Category: Writings

It was just under three hundred miles there and back. I saw six badgers in all. All dead, on the side of the road. Great, leaden bodies, perfect, noble even, in death. The writer said that often the dead badgers we see on motorways and A roads haven’t been killed by traffic but have been dumped there by badger baiters. Poor brocks.

She’d wanted to continue her education but her father wouldn’t let her. What would you have liked to have done? I asked her. I wanted to be a children’s nurse, she said, but I was scared of injections. Would she mind that I talk about her like this? I protect her name. It is just I want to both share and remember. All of this is really about memory. Remembering what people say. It is important to me. A record. An archive of this life.

Do you live in Uni accommodation? a student asked me as I headed home down Great Darkgate Street. It was 4.30 am. He was coatless, swaying a little and holding a KFC carton in one hand. No, I replied, are you lost? No, he said, I just need a taxi. Town was full of them, carousing. A dry night, not too cold and Reading Week next week, all perfect for revelling. I look in windows as I pass. Bald overhead bulbs shine on clusters of bodies around tables. Heads are hidden under hoods, long legs sprawl, table tops are covered in bottles. There is a low thrumming of music. A glut of figures gather outside the Fried Chicken shop and another outside The Angel, their instruments and DJ’s turntable lying at their feet. I am always taken aback when someone talks to me. It breaks my reverie, my internal musings. What do they see? I am cocooned in a big coat, waterproof trousers, hat, gloves and scarf whilst they are dressed for the club, the women barelegged and tripping and the boys t-shirted and reeling. I walk through the miasma of stale beer and cigarettes towards peace.

Windless today.

I’d forgotten her name. I’d warmed to her. She’d asked me questions. The only one to do so. But that wasn’t the only thing. It was her underlying melancholy that attracted me. She was fiery, opinionated but good. The goodness shone through. All alone in that big, monster of a house. All alone except for the old dog that lived with her. They’d bought the house together. Their dream. And then he died. She is managing. She always will. An iron will. But underneath a raging sadness. I think. What do I know? I know I liked her. I like her. So I asked her to remind me of her name. And she did. Thank you. I won’t forget now. Sounds like worry. Sounds like Florrie.

You’ll always be a worrier, she said. Casting it in stone. So be it.

We talked for over half and hour this morning. The first time I called her she could barely manage five minutes, bringing the call to end saying she felt dizzy. Now, she chats away. It is a delight. She has blossomed. She even laughs. A kind of chuckle. Delicious. Light as meringue. She’d just come back from a walk. She said we. With your daughter? I asked. No, the neighbour’s dog. She’s pining for Jet still. And she is funny, she said, barking at things I can’t see. We talk of all things. Her daughter’s old primary school teacher, who told her she couldn’t sing in tune. The storm in Aberystwyth. Llandudno. And the mild winter. Even the primroses are out, she said. And the daffodils. In the past you struggled to get your daffodils open for St David’s Day, she said. I hold the phone closer to my ear and love her. She is a stranger to me and yet, there is love, it cannot be anything else. Go well.

We were sitting outside Morrison’s waiting for it to open. The remnants of Imogen were still whipping up the rain and the wind. Looking across the car park we could see an elderly man blown hard against his car, trying to make his way to the trolley park. I better go, he said, reaching for the door handle. No, I said, let me.

He was large man, with flaccid flesh. He reminded me vaguely of the vicar in Dad’s Army, he even had that slight aristocratic voice. His trousers were too short and thin. His raincoat flapped around his thighs. Can I help you? I asked. Oh, thank you, he said, but I’m alright once I have hold of a trolley. I touch his arm and leave him to it. He is slow but steady, his cheek made pink. I see him as a widower, he says as we get into the car. No, I say, I think he’s been living with his aged mother and she’s died, leaving him the family home. Spot on, he says.

The Prom is like a bomb site. The road is cordoned off. Apparently, someone was arrested for getting too close. We wanted to look. The sea was a marvel. Wild. A torrent. One is drawn to it. Drawn to its danger.

His shoes were muddy. I remember my father cleaning his shoes each morning before work. He didn’t do much around the house. He wasn’t a practical man but he always cleaned his own shoes. I’d watch him sometimes. The cleaning stuff was kept in a box in the hallway cupboard. He did it carefully but briskly. At that time I was too young to even tie my own shoe laces. To me he seemed so confident and so dapper. I loved the care he took over his appearance. They both did. My parents. That was before they got too tired, he with a brain tumour and she with disappointment. I clean his shoes, with love. I serve. I chose to. I always have. Always will.

