Category: Writings

It’s the first Christmas decoration I’ve seen this year. Seen, through a window, at Alexander Hall. A string of red tinsel looped around a window fitting in an upper floor kitchen. An afterthought. Perhaps it was worn around someone’s neck first, for a night out clubbing. My mother used to have some lovely tinsel. She kept it year in year out. It wasn’t that cheap thin stuff but thick and lustrous. Fat coils of red, gold, silver and white. Let me! Can I, can I? I loved decorating the tree, I loved decorating the table, I loved putting out the little Nisser hut. I had to stop myself from tearing open the boxes, so eager was I to get my hands on them. It has always been so, a mixture of impatience and a wanting to go slow, to savour, to treasure the touch of something. She kept all those decorations with such care. The exquisitely thin glass baubles, circles, stars and bells, the Nisser figures in wool and wood, the angels, the snowmen. Each one tenderly wrapped in tissue. The tiny, tiny ones in cotton wool and squeezed into a Tampax box. Ugh, said my father, dropping it with disgust. Where are they now? Who has them now? I don’t know.

Where’re you going? A girl in shorts running from the Pier Pressure nightclub along the Prom. She stops in front of young man, putting her body in front of his, halting his progress, her hands on his chest. Where’re you going? she shouts, her voice carrying in the wind. What’s it fucking matter to you? he replies, his face jutting at hers, tight with anger.

Walking home past the station I hear a beer can rolling and crashing against a bin, then the smash of a glass bottle as it is blown off a table outside Weatherspoon’s.

I prayed for her last night, if pray is the right word. The papers talk of her torment. He husband on the TV, in a news interview, talked of her anguish and how it has made her unable to walk. I asked for some kind of action. For someone to do something so that she may be released. They have the power, it could be done today, this moment. It is all about diplomacy. Let it be so. In my mind I am in that cell with her. I offer my hand. Let her be released. Let her come home.

It will come. The story will come. The fear is of the unknown. When I’m sitting in front of the white space ready to tell my story it will come. It always does. It is only 500 words, I write that everyday, here in this space. I let it come and it does. Always. I dreamt I met Clint Eastwood. It was meant to be Robert Redford but in my dream he’d died. So Clint Eastwood was standing in for him. He looked a little lost, was waiting for filming to start. It wasn’t his face. He was warm, funny, easy to be with. We talked of the weather. He was in a place I knew well. The sunny end. The summer end. It was a nice dream. I felt special, singled out.

The wind was strong this morning. A howlin’ gale, he always calls it. It’s blowin’ a f*****g howlin’ gale out there.

I want to do the other one. I am into it now, at ease with the flow but it feels right to keep them all going, all alive. I will find my pace with it. And if I don’t do it I will feel bad. There is no way round it. Do it.

Brooklyn tonight. We are both lapping it up. A glorious film, soft, tender. We go slow, savouring it, unwrapping it like Mum’s glass baubles.

Shining.

The rain was relentless.

I’d borrowed his coat. I felt like a child, tiny under all that weight. It was warm though, and it kept out the wet. The wind was too strong for an umbrella, though I’d brought it anyway. It was his umbrella, a long, golfing one from out of the car. It’s just about endurance, walks like that. One is buffeted, pummelled. Relentless. I think about explorers, Scott, Fiennes, trudging through impossible icy terrain. Head down, just getting one with it. It isn’t personal, it’s just weather. It isn’t designed to piss us off, or hinder our progress, it just is. That’s all. Don’t go, he said the night before, stay. Come back to bed with me, he says. But I want to be out, out in the air, so accepting it as it is is the only way. There is a calmness in that.

Few people were out. A couple without coats walking along South Prom. Then on my way back, a man ahead of me, swaying along Mill Street. Lurching and then kicking and punching at doors. Along the street, just bashing them, his legs flailing about wildly. I hung back, weighing up my options. I crossed the street, walked slower. He seemed to have gone. A police car, Heddlu, drove past. I started to breathe again, taking it slow. Two lovers ahead, their heads touching. Up the hill, striding now. Then home. You been away? asked our neighbour from his window, his fag nearly finished. No, I said, last week, yes. Oh, I covered for that, didn’t I? he said. No, it’s just I saw they’d left a parcel at your door.

I have a slither of fear, like ice in my belly. I want to write it. I have asked to write it. But there is always this fear of the nothingness. The starting from nothing. There is no escape. Just take yourself to the page, she says. And just write. I will. I will.

