Category: Writings

I never want to go out, not at that time, not in that dark. I’ve always been afraid of it. I told you about the night lights. I had to have one in my bedroom. A sweet, warm light keeping away the ghouls. But when I do, when I do go out into the still night I am glad that I do. It is not only the facing of fears, but it makes me feel alive. It is an animal thing being out in the dark, especially when it is stormy. The wind animates me. And the smell of the night time air is gorgeous. I drink it in. Walking out of my door I drink it in.

I see bodies in the gloom. Dark shapes. My hackles rise. I am a cat. On the Prom the streetlights illuminate them. I see three students. Two boys and a girl. She has long blonde hair and wears a Parka. They do not see me. Passing the shelter I can see two other students, they sit huddled on the bench.

Walking up Loveden Road a security light comes on. The whole side of a house is suddenly illuminated. A shock of white. A white wall. Someone is there. Someone set off the light. Heat-seeking. A click. I stay on the road, walking up the hill by the side of the cars. Hello, calls a voice. It is soft, polite. How are you? it asks. Fine, I say, relaxing now. We reach the top of Loveden Road and join North Road. Which way is he going to go? I move to cross the road and then change my mind. He seems to want to talk. I see he has no coat. The rain is but a mist, but the wind is strong. He wears a short sleeved shirt, it is brown, a reddy-brown with stripes. It’s late for you to be out at night, he says. I am cocooned in waterproofs, a caterpillar-shape in the dark, how can he know me, know what I am? It’s morning for me, I answer. I am touched, touched that he wishes to make contact. He is clearly disposed to talk, but I move on. I want to go home. Take care, he whispers. Sleep well, I reply.

I am low. I am laid low by the dark, by the season, by tiredness. And yet. And yet there is still such a capacity for joy. I turn onto the Prom and at that moment a flock of seagulls take to the sky. How can I describe it? It is a flashing of white against the black. They float lazily in the wind. Their underbellies are illuminated by the streetlights. Flash, flash as they curve into the current. The black is almost blue, like Quink ink. (You could only tell the difference when pen met paper, in the bottle the blue was black and vice versa. I felt so important, so grown up with my bottle of ink. Don’t spill it, my mother’s voice would chime in  my head. Be careful. It stained the little padded bit of the third finger on my right hand.) Can I come back as a bird? I love to watch their flight. Such grace. On land not so but in the air, there they sail like marvellous ships.

Even in the lowness I see the love. I see the love that surrounds me. I am so blessed. He calls to me. Holds me. He knows me. I need nothing else.

My printer died. Kaput, like the car. Mercury must be retrograde, I said. And it was. We bought a refurbished one, the same as the last. Surely it would be simpler that way. Just plug it in and away you go. Not so. My laptop now thinks there are two. No, no, I want to say. It’s like an amputee whose body remembers the leg it has lost, thinking it’s still there, itching. So I have to humour it. Acknowledge the ghost.

The Morlan Centre are holding a vigil today in memory of the Holocaust. The vicar announced it at church. You can go and light a candle. I will. It’s seventy-one years since Auschwitz was liberated. Is that the word? Seventy-one years. The illustrator Mervyn Peake was one the artists that went in to record it’s atrocity. He was never the same. How can you be? How can a sensitive soul like him hold such horror?

Outside the milky sky is broken by a scattering of rooks.

You must retrench, says Lady Russell to Sir Walter Elliot in Jane Austen’s Persuasion. I don’t mind it. In fact it suits my puritan soul. Cut down, deny, tighten one’s belt. We sat down and did the figures. There is enough, we are not poor but we need to retrench. It is OK to do so. Look at the richness, the inner richness of my life. I have never been happier. I am as happy as I can be.

The gym subscription is the first thing to go. And I’m not sorry. I didn’t like it. The noise, the cold, the very public nature of it. And yet, I liked the result. I am stronger, more toned and I always felt high when it was done. Phew, that’s over for this week. So, I shall walk more. Make sure I do the three miles every day and tighten my daily yoga routine, incorporate more of the core muscles poses. I can do it. I can do it for free. And no more gloom on a Tuesday and Thursday morning.