The man delivering the Pause for Thought talks about how he struggles to like everybody. And how that makes him feel. He concludes with a compromise, if it is indeed that. He talks about bearing witness. Bearing witness to others’ suffering, challenges, ordeals, life experiences. Bearing witness, standing alongside, being present for another. That’s how it was as a Samaritan. It wasn’t about liking, but about compassion. Standing for a moment in another shoes. It is enough. It is a loving act. An act of love.

The Year of the Monkey. Not good for tigers, it seems. Lay low, plan but do not act. I know a monkey. He fits the bill. Quick-witted, intelligent, short-tempered, a bit of a rogue. We weren’t suited. But I am grateful for what he brought me. A gift indeed.

I hear the owl most mornings. Is it the same one? Not a wit-a-woo, as I said, more like a howl.

I was nervous. Would he still be the same? Was he still alive? Would he remember me? Was he still upstairs? we asked the Receptionist. A cheery woman, yes, she said, second floor, take the lift. Locked in. Enclosed in a floor of thick-carpeted lounges. Full of wanderers. A woman in an expensive padded jacket, says hello and have I met you before? No, we say, nice to meet you. We ask a member of staff where he is. More cheery faces. Everyone smiling, except the large woman we walked past downstairs, in a black t-shirt. She looked a tartar. He’s over there, says the carer. A large man in an armchair staring at the TV. Was it even on? I take his hand. Hello, he says, do I know you? I sit on the table across from him. He tells me he’s been silly, and that his eyes have been watering. I give him handfuls of names, talk of events, places. Do you know my wife? he asks. Yes, I say. Do you know my family? he asks. Yes, I say. Isn’t it a small world? he says. It’s been so nice to meet you. Another carer comes over to take him to his lunch. Do I know you? he asks. Yes, she says, I take you to lunch every day. What’s your name? he asks. She laughs, Julie, she says. Locked-in. He is locked-in. I only came here yesterday, he says. Did you? I say. Are you happy here? I ask. It’s nice enough, he says. I don’t know really. No. How can you? Lost. It is all lost to you. You remember your job. I was important, you say. I have lots of friends, you say. Do you know any of their names? Yes, I say, do you remember so and so? I think so, he says. His eyes cloud over. They have always been rheumy. Weepy eyes. Sad eyes, like a spaniel’s. I am so sorry. I am so sorry, you are lost like this. The woman in the expensive jacket comes over to shake his hand. Do I know you? he asks. She walks off. It is a bedlam of sorts but with carpets. A happy home. Make this a happy home, sings Gladys Knight. Not home. He remembers his homes. He will return, he thinks. Not now. It is too late. He is lost. You are lost. I hold your hand and remember. I shall remember for you. With love. Always with love.

For me it is a brave thing, this night walking in the dark. I’m scared you see, of that dark, that is. At least, I am until I’m out there, in it. From the inside it looks impossible. I cannot, I cannot imagine being out in it. And then, when I walk out, it is alright. The air is so alive, so fresh, it fills my nostrils with life. The wind, the rain, it is all part of the vigour of life. Yes, the rain hurts, it pricks my face, but it is vital. As is the sea. Each day it is different. Ever changing and yet constant.

The sea birds mass on the shore. I see them every morning. Sometimes they face the sea, other days they look inland. Equally spaced, they stand together but slightly apart, in silent communion. Sharing a common animation, aliveness. Waiting. Waiting for morning.

The other morning a similar mass of Chinese students walking down Llanbadarn Road. It was 4.30 am. What had they been doing? They were wide awake. Some were on phones, others were talking. Were they going to somewhere or coming from something? That’s it you see, there is so much life that can go unmissed. If one pays attention it can seem almost magical. A man opening his door, the yellow light of his porch flooding the blackness.

Sometimes the rooks murmur like the starlings. It is more of mess though. It is as if they have been suddenly chucked up into the sky, ragged and unkempt. Some sit by the parked cars by the harbour. They have learnt to do so. They wait, wait for the scraps that may be hurled from a wound-down window. They wait patiently, the wind ruffling their feathers. When nothing is forthcoming they hop away, a little disconsolate.