He tells me of her father. She talks as she does his feet. His podiatrist, mine too. It helps her to talk, to make funny stories from the heartbreaking tragedy of it. Her father and his Alzheimer’s. He’s in a home now. His wife, her mother, has been a saint. She usually goes in every day but has stayed away due to a cold. I thought you’d finished with me, he said, when she turned up the other day. My father was such a gentleman, she told him, never swore, never any sign of temper or violence. When she went to see him in the home recently, he shouted at her. Your grandfather’s upstairs so pull your fucking finger out.

It’s that dog again. I hear it before I see it. NO! I shout, my hands out ready to fend her off. I turn full circle keeping my eyes on her as she skids into some wet leaves, crouched down ready to pounce. What does she make of me, all that shouting? I get so edgy. I don’t want it. I don’t want her jumping up at me. The owner walks over, avoiding eye contact. Two neighbours, with whom he’s been chatting, are standing by the steps. She only wants to play, the woman says, smiling. What a fusspot. I can’t help it. Such feral-ness is beyond my comfort zone. He’s trying to train her, he says later. I saw him outside the other day. He’s doing his best. Yes. I should try harder. Relax a little. She’s only a pup.

She was out with the dog when I called. Bonnie, a sheepdog is nearly fifteen. She sounded better. It’s started to rain, she said, and I’ve put the washing out. Still better out than in. She walks in wellies, she tells me. Wellies that make her infected ingrown toenail sore. She sounds better, more alive. I like to hear that she is walking. Bonnie likes to be out, she says. Bonnie has adopted her. It’s been over two years now. She came over from the farm and stayed. She has a bed and a blanket in the passageway. How can I say? she says. It’s her little quirk. How can I say? With a mother tongue of Welsh, English words sometimes take a little time to come. I like to speak to her. There is a calm in it. I like her. I am warmed by her. Thank you for calling, she says. It is kind. A good woman, a gentle woman. Modest. She has much to teach me.

He was an ex-work colleague of his. We met him in the street as we sometimes did in Cambridge, years ago. He’d just retired and was off to live on some remote Scottish island with his partner. His subject had been English Literature and he told us how he was going to use his time to read all of Shakespeare’s works. A course of study. It has a nineteenth-century sound to it. Men of private means did it, women of leisure did it, at least those who had access to their father’s or husband’s library. A course of study. There is so much I want to learn, to immerse myself in. To learn for the sake of it. To educate oneself. He read a quote out loud at breakfast from the paper. I can’t remember the exact wording but I remember it was from Aldous Huxley. Something about the only thing you can change is yourself. Does education do this? Partly. I love to learn. I love to stretch myself, even if there is fear in the doing of it. By taking it on, after all, one is admitting to not knowing. There is a vulnerability to that. An exposure of nothingness, a nothingness waiting to be filled. But I do love the stretching, the encountering of ideas. Though it does highlight my smallness, always.

Two mornings running I’ve seen the milkman. He drives a truck not a float. An open truck, rather rickety. He was ahead of me on Llanbadarn Road when I walked home. I swiftly mounted the pavement. He was on the wrong side of the road with his lights off. It took me a moment to work out that he’d been delivering. I’m sure that I’ve talked before about Nanny’s milkman and how he used to arrive on a horse and cart. The horse was inevitably called Dobbin. I loved hearing him coming down the hill. You could hear him through the shut window. A slow pace. No hurry. Taking time to chat. That chink of glass on glass. Housewives on their newly washed front steps, slippers and apron still on. The milk was cold. The cream from the top of the milk on my cereal. I loved it. All homogenised now. And the punctured bottle tops in the winter, from the birds. Blue tits mostly. It seem to me then to be straight out of a Janet and John book. How I loved her. I loved her stillness, her it-will-be-alright-ness. You’re a born worrier, she used to say. Never with her. Never. She wasn’t our grandmother. She was my father’s Nanny and became ours by proxy. They didn’t really get on, she was too stuck in her ways as far as she was concerned. I can see it now, it must’ve been difficult coming from a foreign country to all that. I wish I’d been kinder back then, tried to understand, even just a little.

