me sometimes. My skills, whatever they are, have little financial currency. And yet, if I think about it, is that really true? I have made money, I have earned money. My work has sold for vast sums. It’s just it’s hard to quantify. It’s subtler than that. It will come. Ask and it will come. I will be able to earn enough to cover it. It will come. And it is a gift. In the end that is what it is. A gift to them and one to us. Trust it.

A light rain this morning. I like to hear the pattering sound of rain on my umbrella. When I came back I washed his hair in the sink. It’s a tender thing. A mothering thing. The head is vulnerable thing to have hold of. I remember hers when I was learning Reiki. Holding it in my hands. And hers. And his. I like to care like this. I am made whole by it.

Some sayings seem funny when you consider them or try them on your tongue before saying them. Off to a fine art. A fine art. And I have. I thought so this morning. I’ve got this sans-boiler malarkey off to a fine art, I thought. Out of bed I dash upstairs to the kitchen to switch on the kettle and turn on the blow-fire, then back down again to make my bed and prepare the bathroom. Then back up for the boiled kettle to pour it into the bath, then back up again to boil another kettle-full, meanwhile I lay the table for breakfast and write the shopping list. Then it is back down to empty the water into the bath. Then I hang over the bath to wash my hair and face before stripping to get into the now foggy water to splash myself with soap and water. It does. I am managing. Though I do sink later.

Might they come today?

The papers arrived yesterday so clearly some traffic is getting through the mountains. We ran out of milk, she said placing a plum on the scales. Then it arrived late yesterday and there wasn’t time to get it into the fridges. Were you affected by the snow? she asked. I’d gone to work and when I came out my car was sliding all over the place, she continued. I’ve never driven in snow before.

We’re both a little tetchy. He hasn’t slept and I always get edgy in the anticipation of people coming. All that noise and clatter and big galumphing feet. They are good men though, I think. I’d just rather be left in peace.

I dreamt he’d been run over. It was a surreal thing. There was no blood, no gore. He was just flattened before my eyes. The driver of the car, or truck or steam roller, I couldn’t be sure, was angry with him for getting in the way. I cried out, hollered. He was alive. He opened his eyes. He was in shock. It woke me. I got out of bed, had a pee and put on the fire.

My work feels uncontained. I don’t know what questions to ask of it. And yet, there is something, something is coming. I must just persevere. I like the involvement of others. It is very engaging, she wrote. That’s nice. To engage others, I want this. And yet, I also want, nay long for my solitude. Out solitude. What is coming? We cannot know. Shan’t know. Shouldn’t know. Take each moment. Live it a fully as you can. Alive to it. To all.

I’ve been listening to James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. He writes exquisitely. It takes a while to orientate myself, but when I’m steady the language pours over me like honey. But it is bleak, a bleak mostly internal experience. And sometimes I want lightness.

The sky is whitening now. A seagull flashes across it. They’ve been gathering on the shore these last few mornings, huddled up with an occasional oystercatcher peeping in the distance. Unseen but heard, echoing across the promenade. The stink of starling guano from under the Pier made me cross the road.

To work. Enough. Time to make something of the day…..

She was ahead of me while I walked home. It was 3.45 and still pitch, though down by the harbour the sky had looked blue. No moon this morning. And the chill has passed. No ice and just a few traces of snow in those sunless streets. She was ahead of me and I thought it was her hair. A great top knot on top of her head. I could only see the back of her. A black shape, wide of hip and small of foot. A dressed Botero beauty, perhaps. I caught up with her by the station, she had a phone pressed up against her ear. And it wasn’t a hat. What I thought was a top knot were two pink pom poms. She was wearing a bobble hat.

It is often like that when I walk in the early mornings. Things are not quite as they seem. It could be the dimness of the light, or that my perception of them is skewed. I am certainly hyper alert. Walking down Mill Road I heard a sharp click, I spun round, a door was either being opened or shut. My skin develops extra senses in the night, it hears as well as feels. (Listening to David Blunkett hosting an old edition of Down Your Way on Radio 4 extra, I noticed how often he’d refer to sounds, the noise of the steel-making machinery, the music from the old shows at the Lyceum Theatre. Is it his blindness that makes his other senses so acute? He came across as a kind man, a sympathetic man, especially when he spoke to an ex-usherette from the theatre. His speech changed, verbs were dropped from sentences. But it wasn’t a pose, this was no Tony Blair losing his H’s, no it was a way of making her feel more at ease. Lovely.)

