Category: Writings

They’re going home for Christmas. I’ve seen them, rucksacks on their backs heading for the station. Emptying the town. It’ll be just the locals soon. Quiet. No vomit of a morning. Still a few stragglers left. I saw some this morning. That tall boy with the lace-ups and no socks.

The rain is lashing at the windows. The aerials shake and quiver. Four rooks sit astride one, their plumage awry.

What did you call it? he asked. Black as pitch, I said. That’s it, he said, black as pitch. Still, in nine days time it’ll start getting light again, you wait.

We talked about writing. About the process of writing. I was musing over the fact that after a morning’s writing I always feel like shit. How do you mean? he asked. It’s hard to explain, I said. It’s always as if it isn’t good enough, as if I haven’t done enough, and yet, I’ve done the thousand words I intended to do. I used to feel the same way when I made art, I said.

In Anita Brookner’s Hotel du Lac Edith Hope, a writer of romantic fiction, always has a bath after a day spent writing. The author gives the impression of being somehow sullied, dirtied by the process. I think I know what she means.

I don’t want to be precious about it. I am just curious, nay, eager to cancel the habits. The habits of a life-time. A life-time of self-denigration. Just to stop and try another approach. The work is done. The words written. It is enough. Now rest. That’s all. The time for judgement is not now, not until all the words are written. Then and only then can the judgement start. And even that, even that doesn’t have to be unkind. I do the best I can. We all do. Against such odds.

We’ve begun The Constant Gardener. It isn’t what I expected. There is something curiously old-fashioned about it. We shall see.

She tells us about her horse. She’s sprained her ankle. I’ve forgotten her name. She uses an acronym for it. Ill gotten gains, I think, though that can’t be right if the acronym is IMO. He laughs, great name, he says. Her ex won’t sign over the papers for her. It’s just spite, she says, her voice getting shriller. Says he’ll see her as meat first. I’m just gonna love her and take me chances, she says, shrugging her shoulders. She’s the most beautiful horse, she says, everyone says so. Anyway must rush, customers are waiting. Enjoy the coffee. Ta, guys.

She puts two thumbs up as we leave. Keep warm and dry, she shouts. See you next week, guys. Byeeee.

I saw a fox. The third I’ve seen up close. One in Manchester, one in Cambridge and this one in Guildford. It wasn’t much bigger than a cat. It darted across the road, in the still dark, it’s tail a stiff brush behind. I waited for the hot, sharp stink, as Ted Hughes promised, sniffing the air. Nothing. It felt good anyway. The sheer rawness of it. The feral underbelly of a city. Alive and breathing.

The next morning I got lost. Well and truly, shouting at the dark. The impenetrable dark. My feet becoming unsure on the roughening road surface. No streetlights. I try to wave a car down. It speeds past me sounding its horn. I should’ve turned first right, trusted my instinct. Crying with frustration I had to retrace my steps, the same ginger steps, hesitant. It was OK in the end, it always is. But the upset, the fear shook me, more than I’ve been shaken for a while. I shouted at him on my return. He forgave me as he always does. I was discombobulated all day. All day.

The sun’s out. Cloudless. The phone rings.

London was a marvel. Two exhibitions, scribbles and mobiles. Marvellous. Good coffee. Tea-time chats. Christmas lights and the bridge. Then a rainbow. Quick, he said, catch it. Catch it.

I’d never been in there before, though I’d often walked past and wondered what it was like. It’ll be full of old ladies, he’d said, laughing at my suggestion. It doesn’t matter, I’d said, I like old ladies. It was on the first floor, its row of windows looking down on the street. I always feel a little nervous walking into an establishment with which I am unfamiliar. Do I order here? I asked the girl at the counter. No, just take a seat and I’ll come to your table. Only about half the tables were taken and there were several free banquettes. I took the one in the corner. The seat was soft and cushioned. Three men were seated across from me partly obscured from view by a heavily decorated Christmas tree. They were speaking Welsh. The man who was facing me had cow-eyes, with dark heavy rings. His hair was snow-white. In the far corner a couple were eating gammon, chips and peas. She talked as she ate. He chewed and swallowed it down with tea. I took my book and glasses out of my bag and stared out of the window. What can I get you? the waitress asked, pen poised. An Earl Grey tea, please. A sensation of pure bliss over took me. It was a quiet feeling. I wanted nothing else but to sit there watching the afternoon sink into night. Replete with life.