My dreams have been so lucid these last few nights. Last night, an old woman encased in glass being given an award for her part in a theatrical production. She stayed the course, kept calm, kept steady, was a peaceful presence. It was enough, she was chosen for the accolade. He gave it out, gave a speech. She was a small woman, grey-haired. She looked familiar. An accolade for calmness, for diligence, for staying the course, for being at peace. Imagine that.

Time to go. I’m glad I got a chance to write. She is right, I miss it when I don’t .

A blowy day, big clouds. Cleaning done. I am at peace.

I shouldn’t do it. It feels naughty. It breaks the rules. I think it has something to do with when I fell. I prefer the flat, and it has been recently tarmacked. The pavement is all higgedly-piggedly. Awry. A patchwork of paving slabs, manhole covers, gravel and tar. The road is even, trusty. In the dark I walk in the road.

It was a good day yesterday. Two discussions, one in Café Nero and the other at the hotel in Aberdovey. I taped them both, wanting to capture every nuance. Mostly of what I said, to be fair, I need to hear my sensibility, my truth. Though much of what he said also surprised me. I trust you, he said. I trust that when you are your studio you know what you are doing. I trust you. It felt good to hear. There was a woman in the hotel lounge doing The Times crossword when we arrived. The seats in the window were free. I hesitated. She was sitting on the sofa right next to them. I cleared my throat. Would you mind? I asked. Were going to be doing an interview, would it disturb you if we sat here? No, she said, looking up. Not at all, we’re leaving soon any how. Don’t be silly. An afterthought, tagged on on the end of her sentence. Don’t be silly. An adult talking to a child. She looked discombobulated after she said it. Uncertain. When I told him of it, in whispers, he said, what did you say? Nothing, I said. Nothing. Don’t be silly. She used to say it. Often.

The sun poured in through the window, warming me. We drank tea. Lapsang Souchong. I complained about the size of the teapot. Can we have a large one? I asked the waiter. Saying nothing he turned on his heel and left the room. Returning with a larger one, he said, that’s the size of pot we’re told to use. Regulation. I tried to appease, to ameliorate the situation. It’s my fault, I’m demanding. I like it just so. I look forward to it. I want lots. I want it to last and last. He thawed, asked about the tea. I’ve never had it, he said. It smells smoky. It is smoky, I said. I’ll try it sometime, he said, leaving us to it. I drank to much. It makes me a little high. Gobby, he says. No, more, he said, you’ll get too gobby.

Later, I couldn’t sleep. I lay there between worlds. A voice in-between what he calls jumbly thoughts. A voice, clear and strong saying my name. Ellen, it said, there is no planet. Simple. A statement of fact. There is no planet. Calm, even reassuring. There is no planet. What to make of it. And then the dreams that followed. In my mother and stepfather’s house (though not one that I recognise) trying to shut an array of curtains and blinds, trying to keep someone out. Someone I knew, someone who always brings chaos. I fretted over the workings of the blinds, they were complicated, was I getting it right? And then the other dream about Italy, a landlady renting out rooms to tourists. An AirB&B perhaps? She was found guilty of feeding them tadpoles.

So much milder this morning. Lots of kids out. Two girls, bare-legged in mini-skirts eating pizza from boxes. A man in a tigger suit and another walking down Great Darkgate Street in a romper suit. Before then a man in a dress talking to a girl.

I think it was joy as well as the tea that kept me from sleep. Our discussion made me value myself. So much work I want to do. It was glorious to talk about it. To make plans. He gives it time, he bears witness to it. To me. I am eternally grateful. I am blessed.

Was it Advent? Was that service in Bath Abbey a celebration of Advent? I remember it was cold, so cold and the church was in darkness. That was the point, of course. At the end of the service all was light and the great door opened and there was the tree in the square beyond. Undecorated but lit. I remember I cried. I was low then. Lower than now. Low and lonely and scared. I went there for solace. I kept going but didn’t find it. An austere kind of faith. All hard edges and the church always so cold. That night it was packed and I couldn’t sit in my usual pew, at the front with Winifred and Hugh. Did they see me, did they wave? Winifred for ever frightened of the snow. And her middle-aged daughter with anorexia. Won’t even eat beetroot, says its carbohydrate. I cried from loneliness, for the darkness and for the beauty of the lighting-up rite. The gradual, one-by-one lighting of candles. All hand-held, with cardboard circles under the stems to catch the drip of wax. Inch by inch the church was lit. I burst into tears. I think I even let out a cry. I was pressed between couples, between families. Did they notice? The warmth of others around me. I felt it. It comforted as well as generated my grief. And it was grief, even before the real grief years later. There was magic in the service. I felt as others have felt for hundreds of years, that longing for light in the darkness. She feels it out there and I long to comfort her. I have felt it too. We give it names, talk of special lamps yet it is our condition, it is a dying and all we can do is succumb, make the best of it. Lie low. Light candles. And wait. Wait for the returning of the light. I miss going there. I miss the early Sunday morning services. Just a handful of worshippers right up by the altar. No singing. No frills. Two readings, a lesson, a sermon, prayers and communion. We all sat apart. Apart in our worship. No chatter. No Hugh and Winifred. Just a waiting, a longing for comfort and the taste of the communion wine in my mouth as I walked home.