She replied. I was touched. She didn’t have to. It was nice to make that connection. It gave me a glow.

She called back. I’d tried her but got the answering machine. She called back. She’s come on such a long way from the first phone call when she had to ring off after a panic attack. She sounded better, stronger. I do like her. I love her in my way. It’s a warmth that flows from me. A deep compassion, just like I felt for the begging woman in Nerja, and the woman in the red fleece at the home on Thursday. It takes me over, it floods me and I want to reach out and touch. I can’t touch her, will probably never meet her. This is enough. This phone call every Friday. Are you OK? I think of you. It is enough.

Still no boiler. We will wait. Maybe on Monday. I keep him warm. I keep it all flowing. I long for a proper bath, to shave my legs and luxuriate. It will come. But meanwhile I am grateful this has been a gift. I know this. Nothing is safe, nothing is as we think. All is illusion. So temporary, so impermanent. All we have is our actions. How we behave to ourselves and to others. Keep steady. Keep warm. Keep kind.

Morning opens up.

Coffee and then work.

And The Archers.

They were standing in a shop doorway, about halfway down Great Darkgate Street, out of the wind. Two sets of lovers. Both men shielding their girls from the cold, pushing them against the window glass. The men were shouting, joshing each other, the girls, hidden by the masculine bulk were silent. A strange kind of love-making. Mates and lovers, separate entities for many. To one you tell all, to the other there is a shared warmth, a temporary satiation of lust and intimacy? I’m not sure. I remember being their age and how the idea of men promised such comfort. But in such a situation, being talked over like that, I would’ve soon got irritated. It doesn’t feel right to be merely an appendage, a squeeze. But perhaps my amor propre has always been a little skewed. Men’s men. I’ve never attracted them. Too gobby. She isn’t gobby, is she? my brother-in-law had said to him down the phone when he told them of me. I can be. I don’t like to be ignored, though I am more tolerant than I used to be. I didn’t like coming here years ago, I felt sidelined, cancelled out. Insecurity, I suppose. Not now. Not with him. I know, as he knows, what this is.

I walked this morning. They’d promised sleet but it was dry. I wore my big warm coat and was thankful for it.

I heard the sound of running water. A tap let on? I was down by the harbour walking past the boatsheds. The sound continued and I saw what looked like a stream of water come out from under the wooden door. I thought it was water. I thought it was just wet and strode my way across it. It was ice. Ah! and then I was down, flat on my back. It’s the shock more than anything else. I’m left shaky and disorientated. The coat cushioned me. A bit battered but I’m OK. I give myself pep talks. Up you get, nothing broken, in that cheerful, parental voice that is doing all it can to distract the child from crying. That’s it. Up you get. I walked on the Perygyl to steady myself. All is well.

They didn’t come. We’d prepared ourselves for the worst. He may come today. The snow was as high as his van yesterday, apparently. It feels like the worse is over. At least it isn’t -5. Another night of coats on beds and boiled kettle baths. We survive.

I snatch bits of Richard Sennett’s The Craftsman at work, though the weather has brought that to a standstill, Sunday’s being cancelled too. He writes nicely, accessibly. I’m up to the section about Ruskin. Sennett writes about the Victorians anxiety about excessive consumerism and how Ruskin encouraged us to have less but to treasure and ‘know’ the objects we do have. I love that. I try to do it myself. I mend, keep things going. I know my things, truly. I notice them, stroke them, not because I laud my possession of them, most after all are worth little, but because I marvel at their form, their texture and the memories they invoke.

I dreamt of her last night. He was saving her. Was she drowning? I came later. I held her, felt her bones. She was skin and bone. Is she still hurting? And then another dream about meeting my dear friend in a restaurant in Italy. It was to be a day trip. So extravagant, so wild. She’d thought I’d so no but I said yes. I got to the restaurant and then couldn’t remember what we’d arranged. Was I at the right place? Then she was there, and all was calm. She too was skin and bone when I hugged her. Solving dreams. Dreams of sun, of warmth.

Resilience. Solving problems. Being kind. Keeping going. It’s just the cold. It bites into my fingers and they split and sting. It’s OK. It’s been OK. We have survived it. Maybe it will be fixed today, maybe Monday. It doesn’t matter, I can be sanguine.

Work now. Coffee first. I want a quiet day. A working day. Amen to that.