He asked me the Sunday before if I’d be happy to read one of the lessons. Yes, I said. And last week I did. I stumbled over one of the Old Testament names, Nehemiah, otherwise it went OK. The congregation is small. Six last week. I am the youngest by far. We are the insomniacs or the ones who have grown beyond children. The old man with the tousled hair stopped me as I slunk passed his pew. He wanted to talk about a funeral he’d been to the week before at the Crematorium. He stood up to talk to me. Is he from Lancashire or Yorkshire? I cannot tell. The service had been completely secular. No hymns, no readings, nothing, he said. Here’s the Order of Service, see, he said handing me a leaflet with an picture of Aberystwyth Promenade on the back. There’s a poem, but it’s not religious. I tried to read it but didn’t have my glasses. He was clearly put out. When his son died they had a lovely service at St Michael’s, he continued. I didn’t know what to say and muttered something inane about people coming together to remember him. There were at least a hundred, he said. He had Leukemia, he said, he’d had enough, just gave up.

I think about the explorer. He was just 55. Not much older than me. He died of exhaustion. So sad. It seems such a waste, I said to him over supper. But some people need to do it, he said. Yes, I say. I understand. What was it the son said in the play about Jennifer Hope, the nurse that was murdered in Peru? She died living. He died living.

I walked before the rain came this morning. The wind was wild. A glorious force. You push into it, battling. Walking down Terrace Road I come upon two lads kicking bin bags. They are clearly drunk. One staggers into the road. They are both skinny, lean. Without coats. I walk towards them, holding my breath, ready. One of them sees me. He stands still, almost to attention. Does he say Excuse Me? I can’t remember. His voice is soft, a Southern Irish brogue. He is polite. Do you know the number for a taxi? he asks. I tell him that OW’s taxis are the only ones out at this time of the morning and then I see one coming towards us. There you are, I say, that’s them. The boys call out, waving their arms. The taxi drives past. I walk on.

I sat down after reading the lesson and promptly knocked over the coins I’d placed on the pew for the collection. Bugger, I said, just a little too loud.

My neighbour was at his window smoking when I came round the corner. It gave me a jolt. I’d been lost in thought. It was 9.00 am on a Sunday morning. You’re up early, I say to him. He is usually abed at this time. I’ve a noisy sister staying, he replies, smiling wryly. I turn, my hand on the door handle. I sympathise, I say, I have one of those too. He laughs and says thank you. It isn’t true. Not really. It’s all relative, noise. I like him, but I don’t always know what to say to him. If I could crawl under his window I probably would. I not a natural at all this social stuff. Mrs Gaskell writes about the Bronte girls’ shyness. They were outside of society. Inward-looking.

Storm Jonas is battering the windows. No afternoon walk today. I had five bookings yesterday. Up and down, up and down. It is good to have the work but I become ungrounded and ragged. Then the car broke. Poor little thing, it chuggered and clunked. Something to do with a coil. No Bath visit tomorrow. I am sorry. I wanted to see them so much. So be it. It will happen. In the Spring. Hunker down, my love.

I take my sewing to work. I am learning. It is scrappy. I hide it, ashamed of its imperfections. I must see it through. It is how I learn. I am slow. Each stitch taking me nearer to a better understanding. They are not curious, thank God. I am not ready for explanations yet. Not yet. Not yet.

Rest in peace brave explorer. Rest in peace.

A fire was still burning on the beach. I smelt it before I saw it. Just before South Marine Terrace, up on the pebbly bit of the beach. The embers were a glowing red, it had obviously been burning a while. All through the night, perhaps. Then I heard shouts, screams in the dark. It sounded like sea birds. Two figures down by the sea shore, fully clothed, paddling in the sea. One trying to push the other into the water. A woman’s voice screeching then laughing. Then silence.