I don’t know what I can do, so I ask him. He has no answers either. I ask it if troubles him. Thirty thousand. I cannot imagine such a number. To loose everything, the whole fabric of one’s life. How does that feel? I want to stand alongside them. I walk in the wind and rain and pull myself inside myself for warmth. Can they do that? Is there always hope? Is there? What do I wish for them, those refugees and indeed the homeless here, the man in the shelter? What do I wish for them? A resolution, food to eat, warmth, safety, a chance, hope, peace and the grace to cope with what life has brought them. Is that enough? Can I do more?

‘I become weak when I enter the region of fiction; and you say, “real experience is perennially interesting, and to all men”, so wrote Charlotte Bronte to G. H. Lewes.

But where’s the story? he said.

So how’s the film going to end? he asked, I don’t know, I said. You’re the creative writer, he said. Not of fiction, I said. In the end it ended positively, I thought. But he lost his job, his wife, he said. Yeh, I said, but he’d grown tired of it all, jaded. He ended up with a friend in the boy. And they were going to write the stories, other people’s stories together.

I asked after her grandmother. Oh, she passed away, she said, a while ago now. She died in hospital. Do you remember, she was the woman who wouldn’t open her eyes. Her last stand. Did she look at you before she died. Sort of, she said. They say hearing is the last thing to go, she said. We took in a CD player and played Welsh hymns. I woke early, about seven o’clock, I knew something was up. So I went and sat with her. She died around eleven. No, we did have the funeral in Chapel, too gloomy. Yes, the Crematorium is nice. That big window. I sat and watched a red kite during the service. My brother read a poem. No, we haven’t had time to miss her yet, we’re too busy sorting out the house. Her name? Morwenna.

To be continued. His essays always finished to be continued. A suivre in French. Continue. To be continued. French phrases played in my head as I walked this morning. Anna Massey in Hotel du Lac saying je vous en prie. It’s like the Welsh at work. It, the words, just flow around and over my head. Some I can make sense of, others are just sounds. I listen to the intonation, the timbre of the voices. I remember my mother talking to my grandmother or my aunt on the phone. Her voice suddenly unfamiliar, speaking her mother’s tongue. Sometimes it made me cry. I thought I’d lost her.

A suivre.

It was wild yesterday morning. The wind was a force. I walked into it. Then it seemed to shift direction, now it was off the sea, now it was from the south, then the north. I was buffeted, my coat hood flapping against my ears. I don’t mind it. It is alive. I feel alive. My limbs are bruised, my muscles used in such a walk. And such sounds it makes. Not just the wind itself but the objects it encounters. Down at the harbour especially, such a jangling of rigging. Sometimes there is a scream, a screech, then a howl. All is intensified in the darkness. There is a whistling, a singing, a whispering, a rattling. The harbour water grows black, it swirls and shifts. No wonder sailors imagined sirens, singing mermaids. Such howling is barely human, beyond human. Who would go out in such weather? I would succumb to the drowning, let it be, let the howling cease. Take me into the dark, cold depths. There is warmth in death.

I woke cross. It was my dream. There was a little girl. A blonde-haired little poppet. Moon-faced and charming. But she kept appearing at windows. High windows.  She was on ledges, on balconies, unafraid, it seemed of falling. I was responsible for her and I couldn’t stop her from putting herself in danger, from taking risks. She made me cross. I couldn’t catch her, find her. She’d just appear at opportune moments at the side of my vision. I know what it means. I can see it.

Another Lee Hall radio play. They are good. They are fantastic pieces of writing. All from a child’s perspective. We listen as they try to reason out the unreasonable. Trying to find their own power. A fourteen-year-old girl who wants to be become pregnant to compensate for the loss of her father. You’re not pregnant, shouts her mother after they’ve been to the doctor, you’ve not even had sex. And yet, she is such a wise girl. Profoundly so. It’s not about hate, it’s about love, she says. At least the baby will be mine. And her brother, Scout, who buries his father’s socks to make him come back to life. And he does.

Easter is coming early. Shrove Tuesday next week. I made him pancakes yesterday. We didn’t know. Lent. I dispense with treats. Coffee beans from Monmouth Coffee in Covent Garden with their smell of toffee and chocolate and Jo Malone Candles, my monthly massage, pomegranates.