I tried to go out this morning and got as far as the end of Llanbadarn Road before the strength of the wind began to scare me. It almost blew me off my feet. I feel vulnerable these days. And the wind was just too strong for me. I turned round and began walking in the direction of Llanbadarn thinking that if I walked into the wind it would be better. But I got as far as the beginning of the other entrance to the Llys and gave up. Here too the wind was whirling and gusting. It is too much. Too much for me. Don’t go, he’d said last night. I’ll give it a try, I’d said, tenacious as ever. And had dressed up super-warm in his coat, my gilet with fur hood, my set of waterproofs with double trousers, two pairs of socks, double-gloves, scarf and hat. Even so my hands were like ice, as were my toes. It wasn’t the air. It’s only meant to be minus one, it’s the wind.

Still no boiler, still no heat or hot water. Another bath in a thimble full of kettle-boiled water but I’m getting cannier. I dash from room to room, exchanging the little electric heaters the burly boys left us. It’s the hallway and bathrooms that are Siberian-like. Ugh.

A strange day yesterday, apocalyptic in feel. People looked strained, anxious, rushing, dashing through the wind. The 13 cm didn’t come. There’s barely 2, and even that is just wind-blown up the sides of pavements. Lorries are stuck on the mountains though. We are cut off from the world. How does that feel?

It was a rushed session at the home. It was all too much, the rush, rush rushing around. And it was cold. I went to an upstairs lounge. A few Welsh ladies sat there staring at me with mild curiosity. Others were just dotted around, some eating at tables, others sleeping, one watching the TV and then breaking into song. Daisy, Daisy give me your answer do. Another was standing over a woman’s table attempting to wipe up some spilt sugar with her hand. All of a sudden she fell backwards. A heavy thud and a cry out. She looked like an up-ended beetle, shock and distress across her face. It was heart-rending. The staff are calm, they are used to it. One knelt down beside her, stroking her hand, her ankle. An alarm was rung and a hoist sent for. She didn’t want it. It must be so disorientating, hanging in midair being levered back onto your chair. She slept after that, her glasses falling off her face. Then it was rush, rush to work.

Driving to work I saw a trampoline in a front garden. It had come loose from its moorings in the wind and was waving, flapping like a great crinoline.

Work then home for lunch then out again. But no, that was cancelled. Thank god. We both needed rest. To hunker down. The cold is tiring. Managing it is tiring. But it is OK. I am made so grateful by this adversity.

He had a call to say that they will come today to fix it. We’ll see. The weather may make it impossible. We have to prepare ourselves for the worst. Always. And then it is OK. For the worst is always doable.

A warm life, I am truly blessed.

The roads were white this morning, made white by salt. They looked ghostly, dry, severe. The snow had not come when I ventured out. It was waiting. The world felt like it was waiting. For something. The cold was sharp. A north-easter that stung my face. And yet, I liked it. Thanked God for it. A magical night. No one about. Nothing but this holding of breath.

They’re saying we’ll get 13 cm tonight, said the supermarket manager as he slowly fed our fruit passed the beeper. An’ they’ll be 20 tomorrow. He isn’t a smiler. No she’s not in, he said when I asked about her. She’ll be snowed in later. She said she had a really tricky time getting home last night. So much panic. And yet, I hear on the news that some people in Scotland have been trapped in their cars for over 15 hours. Bless them. I wish them warmth and relief.

As I do us. Our boiler is off. My worst nightmare. And in this weather too. The car said -4. It felt like -10. It was surreal. Way passed my bedtime and there they were four huge burly men standing around in our kitchen talking about flues. One with a bad back, one not sure if he’d make it into town this morning, one the owner (at one point lying on his belly putting his hand down a wall hatch) and another a young lad who brought a heater. Oh, and the owner’s little boy, decked out in dinosaur onesie and dinosaur slippers was also there. God knows why. Perhaps the owner thought it would soften our response. This after all appears to be his fault. A bodge-job man, methinks. Anyway, it began with me finding my bed sodden. I thought one of the hot water bottles had leaked. No it was coming from the ceiling. Drip drip. My teddy bear was drenched, as were my cushion and eiderdown. Ugh! Keep calm. We called and the burly men arrived. They had to turn it off. Carbon monoxide poisoning might have happened. Think of that. And she was so young.

We are being stoic. He lies on his bed with his coat on and he slept fully clothed last night. I didn’t. Naked as usual, I loaded with my bed with blankets, coats and throws. It was OK, though I couldn’t sleep. It was all too much. They may be back today to cut a whole in the wall so that they can access the leaking flue. Who knows? Else it will be Monday. Can we manage? He reads more snow stories from his iPad. I want to stop being scared. We survived. I bathed in a thimbleful of water from the kettle, froze but got clean. I’ve mopped the floors, done the washing, yoga, walked and made breakfast. It was OK. Life goes on. So many have it worse. I think of the man in Syria. And I know I am blessed. Always.