The bakers are up. Both in Slater’s and the Pelican. Windows all steamed up. I think of bakers all over Europe. The ones in the Costa Del Sol and in Duras. The daily bread being made. By hand. Floury footsteps outside the shop. Delivery vans buzzing like flies. Men in aprons, made white. A radio on. A fan. An insect killer over the door. A continuum. Beyond language.

I walked under the light of the moon. That glowing white circle that always makes me catch my breath.

Walking down the hill by Alexandra Hall I heard a car. It was coming fast, skidding into a curve, burning tyres then stop. A side window taped up. Spoilers. Two lads. Let it be.

There is a Thomas the Tank Engine train shed in the window of the Charity Shop and two ceramic hen-shaped egg containers that make a heavy scraping sound when you remove the lid. He said you should never keep your eggs in the fridge.

She’s burst into tears. She’s been holding it in. Then I called. It was about a dog. A dog had died. That night. Last night. I can’t always hear what she is saying. It’s the phone, she must hold the mouthpiece to near to her face. Her voice is often muffled. It’s a dog. Her neighbour’s dog, it died. A sheepdog. Sixteen years old. It was called Jet. She used to look after it when her neighbour was away ‘gallivatin’. She apologises for crying. As a girl I even cried when the chickens died, she says and then laughs. But there is something more. Something her neighbour said to her. I can’t make it out. Need to leave it, she says, until it all cool’s down. She is a tender soul. Thin-skinned. The world hurts her. It doesn’t mean to but it does. What can I say to comfort her? I’m out walking, she says, where I used to walk with Jet. It just reminds me, she says, when I lost my own. Death up death. The loss of it all. That dog was a hundred and twelve, he says.

Some days I just feel raggedy. Nothing fits.

Driving home from our afternoon walk we see the homeless man. He must’ve been in the Services, he says, he’s always so well wrapped up. He is referring to his neatness, the way everything is packed away into his rucksack. When we holidayed on the Broads, he continued, there were some Navy lads on another barge. It was immaculate. And they always had someone on watch at night. Twenty-four hours, he said, even on holiday. It’s ingrained, he says. You can’t shake it off, even on holiday. He never begs, the homeless man, never. Self-contained. What is his story? Why does he stay here? He sleeps to the sound of the sea.

The chiropodist chattered away to him about her father. A continuing saga of a much-loved man with Alzheimer’s. She was having tea with him in his kitchen, he tells me. Her father was looking around the room. I don’t think much of your décor, he says.

The sky is milk. A breeze rustles the conifer.

She lives near the fish ladder, he says as we walk. The fish ladder? I ask. Yeh, he says, you know for the salmon. I don’t know. I don’t know what he is talking about but it doesn’t matter. I am content to listen to him talking as we walk, my arm in his, in the winter sun. What a day. What a glorious day. Perfect sky. Perfect blue. And the sun. How are you two love birds? asks the man in the estate car. He doesn’t know him but he says he’s seen him most days parked on the Prom. He plays classical music on his car stereo with the window open so he can hear the sea. Listen to that swell, he says, smiling. He has an East End accent. I think I recognise him from somewhere. It must be love, he says, inclining his head towards our linked arms. Or it might be decrepitude, he replies. Now, now, says the man, no negativity. No negativity. He’s only joking, I know it. It is love. Love birds, we are.

He is a generous driver. He always stops to let people in. Sometimes a car behind will beep with frustration. I’m just keeping the traffic flowing, he says. They won’t get out if I don’t let them out. I like that about him. We collect the gestures they give him in response. You know, the thumbs up, the wave, the nod of the head. It makes us laugh. Some are cool, a finger lifted off the steering wheel, others are more emphatic, a wave of an arm, a tooted horn, flashed lights. Women are less demonstrative, often distracted and the gesture is cursory, or tentative, their minds on other things. We play them out in the car, copying them. That’s a new one, I say. The other day we watched a man with his old beagle. It had started to rain and the old dog had just managed to make his way onto the beach. It had taken him an age. His legs slow and dragging. With the rain his owner turned back. We couldn’t hear him but just saw his gestures. A cross kind of waving, beckoning the dog to follow him back onto the path and into the car. Poor dog, didn’t know if he was coming or going.