What was the bliss about? I’m not sure. I’d stepped out of my usual routine. I’d done something different. Stood still. Given in. It wasn’t our usual kind of place and there was something rather restful about that. No one knew me. I could just stare, or read, whatever I liked. There was peace in that. And the waiting. A good kind of waiting, with no expectations other than time passing.

I never see him outside. Does he go out? His skin is pale pink. No sunlight. You wouldn’t get me down the Prom in this weather, he told him the other day, not like your lady wife. He was at his window smoking when I passed by. Have you been away? I asked. Yes, he said, Berlin. So he does go out. Though I’ve never seen him.

A tall student walking up Penglais hill with a girl wearing a woman’s negligee, his arms and legs bare. The rain was heavy, the wind strong.

No umbrella again this morning. There was no point. Drenched. Rain-soaked face. Cleansed.

The weather report was wrong and I got soaked. Two heavy downpours between four am and five. Cold rain. Was it sleet? My feet skid on the pavement. I gave in to it. I don’t usually like walking in the rain without an umbrella. The rain hard on my face. I gave in. I succumbed to the sensation. Paying attention. Rain like tears on my face. My coat saturated, only my feet in my blue wellies, dry. The wind was strong. This is like being alive. This is being alive. Accepting. It isn’t personal, you know. It’s just weather, doing what it does.

We watched the end of The Imitation Game about Alan Turing and the Enigma machine. I had no idea that they had such moral questions to deal with. No longer a game. Can’t we save the human convoy? one of his assistants asked, My brother is on it. Sorry, Turing kept saying, I’m sorry. Sacrifice for the greater good. You are not God, he shouts. The greater good.

They told us that in the event of a terrorist attack the police may have to walk over the bodies.

We’ve a budget-freeze, said the Librarian, we can’t purchase any more books until April. It’s gone missing. The book I wanted has gone missing. Shall I buy it and donate it to the Library? Which book would you donate? Could you choose just one?

We’re stopping the be-friending service, she said over the phone. We can’t fund it anymore. No more one-to-ones. You can keep calling your client, she said, but we’re not taking any more. But isn’t that what we all need, I want to say, though I know it isn’t her fault. One-to-one. Tete-a-tete. Intimacy. The focus on one. Honing in, listening to just one. One life. One life for the greater good. Yes. I think so. Don’t you?

It was a crossword clue, the Word of God. He didn’t know it either. How is it that we didn’t know? The Word of God. Logos. Logic stems from it, reason. How things have changed. Many believe that to have faith shows a lack of reason. At least that is want I have found. The faithful considered to be fanciful, sentimental, unable to explain their feeling. A feeling of something like joy. Is it not? Sometimes it is the only thing that makes sense. Stands to reason. Stands for reason. All else is merely illusion. The Word of God. Amen. Amen to it.

The Christmas ridiculousness begins. Has begun weeks ago for some. I don’t mind. Waves of nostalgia flow through me. I loved this time of year. I loved the ritual. Though I am happy to let it pass these days. To be quiet. A quiet puritan. It is enough to hear the distant music, light candles, succumb to the dark.

Work emails are full of seasonal requests and offers. Last week a mother was asking if anyone had a camel costume for a six-year-old. Number of humps, it read, not an issue. Then there was another offering skis for sale, with a Chanel logo. In brackets, they wrote (logo painted on to humour shallow teenager). I love the whimsy of these communications. And there are hundreds each day.

At The Shilam Shubert is eagerly anticipating setting up the Nativity scene. We have some new things, he told us last Monday. He loves Christmas. I make so much money, he says, playing my music. He wants to be home then. Goa. They are all from Goa. Nice boys, so warm, full of smiles. I miss Wellington. He will be back in two months, Shubert tells us, grinning. They share a house, live in each others’ pockets.

The radio maps out my day both as my work and as my pleasure. Voices. Certain actors’ voices. There was a book being read recently by Bill Patterson. He played the father in Wives and Daughters on the television, years ago. A rich, sticky Scottish brogue, his voice comforts me like hot porridge. No-nonsense, unsentimental, he tells it like it is but there is soft roughness, like the tongue of a favourite Labrador. Who else? Alex Jennings is a favourite. Radio voices. It sounds easy, it is not. The people I put before the microphone are not usually professionals. They don’t know how to use their voices to best effect, are nervous, tentative. Breathe. Feel your power. It is there.

I think about paper boats.

Yesterday I was blue, heavy with greyness. Sometimes just going out takes a herculean effort. Speaking to people. Too much. My skin is thin then, I worry what they think, too much.