There was a girl sitting on her haunches on the Prom this morning. Just sitting there, well, perching. A baby bird in neat ankle boots. She stared ahead at the sea, at the darkness.

They are going to shut Bodlondeb. Bod they all call it. The local council-run old people’s home where his mother died. A shabby place but kind. The staff were kind. She had a tiny room. She wasn’t meant to stay, she needed more care than they were able to give but they let her stay on regardless. To move her wouldn’t have been kind, would’ve speeded up her demise. He clung on, knuckles white. They even had a mattress on the floor, for him if he needed to stay. I remember the tea trolley. It was always being pushed round. Tea, biscuit? She a tiny bird, no flesh, no teeth, in a nappy, crying out when they had to turn her. They were kind. What price kindness, eh? And the wipe clean board downstairs at the entrance to the canteen with its menu of the day and a weather report underneath. Chicken curry, spotted dick and custard, tea, pineapple upside-down cake, sunshine and showers. In the hallway was a locked glass cabinet displaying hand-made crocheted doll toilet paper covers to buy in support of the Bod fund. Are they definitely going to close it? I asked her. Yes, she said, her face glued to the screen. When? I asked. Next March.

He told us about an ex-student who spent the whole three years writing short stories in the style of Raymond Carver. Raymond Carver is my favourite writer he’d said, picking up my book, all those years ago, when he came to house to interview me. It’s a good way of learning, he said. A way of learning the craft. Shall I do the same? Immerse myself in short stories? I want to write stories. I have ideas and I want to dispel this idea that I’ve told myself that I am not a fiction writer. I can be what I want to be, can’t I? I want to write about a woman who cross-stitches. I thought about it as I walked. I want to write my way into understanding why women do it, the time they invest in it when they could be doing other things. I remember the story that that historian (I forget her name as I forget so many others, she’s nice with a round, open face and a penchant for leather) told of the eighteenth-century woman who made laced, tatted, sewed, embroidered her way through a loveless marriage. Did she write a diary? Might I seek it out? A contemporary take would be interesting. I want to explore such a woman’s mind-set. Mine, too?

Today we go to talk and have tea. I shall tape it, listen to it back. Write it up. He is generous, generous with his time, his tea and sympathy. The blessing is ever present, even in the sadness. The moon is dwindling and I am sorry for it. I have welcomed it’s light. Off soon. Till tomorrow.

I visit my averageness. Taking out the reports my father had saved from when I was between eleven and sixteen, I visit my averageness. Some surprise, others merely tell me, reflect back to me what my mind already believes. Without question. I feel detached. It is a detaching process such revisiting. What am I looking for? Confirmation of something deeply understood. Or is it more a search for relief, for permission to let it be? I was no shining star, when I have shone it has been for brief moments and it was never believed by me. Not really. I test such accepting. How would it be to live with the averageness, embrace it rather than fight it? I worked with ‘industry and application’ but still only got 37/60. Is that so bad? I worked with industry and application. I remember. I did. So frightened of failing. So frightened of not understanding. Of judgement. And it is with me still. I will explore this. Not to be maudlin but to gaining a better knowing. Is that not a good thing?

The seal was still there. I thought it had gone but it has merely been moved further up the beach. The bleeding flowers had gone. So had its head. Decapitated. There is no dignity in death. A carcase. Something has begun to erode its form.

The answer to the anagram was shape-shifter. Something that takes on an animal form. A shape-shifter. The stuff of fairy tale. Women who become seals and vice-versa. The sailors thought they were mermaids, sirens of the sea. Those eyes. Icelandic tales of women whose husbands hide their skins so that they cannot escape back to the sea.