We bought hyacinths. They will soon go over. Top heavy they tilt. I love the scent. Heady and cloying. It’s stronger in the summer evenings. In the winter you have to get up close, your nose touching the flowers.

I saw the woman with the red hat again yesterday. She was talking to herself as she walked. The string with her keys around her neck, flapping as she ambled.

I can just make it out in the gloom. A red, glowing circle. He is at his open window in his pyjamas smoking a cigarette. His light is out. The red circle is the only light, the only animate thing in the dark. I’ve just been for my morning walk. I don’t want to have to talk. It is too early to break my reverie, my precious silence. But his window is level with the path that leads to my door. And he is my neighbour. Even at 4.45 am in the morning, he is my neighbour. It’s a lovely morning, I say, even though it is clearly not morning. Not yet. It’s better than it has been, he replies. It isn’t that I don’t like him, for I do. He is wry, funny, intelligent, I think. And more than a little enigmatic. It’s just that I am sometimes frustrated with the conventions, the conventions of sociability, that even at this early hour, one is bound by. I am sure he doesn’t want to talk either. He is still awake after all. This is his time too. His mother is abed and he is finally alone. To be himself, no son, no father, no husband, just himself. Whatever that it is. Just as I, when I walk, also eschew labels.

There were lots of kids around this morning. Making noise. Drunk. Rowdy. I can hear them as I walk back along North Road ready to cross the road at Terrace Road. It sounds like they are kicking the bags of recycling that the house-holders have left out the night before. I hear them shouting. Boys, three or maybe four. At the junction of Terrace Road and Llanbadarn Road I can make out a girl. A broad-hipped girl, wearing a short, floral, cotton skirt. Come on, guys, she shouts. There is a red pompom in her hand. It looks like a key fob. She sees me and smiles apologetically. Sorry, she says. I nod.

Yesterday afternoon the air smelt of pencil cases. You know that smell of wood and lead.

He’s been there the last two mornings. A homeless man sleeping in the Promenade shelter. Is he cold? Is his sleeping bag warm enough? Later, I saw him on the street, his rucksack on his back. He is thin. His expression is serious. He doesn’t engage or make eye-contact with the people he passes. His rucksack looks heavy. As big as a snail shell. Weighty, it’s all he has. He wanders around the town. Sometimes he has a can of Special Brew. I’ve never seen him eat.

I am becoming immersed, it is the only way. I see parallels. Shared experiences. I remember the Parsonage so well. It is etched in my mind. Its neatness, its smallness. As a young woman she wrote to Southey, the Poet Laureate of the day, with some poems. He wrote back encouraging her to continue writing but with no thought of celebrity. ‘Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life’, he wrote,….write…for it’s own sake.’ Can I own that I like her? I know that Mrs Gaskell’s biography is considered too hagiographic and is no longer thought just so, yet, she bursts from the pages, especially in her letters to E. ‘Do not mistake me – do not think I am good; I only wish to be so….I am in such a horrid, gloomy uncertainty.’ I swallow her up, greedily and harbour ideas, hopes for something……….I don’t know, not yet.

He thinks he is gambling. Gambling on line. He must be, he says, why else is he up so late? And besides, he continues, I seen them on his computer screen through the window, on my way to the car. Seen what? I ask. Cards, he says. I think he’s playing poker with people abroad, that’s why he’s up so late.