I heard the owl as a I walked, albeit briefly, this morning. It isn’t twit twoo. It’s more like a moaning, a keening. I couldn’t see it in the dark. It sounded like it was overhead. It’s call echoing above me.

The sky is a mass of clouds. Milky white covering the blue. The wind has dropped and there is no rain, yet. The bird song is splendid pre-dawn. They think it is Spring. Not long, not long now. Soon.

As he talks I stare at his fingernails. They are long, like guitar players’ fingers. Long and yellowed. It’s the cigarettes. He is wearing a black cotton shirt and tufts of white chest hair protrude through the buttoned gaps. I find it awkward talking to him. I’ve never been good at small talk. And this isn’t even a party. I am just passing, on my way up to our front door. He is at his window, smoking. It isn’t that I don’t like him. There is a warmth. I can sense that he is kind. But there is a sardonic-ness to him. He deflects attention from himself by somehow making me feel a little foolish. Or am I being over-sensitive? Is it just that I don’t wish to talk, to stop, to pass the time of day?

Just pass the time of day with him, he says. That’s all. I am awkward, and I sense he is too. We ask about each others’ day. I’m busy, I say. I’m retired, he says. He says he’d like to travel. Central America. But he is grounded for the most part by his aged mother. He doesn’t say this but it is implicit. He asks, so I tell him that I’m an artist and a writer. Do I mumble it? My confidence is not as it was. He tells me his mother was an illustrator. Oh, I say. Anything Welsh, fairy stories, he says. And my daughter is an artist too. Is he dismissing me? The world is full of artists.

Why didn’t you tell him? he asks. Tell him about what? Your achievements, he says. Because, I say. Because, I don’t need to. And yet, and yet, there is still this longing to be…to be what? Recognised. To do well. To rise about mediocrity. Why, why not let it go? There is no peace to be had in such a seeking. I look her up. His mother. On the internet. They are detailed, romantic images. She didn’t begin till she was sixty. Self-taught. Admirable. She has stopped now. She is in her nineties and her eyesight is failing. She has even published an autobiography. A potent woman, I think. I know others like her. Potent.

Yesterday the air smelt like Spring. We saw crocuses on the bank. Yellow ones. Single ones pushing through. We talked about The Backs. We remembered our Sunday walks, the flood of crocuses. There is a house on Llanbadarn Road that has a lawn beset with snowdrops. What a joyous sight.

Storm Henry is stirring up the sea. A steely grey. Turbulent. Anxious. Fretful.

I dreamt of two meals. I had to attend two meals. People kept arriving. I watched them come through the door. The elderly, the young, steadily they poured in. I had to tell someone that I had to leave. I’ll tell them soon. Soon, I thought.

On Pause for Thought she talked about the philosopher A. J. Ayer. And about how he was an atheist until he nearly died. He claims he then met the Supreme Being. He’s a much nicer person since he died, said his wife. In 2012, on Desert Island Discs Sir Terry Wogan implied that he no longer believed. Kindness was his thing. And yet, the papers say that the family priest was flown in. Did he change his mind? Was it a comfort thing, for his wife? Light a candle for me, he said.

I catch a bit of Lee Hall’s radio play I Love You Jimmy Spud. Jimmy is a trainee angel trying to save his Dad from cancer. God is a bastard, shouts his Dad. He breaks his heavenly trumpet. Dad dies or does he? I couldn’t tell. I’m going to cover the world in angel kisses, says Jimmy. Angel kisses. See my feathers, they’re starting to grow, he says to Scout. I think of Mervyn Peake’s Mr Pye, having to become devilish to stem the onslaught of his wings. On earth not even angels are perfect.

You do not have to be good, writes Mary Oliver.  You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Amen.