A homeless man is sleeping under the castle. It is a kind of meeting place, built under the castle’s ramparts. There is a mosaic of dancing people on the wall. It is dry, that is all. But cold. Open to the elements. Open to the wind. He is a sleeping mound, looking just like the decapitated seal with his blanket pulled over his head. I am shamed. What have I to feel sad about when he must be so cold. Is he cold? Do you become inured to it? Or do you just stop expecting to be warm? Is he hungry? Is there some kind of relief in having nothing? Time and time again whenever we stopped for a pee in the motorway services there would be this picture of that African girl on the back of the toilet door. The advert wanted donations towards a scheme that helps girls like her with sanitary products. She has nothing, no family, no home, nothing. And now she’s got her period, it read. Nothing. To have nothing. No thing. No comfort. I stand still with that thought before the wind buffets me again. Returning me back to my selfishness, my self, my minor inconveniences.

They were wrong about the weather. There was wind and there was rain. Five times my umbrella blew inside out. Five times. I swore. I was cross, even after seeing the homeless man, I let my crossness prevail. It buffets one, the wind. My body aches with pushing into it. But I want to return. I want to return to standing in another’s shoes. What can I do? Shall I bring him food? Shall I bring him a warm drink? Does he want to be alone? What can we do for others?

I am cross too often. My sadness makes me imperfect, uncharitable. I ache for peace and know it is there. If I just let go. Accept what is. Accept this. Take it. My gift of averageness.

Betty, our neighbour’s cat has jumped on his car. Get off, Betty, he says laughing, wanting to drive away but can’t. I call her. She comes eventually, jumping down off the bonnet with a tinkle of her bell. It’s the warmth of the engine, I’d said, when he told me a few days ago about her doing the very same thing. Our farmyard cats used to the do the same with Dad’s jags. He hated it. Bloody cats, he’d say, trying to wipe off their muddied paw prints with his handkerchief.

There was a dead seal on North Beach this morning. Washed up, it’s immobile body dotted with red flowers of blood. Just like flowers, the fake ones that magicians use. Flowers of blood. Flowers of death. Do you think it was attacked? I asked him at breakfast. Probably, he said. By porpoises or dolphins, I asked. One of the other, he said. It looked so heavy. So heavy in death. Will the tide reclaim it? I asked, or will someone have to come and take it away? I don’t know, he said, clearly wanting to read his paper.

The back of truck read ‘Salt Dogs’. It had a kind of funnel mechanism on the back. A salter. Do you call them that? A small truck, salting the road. Pink salt. They said there would be frost. It was just two where we are, she said as she passed our goods through the scanner. I don’t mind the cold, she said, its the snow.

The grief always takes me by surprise. It pours out. And then more. It was the love in his eyes, his concern and care that made me start all over again. And then the next day I wonder what was all that about. Just do it. Just do the work. All this thinking. And yet, that is what I do, think. Think away the concern, the failings, the insecurity. And I feel so tainted by it. The grief. Tawdry. Ugly. I need to go back. My dream told me that. I was in a large department store and someone, a girl, an irritating girl, was helping me fill a trolley. I was buying clothes for a child. And then when we got to the till to pay she lost the trolley. So we had to start all over again. Start all over. Some of the clothes were exquisite, made with filigree and diamonds. Diamonds on the soles of her shoes. (The Desert Island Discs guest yesterday kept quoting from songs, too.)

Is such grief a madness? Is this disquiet, this unpeacefulness a madness? They told her she has a mild personality disorder. What is that about? Are our personalities so fixed, so rigid, so determined that they can’t wobbled, can’t become disordered without seen as an illness? They told another girl the same thing. A beautiful girl with sharp blue eyes, deep blue eyes and auburn hair whose name I always confuse. They told her the same. Incarcerated her for a time. When they let her out she threw herself under a train. Is such grief at not being good enough a madness? Not fitting in. Not feeling right? May she rest in peace. Forever.

Did you hear the fireworks? he asked when I went in to wake him. No, I said. Oh, good, I did worry. They were quite loud and seemed to be just outside. Just here. No, I didn’t hear them. Dead to the world.

A milky sky.

Still.