There’s a new bakery just opened on Terrace Road. The Pelican Bakery and Coffee House. I walked past this morning, early. It must’ve been about 5.20 am. I looked in as I went past. At the far end of the shop a man in an apron was taking loaves out of one of the ovens. I could see the counter, just by the window as you go in. The bread shelves were virtually bare. Like Russia in the eighties or post-war Britain, barely out of rationing. There were a few specialist bakes on the lower shelf, sweet cakes in cellophane. The rest, as I say, were bare, the hand-written labels standing sentinel, waiting, ready. Small Wholemeal, Large White and Granary. There was something poignant about them being hand-written. Not quite professional. A homely concern. On the counter were a few freshly baked loaves wrapped in cling film. They looked as if they were waiting for someone, waiting for someone to collect them. The baker had a bald head. He was in a light blue t-shirt. Their was a fan in the window, a large, circular chrome one. It was blowing full pelt. Outside it was -1.

I am warmed to the cockles by this new endeavour. I wish them all the luck in the world. Two shops up is The Crimson Rhino café. Also, quite new. A haphazard affair to begin with. It’s shop sign, also hand-painted. An array of fruit and vegetables ripen in the window. Avocados, yams, tomatoes, chillies. The staff are young. I imagine ex-students, having fallen in love with the place now eager to make their own way here. It gets busy in the afternoons. The windows steam up with heat from the bodies and the cooker.

I’m glad. I’m glad for Terrace Road. It’s a shabby road at the best of times. There is a second-hand record shop, Knockout a dealer in cheap furniture, a curio shop with an assortment of oddities in the window (presently there is a French Horn, a 1930s Doll’s House, a Hornby train-set and a ceramic egg holder in the shape of a hen)The Hot Dumplings Chinese Take-Away, Jacob’s a fried-chicken seller and Spartacus Sandwich Shop. There used to be two hairdressers. Now there is just Margaret’s. The lighting is stark. She is often unoccupied. Her busiest times are Friday mornings when the pensioners come in for a rinse and set. Mostly she sits at the counter reading magazines. There are other shops but they are boarded up. Two years ago the council paid for the road to spruced-up. There was scaffolding everywhere. Licks of paint. But the shabbiness has returned. Petrol fumes and dirt. Splashes. Some roads are like that, destined to be un-pretty. Through roads. No one stops.

Those clouds look like snow, he said as we drove to the supermarket.

The sky, the sky is a perfect blue. The wind still howls but the sun is out and the sky is radiant. It could be summer. At least from the window of my studio. Shall I pretend? And this morning it was pitch, wet and storming. What a difference a few hours can make. The clouds are moving quickly, ships, mighty ships of fluffy-ness. The light is gorgeous. A Mediterranean light. Sharp light. A need to wear sun-glasses light. Eyes squinting.

I notice shoes. Most peoples’ are muddy, scuffed. He brings in sand on his. A grainy, grey, silver-like sand.

He was cremated in secret. He’d arranged it so that it would be so. Can you do that? Is that what wealth and influence brings? No, you can’t come. Leave me to disappear in peace. The third day and the papers are beginning to rake up dirt. Leave me be. Leave me to disappear in peace. Did I tell you that I don’t want a funeral, and nor does he? Leave us to disappear in peace. No fuss. He didn’t want any fuss. Mozart’s body being poured, unceremoniously into a mass grave. His corpse bouncing as it landed atop another.

Let us disappear in peace. For we will disappear. If he can go we all can. Dust to dust.

Think about your death, he says. Imagine it. To be nothing. To be no more. Would it be so bad? I am ready. I have been for a long time. Though this perfect blue is a bonus. For now it will do. Thank you. Thank you.

It was a shock. Petroc Trelawney announced it during his early morning breakfast show on Radio 3. Then it was on the news. I called down to him. David Bowie’s died. It can’t be. He’s only…The papers are full of him. Pictures of him everywhere. I remember when I worked at Jim Henson’s in Hampstead and finding the drawers full of latex copies of his face. They’d made Labyrinth there. They’d said what a nice man he was. One for the ladies, apparently. No wonder. What a charmer, what an stylish man. I’d have fallen. And they are the same age. Were. Born the same year.