I didn’t go. I needed to have a day at home. Steady, still and to ground. Go to ground. I missed it. Though this faith is not a comfortable one. I missed the communion. The thinking, the giving over of time to other thoughts, to thoughts of others rather than just myself. It is not the Abbey. It has not it’s beauty, it rarefication. Yet, it is still sacred and indeed, ancient. It pleases him that I go. My church, he says. I am a creature of habit. Securing a pew and returning, week in week out, to the same one. I used to sit right at the front in the Abbey. Just before the pulpit. Hugh and Winifred sat next to me. Hugh had Parkinson’s and his hands would quiver as he handed round the collection plate. Winifred, his wife, was a nervous bird-like woman, who was terrified of snow. I liked them so much. They muttered about change, about Edward the Rector, but I liked them. It was just fear. Fear of something new. Hugh always wore a suit. Here we wear waterproofs and kneel at the Lady Chapel altar exposing our hardy shoes. There is always birdsong outside as he delivers his sermon. When I began to go the early morning Eucharist I no longer saw Winifred and Hugh. Tell them I’m alright, I asked the Church Secretary, they will worry otherwise.

So many deaths. Of course. Death comes daily to those of us who are unknown. He died yesterday. I loved to hear him. He made me smile. I listen to him on Desert Island Discs, so pragmatic and self-effacing. Chocolate, honey, those mellifluous tones. Gorgeous. He knew it wasn’t real. Not any of it. Woe betide those who believe it to be so. I thought once, that it may come to me. It was a whisper and then gone. So be it. It is for the best. Rest in peace and thank you.

You don’t have to do it, he says. I know. And sometimes the compunction to do so makes me want to cry. I drive myself hard. Not physically, necessarily, but mentally. I expect so much. It is never good enough. I am never good enough. Let it be. I read. Let it be, it says. Let it be exactly as it is. Let the mediocrity be. Let the mediocrity of my work, my writing be until it can be something else. I read of Charlotte Bronte, leaving aside her writing to cut away the black eyes on the potatoes. Keep the balance. Nothing really matters. Death will come. Just be kind. See it. See it in the eyes.

It was an eerie light, white then green, flooding the sky beyond the rooftops. I thought of the aureole borealis and the light described in Michael Cunningham’s Snow Queen. What could it be? Was it a portent of some sort? I asked him. Come, I said, come and look at this light. Oh, he said. It’s a soccer match. They play every Friday night. That’s all. Nothing mystical. A prosaic answer to a sacred question.

My body is changing. It’s been doing it all it’s life, obviously. It heeds me not. It does its own thing. Presently, it sweats at night. My chest mainly. My sheets are made wet. Cold. Usually it comes between one and two am. A rush then stop. There is no odour. It is cool and clear. A flushing out. You could take something, he says. I could. There is all manner of drugs to stave off the inconvenience of ageing, of dying. For that is what we are all doing. No, I say, I don’t think so. I can live with it. I can live with the dying. I welcome it. It is honest, authentic. And I am more than my body. Am I not?

Walking I find things. Things dropped from pockets. Money, mostly. Today there was a brass button and a 13 amp fuse.

It’s a shabby craft. It’s pale blue paint is peeling. Out of the water, it sits high up on bricks. There is a hand-written sign, hanging from it’s hand rail. For Sale it reads and there is a mobile number underneath. The wind rattles at its rigging. It doesn’t seem sea-worthy. Not to me. Miss Me is for sale. Will anyone buy?

In her letters home Charlotte Bronte wrote about the cold of a Brussels’ winter. They’ve not yet lit the fires, she wrote. In her biography of her, Mrs Gaskell told of how she struggled with the cold, the lack of sleep, the loneliness. Her spirits were depressed. Such lowness affected the way she saw things. I think of Lucy Snowe in Villette, full or ire at the way she is treated, full of love for Monsieur Paul. Gaskell makes no mention of Charlotte’s passion for M. Heger. She makes comparisons between Charlotte and Emily, demonstrating this by recounting an event involving Emily’s dog Keeper. Keeper a great, hulking hound had a penchant for sleeping on the pristine white counterpanes of the upstairs beds. Though he was reprimanded many times he kept doing it. Finally Emily threatened to beat him if he was found up there once more. He was. So dragging him downstairs by the collar she punched him hard between the eyes. This event comes to Gaskell second-hand, via Charlotte. The injured dog was then lovingly cared for and nursed by Emily herself. Ergo, Charlotte’s loving was understated, quiet, empathic, Emily’s was demonstrative, passionate. I’m not sure it was that simple. Should we read Charlotte in her characters? Lucy Snowe and Jane Eyre, in particular. I cannot help it. They smoulder. It takes much to rouse them. But the passion is there.