A line of clubbers are filing out of Pier Pressure. It is 3.30 am. A girl emerges first, and her long curly hair is blown into her face. I can’t see, she shouts, my hair. Another girl, following close behind and almost toppled from her heels, pulls her short leather jacket across her chest. Then a tall, bearded American comes out, wearing a baseball cap and a short-sleeved checked cotton shirt. Ah, Jesus, he says, will you look at that wind? Will you look at that wind? It is strong. A fury of a wind. It pushes into my stomach like a fist. They wear next to nothing these kids. Walking up the hill behind Alexandra Hall there were two girls in thin shorts. A cold wind, a north wind. But the moon. The moon was gorgeous. It lit my way. I am grateful for any light. Even the cold light of the moon. No torch. No torch necessary this morning.

She said yes. I tried it and she said yes. That’s good isn’t it? Some proper work. Writing about poetry. Sometimes I have to pinch myself.

Still no reply. Is it anger? Or is she unwell? I will try again and then let it go. For awhile at least. It’s the silence I struggle with. What is one supposed to make of it? Communicate. Tell me. Talk to me.

I am rigid as I walk. So much angst. So much fear. A few years before he died my father gave me an envelope. Inside were my old school reports from boarding school. I must’ve been between eleven and fifteen, I suppose. I don’t recognise her, that girl, that girl they write about. All I can remember is the fear. Has it ever gone away? I grew up being fearful of her, then it was school, then it was the world of work, then it was my work. Will it ever go away? Will my deathbed be one of a great lifting, a great lifting of fear? I hope so. I cannot see I will solve it before then. Not now at least. The best I can do is try to understand it and accommodate it, live with it. Welcome it in. Good morning, heartache, sang Billie Holiday. It started then, that inclination to create. I was not a star pupil, I barely scraped a C but there was something there. It was a striking out, a striking out of a pretend confidence. Dare to be different, all the while knowing you are not. Then it was A level and I was nurtured, cared-for, known. I loved that. Though the work, myself, we were both pedestrian. Even through my Foundation year, nothing remarkable. I wasn’t worthy of remark. I do remember a drawing of an egg box. It got a good response. I was noticed, asked questions. Oh, you’re applying to Wimbledon. Oh, you have a B in English Literature. And then I got in. And there were flickers. Of something. Nothing remarkable, just flickers. I got distracted. Fell in love. Made a life of sorts. An average girl. Always. From the start. 2.2 material. And yet I persevered. I kept trying. Why do we? What compels us? All those art school leavers. So many. All with heads full of possibilities, mostly other people’s possibilities. Not ours. And now? What am I? Still trying to be authentic. I’ve done some shows that have pleased me. For a time I sold well. People bought what I did. But always this uncertainty. Is certainty, real certainty ever to be had? She looked so happy. She has a purpose now. She knows what is expected of her. I made a roast, she said, so proud, so full of belonging.

He told me she’d seen a hedgehog that morning. My first in ages, she’d said. She likes to walk, he said, on the top. It had been noisy in the canteen. Students? I’d asked. No, he’d said, the girls. The girls behind the counter. Hedgehogs love pumpkins, she’d said. Had there been pumpkins on the top? Squirrels love pumpkins too, another of the women had replied. Yes, she’d said, its squirrels that love pumpkins not hedgehogs. Or do they? He loves it. He loves the rumbustious-ness of it. They make a fuss of him give him the occasional croissant or chocolate brownie cookie for free. Go on have it, they say. A pseudo-husband, a token male, a stand-in to be cajoled, pampered, clucked over. Go on, have it.

He wouldn’t take no for answer, so she and her daughter have to go. They don’t want to. They are shy people, keeping themselves to themselves. A bonfire party. She collected newspapers for him. You must come, he’d said. That’s alright, she’d said, it’s for your family. The more the merrier. I ask about the dog. The neighbour’s dog, Bonnie. Will she be alright with the boom of the fireworks? I think so, she says. Years ago our dog ran away because of them. We couldn’t find her anywhere. She just bolted. There were some travellers. I wasn’t sure, but we asked them. They’d found her cowering and had taken her in, made her dry and fed her. They’d taken great care. How do we know she’s yours? they’d asked me. And then my daughter had come in and the dog ran to her. We know now, they’d said. So kind, she’d said.