And Ed Stewart a few days before. Junior Choice, such a part of my childhood. He is reading his obituary over breakfast. He was a member of the mile-high club, he says. That’s rude, isn’t it? I say. Yes, it means they have sex in mid-air, on a plane. It seems inappropriate. Lewd even, that Ed ‘Stewpot’ would indulge in, much less admit to, such activities. One associates him with innocence and childlike fun. And yet, he was a man too. He was divorced too, he read. Odd, really, listening to him on the radio one thought of him as leading a cosy life, he says. Yes, I concur, me too. I didn’t really enjoy Junior Choice. It embarrassed me. He, it, was too gushing. Not quite authentic, even patronising at times. But nevertheless, it was ours. It belonged to us children. It was our time, our space, like Crackerjack, Blue Peter, Vision On, Jackanory and The Magic Roundabout. I could go on and on, Hector’s House, Play School….Did I really like any of them? I’m not really a TV watcher, never have been, but I do like that idea that something belongs to us, is dedicated to us. I think Ed Stewart was on air over the New Year. It must be hard to stop doing what you’ve always done. To bow out gracefully. He became a little forgetful, making mistakes, fluffing his lines. I liked him better for it. The gloss had gone.

Not the same with David Jones. He kept changing, moving elegantly forward. The White Duke. Aristocratic. Nobody knew he was dying. We all are but we forget in our day-to-day littleness. It’s coming, the falling away of all that was, that one thinks will last forever. It won’t and nor should it.

Rest in peace. Rest. In peace.

The congregation had swelled. We were six. Seven including the vicar. I took a seat at the back pew, being nearest to one of the two radiators. A man in scuffed shoes sat further along the pew from me. He nodded a greeting. As did the others. Good morning.

I’d got there too early. The door was locked. A woman was sitting in the little front porch. She smiled at me. She always reads the second lesson. Speaking fast, her voice has a mid-Wales lilt. She speaks urgently as if there is too much to get out. I walked over to Cis and Dick’s headstone. The tree overhanging their grave is leafless. It is a gnarled, dwarfish specimen. Rather sombre. I thought of Cis. I could hear her laughter, see her little wave; her only remaining gesture after speaking became too much. I shall plant some snowdrops for next year.

I’d forgotten my glasses so I didn’t speak the responses. I preferred it that way, I don’t agree with them all. The sin stuff. We just do the best we can. But I like to hear the words. I like the slow, monotonous chanting of the words. And I like the prayer. I like to kneel. It feels ancient. An ancient act of losing the self. An act of submitting. And one of sharing. We share compassion for our fellow men. It feels good to do so. Kneeling at the altar for communion, I smelt those either side of me. The man with the scuffed shoes smelt of washing powder and a slight hint of damp, the woman to the left of me of talcum powder and violets. The wine is sweet, cloying. Morning had broken as I left, a crisp azure sky.

Sitting in the car at Morrison’s waiting for him to return the trolleys, I watch as a girl does a cartwheel. She is outside and I think of her small pudgy hands coming down hard on the wet concrete. She completes the cartwheel and returns to her feet a little flushed, her ponytail awry. She turns to see if her father and grandmother had been watching. They had not. For a moment she is disappointed but shrugs it off, skipping forward to join her grandmother on the bench.

Poetry Extra on the radio and the poet Gavin Maxwell is talking about white spaces. Just like artists, always concerned with how to deal with the negative spaces, the emptiness-es, the silences. Do we fill them or let them be? It is an eternal fear, I think. What if the nothing is all there is?

Another radio programme, this time on Radio 4, and it’s in response to the anniversary of the killing of the Charlie Hebdo staff. A teacher from Paris is saying that ‘religion is the new taboo.’