I think of another. She also had dogs. I remember her rubbing their noses in it when they soiled the carpet. I remember her dragging them by the collar, the skin round their necks ruched up, their hind legs dragging. I remember them running from the room whenever her voice was raised. I remember her hitting them hard on the nose, or sometimes with their metal chokers. The chokers cutting into their fur at every jerk. Come to heel, she’d say. Come to heel, as she lifted them off the ground in her frustration. They obeyed. They always obeyed. Was this a sign of love? I don’t know. I just don’t know. They felt safe with her. She fed them, cared for them. But she made them watchful, edgy. Especially the Dane. She followed her everywhere. Get out of the way, she’d shout as she tripped over her time and time again. Why did she follow her? Fear, unease, a sense that all was not well. Is it love? Or is it self-preservation. I cannot say. And there was a puppy put down because it didn’t grow spots. It was a male and smelt of caramel. When we asked her why she said it would contaminate the breed. The Kennel Club rules. Did the mother dog miss it? Or did she have enough with the five clambering over her, jostling for her nipples.

I like to hear her talk as she does my feet. Her voice is lyrical. She tells stories. Mainly about her family. Her father with his Alzheimer’s. He had to go into hospital with a suspected heart attack, she told me. They kept him in over night. He was so eager to get home the next day that when we undressed him, she said, we found that his shirt under his jumper was all unbuttoned. They have a small holding. They have sheep. Only a hundred, she says, we used to have a thousand. Her two children look after them. They’re my son’s really, she says. They put on their overalls after school and go and help with the lambing. It sounds to cosy, from where I sit. I like her. I’m not a very nice person, she says. But I like her.

I had time for her today. I like that. I sit down on the floor and hold the phone close to my ear. She sounds so much better. Her voice is clear. She says my name. She is grateful for the call. We’ve never met and probably never shall but we are friends. I like her. It breaks the day, your call, she says. Thank you very much. It breaks the day. Thank you very much, cariad. What will you do for the rest of the day? I ask. Oh, some podling, she says. I can’t just sit and look out of the window. So I podle. She laughs. Just some podling.

I’d got my timings mixed up and arrived too late. All the candles had been snuffed out. The room smelt of wax. I went in anyway and sat down. I sat down in the silence that had been left. There was a little table by the window on which stood a small wooden cross, a vase of plastic flowers and a large bible in Welsh. It was an odd little room. A seminar room of sorts with a projector and a large empty white wall. Behind the arc of chairs was an electric piano. On the left-hand wall were two tapestries of Celtic Crosses. The candles had been arranged on a circular table. They were tea lights. I sat and tried to empty my mind of minutia. Just for a moment. I heard singing. Sallow-skinned faces smiling. Candles lit in darkness. I felt separate, awkward and self-conscious. The room was cold.

We walked on the Prom afterwards. Then the rain came. He told me he saw one of the men working on the building site. They come from Newtown every day, you know, he said. I know, I said, you tell me that every day. He’d rolled down the car window to greet him. To pass the time of day. I thought you’d got a new one, the man had said gesturing towards his car. He explained that the engine had developed a fault. Something to do with a coil. It would’ve been missing like fuck then, the builder had said. Yeh, he’d replied, grimacing. How much do ya reckon it will be then? he asked the builder. Where’d you take it? asked the builder. Anthony’s, he replied. Oh, the builder says, loads then.

Locking our door this morning I see a boy through the window standing by the other block of flats. He is staring into his phone and swaying. The light of the phone is bright in the blackness. At one point he has to hold his arm up against the wall to keep steady. I walk past him. As I go down the steps I hear him begin to knock on one of the windows. Down on the Prom there are lots of students moving in a glut towards Alexandra Hall. It is now 4.15 am. They are coatless and carry boxes of takeaway pizzas and cartons of sandwiches and baked potatoes. They chat and hug their bodies against the cold. There a group of three walking towards me. One of them is black and is wearing a short-sleeved sky blue cotton dress with a lace bodice. The figure is small in stature with but with a thick bullish neck like a boxer’s. I catch their stare momentarily. Is it a woman or man? The stare is defiant. I dare you, it says. From it’s ears hang long threads of diamante. The wind bites.

The tide must have been high. The North Prom is coated in a fine, grainy sand.

A tooing and froing day today. So be it.