I think about ways of raising more income. I don’t want to do cards. It feels like going backwards. My heart isn’t in it. What else can I do? I look at journal and magazine websites. I could do more writing. It feels less treacherous, less inauthentic, as long as I am truthful, as long as I write the truth. I looked at the Poetry Wales website. I remember the editor, she came to give a talk. I will write to her, send her some examples of my work. There was a section on ‘How I Write a Poem’. Fascinating reading. It’s what I am trying to do, to pick at the bones of what is my practice. Insightful and elegantly presented.

The war memorial is red. A yellow light that usually shines on it has been made red. A strong but simple statement.

The rain was relentless. It is never as bad as it seems when I am indoors prior to going outside. I like the sound of it on my umbrella. My umbrella was blown inside out ten times this morning.

Keep it light, I remember him saying, no heaviness. She doesn’t want it, doesn’t compute it. She is a self-contained, enigmatic being. Is that what makes her so attractive, particularly to the opposite sex? An Amazon. A towering beauty. There are many kinds of beauty, she said.

Let her nurse her anger if she must. I cannot do more than say sorry. I didn’t mean to upset her. Have I? Have I truly? My request was one that celebrated his achievements. I was curious. Our discussion that time in their kitchen whetted my appetite. I wanted to see. That’s all. If you must be angry, then so be it. I will wait. I am good at that.

The birdsong is back. I heard it just before 4 am along Llanbadarn Road. Was it a blackbird? We need the joy in all this darkness. Still dark at 6.55 am. And going dark at 5 pm. So be it. I wonder at my reluctance to go into my studio to work at such an early hour. Is it the dark and cold? I want to be cosy.

So much to do but at least the time is mine. I am grateful. We almost fell out. I didn’t mean it. Did I? I just wanted to be nearer to her. A fantasy, I know. Everything is in place here, and he needs to be here. Doesn’t he? So be it. I will let it go. Perhaps we can take a holiday there, he says, instead of going abroad. Yes, I say, that would be good. That would be good.

Euphoric days are often followed by flat or edgy ones. I spend my life expecting things of myself. Expecting too much, mostly. Are you the same? I’m not good at just not doing, accepting that this day or that day is a down one. A coming down one from being so happy. Too happy. Can one be too happy? It brings me peace, you see, just to be with her. There is nothing complicated about us when she is in my sight. I asked her questions. I asked her everything. She was nonplussed by my interrogation. She was honest, open. My darling, darling girl. Can you know how I love you? And yet, I don’t know you. Not properly, not the day-in-day-out kind of knowing, the way I know him. Even so, there is this well, this deep, deep well of love. Can we move, my love? Can we move to where she is? I want those flying dreams that being with her bring me. Nothing else is as important. Can you see that? Can I ask it? Can I ask you to uproot yourself for me? Ah, I don’t know, I know nothing. Nothing.

My thoughts were about my work as I walked. Trying to solve it, solve the puzzle as I walk. My mind is stimulated by the movement, by the fresh air, the sea. What is it I want? I woke intent on trying to let be, just be. Let it fall away. Do not direct life, just let it be. It is hard for me. I like, no need to be, in control, to manage everything. To anticipate problems, to be ready with a solution. What if there is none? No solution, just a continuum of searching. What is it you want to do? To be involved, to be engrossed, to be at work. I need to work. I need to do, to be actively involved in something meaningful. And yet, I must now provide the meaning. Strip away its commercial viability and what do you have? A hobby? No, I thought, as I hung the washing on the airer, it is not a hobby, it is too important to me, it absorbs too much of my waking life to be relegated to a mere hobby. What is it then? A doing thing, something I do in order to be myself. Is this just wank? Excuse the language, but is it? I want this stripping-down, it is timely, but it is also painful. For by stripping the sense of oneself down, one is also questioning one’s ultimate purpose. Nurses, doctors, midwives, freedom fighters have a very direct purpose. They save, they protect, they alter the course. What of artists? What do we actually do? There are others who either chose not to, or could not, make a living from their art. Emily Dickinson, Vincent van Gogh, neither Emily or Ann Bronte, I believe made any money from their books. Emily, in particular wrote secretively, hated the idea of fame. And yet, do we not all crave some sort of notice. To walk invisible. Yes. That I understand. But the critical stuff, the response. I need to work for others. Not for their recognition but to be in their presence. To make a shift, to make a murmur of a difference. I think about performing my sewing in old people’s homes, hospitals, hospices. Only to baulk at the idea that I might be using them. I need to talk more about this. Yes. But work calls. Needs must. Needs must when the devil……