Before beginning the service the vicar reads out the notices. He tells us of the sad death of one of the congregation, saying that his funeral is to be this Friday. He ends the notices with a reminder of the church’s block booking for the pantomime, and that tickets can be accessed via the website. When the old man with the hearing aid gets up to read the first lesson, as is clearly his habit, I notice that he is no longer wearing the navy jumper I’ve seen him in for the last two Sundays but a sparkling creamy-white Aran cardigan. It is a little big for him, forming a skirt around his hips. Under the cardigan he has a white shirt and tie. His hair is still fluffed up at the back, like that of newborn. He is Northern, Lancashire or Yorkshire, I can never tell.

Who is it? the girls in the office ask. I tell them his name. Oh, god they say, not him. He talks and talks, it’s exhausting. An ex-preacher apparently. He’s as thin as can be, his clothes hanging off him. I’ve got cancer, he tells me, pointing at the sores on his head and pate. I ask him what he’s come to talk about. Dei Tomos, he says. But what will you talk about? Oh, I come in to talk about people who died a hundred years ago, he replies pulling out a scrap of paper from his coat pocket. His script is tiny, closely written, with dates and underlinings. He smells of aniseed.

In the end we couldn’t watch the end, the DVD was buggered. That was the bit I remembered. The Requiem, the rickety horse-drawn carriage, the pouring of the corpse out of the borrowed coffin into the mass grave, a spade shoveling lime on top of it. Then Salieri being pushed in his wheelchair through the asylum, greeting the ‘mediocrity’. I bought a copy of The Requiem for you, I told him. Did you? he said. Yes, I said, it was one Christmas but you never listened to it so I gave it to OXFAM. I didn’t know you very well then, I said. I’m sorry, he said. Of course, it is too dark, too melancholic, for him. I know that now. I know him now.

See the sun has come out. And the sky is Titian Blue. It is enough.

The crossword clue was orange flower, eight letters, beginning with M. Marigold? he asked. But they’re yellow, surely, I said. It fits, he said.

Marigolds always make me think of Carrwood Estate in Knutsford. We lived there in the late sixties, early seventies. I remember a neighbour’s garden was full of them, and nasturtiums. Yellow/orange, a burnished gold. I recall watching a caterpillar on one of the petals, twisting and turning. I picked it up. It felt cold to the touch and I dropped it, squealing.

Serendipity. The next day. The very next day Hermione Lee and Julian Barnes are on the radio talking about Rudyard Kipling in France overseeing the war graves. They read out the letters he wrote to the Commission, detailing the problems and the joys. ‘Sun on the marigolds’, he wrote.

The last part of Mrs Lirriper. She and the Major and her ‘grandson’, Jem holiday in Paris. ‘I feel as if beautiful fireworks are being let off in my head, she tells Jem before she retires, uncertain whether she will be able to sleep. If life made me rich I’d travel. Beautiful hotels are my one weakness.

I forgot to tell you that her grandmother, the one in hospital with a new hip, refuses to open her eyes. She doesn’t want to be there, she told me, so she won’t look at it, or anybody. Open your eyes, Gran, I say, but she won’t. She’ll talk alright, and eat, but she won’t open her eyes. Defiant, wilful, even in such adversity. The human spirit is potent. Jude just told me, he said as we took our shopping to the car, that she had a call from the hospital last night. Her mother is refusing to eat. She has to go in after to work to give her a good talking to.

Ychaf-fi, she kept saying Ychaf-fi. An exhalation of disgust at the floods. Spat out. A derisive noise like a West Indian woman sucking her teeth. Strewth. A mild expletive. Isn’t it Australian?

I turn the paper over, I don’t want to see him. A young boy, bare-chested. A young boy, smiling, large eyed, large-headed, starving.

The students are back. Bodies moved about in the dark as I walked this morning. A bare-legged girl in a long fur coat. Two lads in black, one lurching as he attempted to pick up a dropped coin from the road.

Is one’s sense of smell more defined in the dark? A man walks past me. A halo of white hair, sloping shoulders and a rolling gait. He leaves a miasma of body odour in his wake. A smell of dis-ease, sorrow, loneliness. His head is down, no eye-contact. Good morning, I whisper, sleep well.