My waking day is topsy-turvy. By this time, 6.27 am precisely, I’ve been up for over five and half hours. This isn’t a bragging thing, I’m not trying to impress, just explain. That being so by the afternoon I am dog-tired. So having a booking at work for 5.30 floors me. It is all wrong. My body, my soul does not want to go out of that door. I do it. It is my living. But it sends me awry. Supper is later and I am in bed way after my usual time and then I lie there, like I did last night, wide-awake and staring. I woke again at 10.30 had a pee and tried to get back to sleep. It took what seemed like hours. Just enjoy lying in the warmth, I told myself, sleep isn’t important. But I want to go. Too much going on my head. Too much.

It wasn’t a victory. It isn’t. I derive no pleasure or exultation from forcing the issue. What now? Will we speak again?

I knew I slept for I remember fragments of dream. I had found what I thought was a mouse in a food cupboard. I wanted to just leave it, couldn’t face it but I persevered telling myself that I could put it in the food recycling box. However, when I came to pull it out it was in fact a white rabbit (it was it’s nose that I’d seen). A white rabbit in a white paper bag. I yanked it from the bag. It was enormous. A great, fat, plush, pink-eared rabbit. And perfectly healthy. Then I remembered that I’d known about it all along. But what about it’s food? I hadn’t been feeding it. But it was well, and searching through the cupboard I found lots of food for it. A cat jumped out too. Another fat, well-preserved animal. Yet, it seemed that I already had a cat and it spoke to me on the arrival of these two newcomers. Aw, it said, looking up at me with disdain, what about me? Then a gang of people started to flood into my flat and I worried about leaving the animals to their own devices. Will they eat each other? I was carried along and out with the crowd of people, forgetting my keys and phone in the process. Did I lock up? What of the animals? Then I was in an underground car park trying to call him without a phone. The rest is lost.

The online dream dictionaries all regard white rabbits as good omens, symbols of luck. I’m due some. Yes please. And this moon apparently is a Virgo moon. Nice one.

She is a beauty. She lit my way this morning. Almost full. Full tomorrow I think. The end of chapter apparently. Yes, it is.

I wish her love. Always.

He was a big man and nervous. My buddy told me to wear a turtle neck, he said, thinking it would make me look more academic. His discomfort and nerves were palpable. Can you do something silly for me? he asked afterwards. Of course, I said. Take a picture of me so that I can send it to my buddy. They were hard on him. I felt for him. There is no generosity in Academia, it seems.

Waiting for his piece, I heard a feature on the so-called Syrian ceasefire. It comprised an audio, probably from a phone of a Syrian man in his flat recording the sounds around him. The flat echoed from emptiness, a baby or young child was crying and against his voice, edgy and staccato in this his non-mother tongue played out a salvo of gunfire and bombing. How do they live? I cannot leave my apartment, he was saying, I have nothing in the flat, nothing to feed my daughter. I wanted to reach through the air waves and comfort him, give him some sort of relief. His voice was harrowing to listen to. I cannot imagine such a way of life. He has not asked for it. He is caught up in it. A victim, a man trying to live. It stopped me. It stilled me. How can I make sense of it? How can the knowledge of it make me live better, kinder? I wanted to stop listening yet also to know, to stand in his shoes, for a moment.

How do they live?

It was a beautiful walk this morning. No one was about. There was no wind, no resistance, just a cold calm. The sea lapped and the moon grew full. There are many tangled masses of roots on the beach, great logs of dead trees washed up by the tide. They lie there in the semi-gloom of night like beached whales. Heavy, lumbering sculptures, lying ossified on the sand, too heavy to move.

I walked past a plumbers van caught by an image of a rubber duck and the strapline: bath valves and beautiful bathrooms. Later I passed a waiting taxi, with an ‘x’ missing from it’s lit-up, roof-top sign. A few kids hung around outside the Why Not? Others could be heard shouting and kicking at bins along Bridge Street. Lip Lickin’ Chicken was open but no one was queuing outside. The Perygyl was calm, lit by the moon. No fishing boats illuminated the harbour. All was quiet, all was still.

I wish you peace and quiet, Syrian man. May there be an end to it soon. May your daughter be fed and stillness reign. You have moved me. Your voice in my head will stay.