He says the nights will start to draw in soon. You wait, he says, three minutes each day. Light. Candles. Shining.

She was there in the gym again today. I like it when she is there. She doesn’t ask too much of herself. The bike, maybe a couple of minutes on the rowing machine. The bike is best because she can read on it. Today it was a free gift catalogue, its front page emblazoned with images of Christmas baubles. On the TV a Syrian man told us how he lost his brother and his family to air strikes. Should we bomb? they asked him. No, he said. Thank you for your opinion, they said to him, now its over to the weather.

Logos. Are we listening?

There are three lads messing about on a park bench along Terrace Road. It is 4.45 am. Across the road one of their friends is calling to them. Matt, Matt, he calls, Matt, Matt, Stu over here.

There are kids everywhere, mostly drunk. Along the promenade I watched as a large boy in a t-shirt stumbled his way round the corner past the Aber American Diner. He lurched as he walked, banging into walls and finally stopping in front of the Ceredigion Bay Hotel where he proceeded to bang hard on its glass-fronted door. When I looked back he was still there, sitting in the covered doorway, head falling into his chest.

At the top of town there are more. I walk through the Castle grounds and come upon a form in the dark. Another large boy. Then I see a young man walking towards him. Ray, he shouts, Ray. Hey man, I’m really sorry, you alright? Ray lets out a loud wail. By the town clock two skinny boys in parkas are calling up to a window over Agnelli’s Trattoria and Deli but there is no response. They walk back towards the Pier. There is a loud burst of noise, like a salvo of gunfire. One of them has just jumped on a balloon. Two students are sitting in Superdrug’s doorway. I always do it that way, the girl is saying.

The smell of baking bread from Slater’s Bakery has the aroma of salted peanuts.

The Christmas lights are up, as is the tree, but they are not turned on.

My blog article for New Welsh Review has been liked and retweeted several times. A small pleasure. To be read. That is all. That is enough. Might you read it too? https://www.newwelshreview.com/article.php?id=1115

Idea for a short story. The Visitors. A small moment, but one of profound poignancy. But is it a story? He might ask. And my memoir. Write it as fiction, she said. She may be right.

I was meant to be in Bath today. I was sorry we couldn’t meet. I miss her. I sent white roses instead. I hope they please. And I think of another in Cornwall. What can I ask of her?

Keep safe, always. I love you.

Last Sunday I heard Shirley Henderson reading Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market. What a marvel. I first saw Henderson on TV in an adaptation of Trollope’s The Way We Live Now. God knows how many years ago. She was like a wild animal, snarling, with a long curling mane of black hair. Fine black hairs dusted her upper lip. But it was her voice. A reedy, throaty, sometimes high, sometimes low, animal sounding voice. I’d never heard Rossetti’s poem before. I was made breathless.

Wind. It howls and batters. We’ll have it for five days at least, said the ex-Golf pro in Morrison’s. It makes me feels edgy. At night-time it frightens me. I am unsafe. The house rattles, its windows bowing and buckling. Will they burst?

We finished Mr Turner last night. Timothy Spall was stunning. As was ‘Jane’ from Midwife. Painting as compunction but not as a salve. There was comfort in Mrs Booth. She oo-ed and blustered around him. Mrs Booth, he said, you are a profoundly beautiful woman. He wanted to be remembered, now I will be a non-entity, he said on his deathbed. Have you seen his later paintings? Or even his sketchbooks. Profound beauty? Absolutely.

Four purple candles for Advent. Ready?

She talked about a wedding and funeral. There were three swallows trapped inside the church during the wedding. A jazz band followed the cardboard coffin as they carried it to the natural burial site. Then they had a ‘Jacob’s Join’ at the Village Hall. I only met his wife once. A glamorous woman, beautiful even. She gave me a lift from the station when Dad had hurt his knee. She reminded me of another woman from Cambridge. A neighbour. Contained emotions, fit to spill. She’s gone to Scotland to scream.

Archers soon, must fly. x

I can hardly hear her on the phone. Her voice is muffled, it trails off. But she is mid-flow, is laughing, and I don’t want to shatter her joy. We talk about Christmas. We both like the carols, don’t like the fuss. Do you send cards? she asks. We used to take round a sponge to our neighbours, she says, but they’ve mostly passed away now. Her tooth is still troubling her. Bye, Bach, she says.

Two men in the dark walking towards me, I can hardly make them out in the gloom. They’ve both got wooly hats on. Yeh, he’s banned now, one of them is saying, banned from The Angel. There is silence. And then the same voice, I can’t believe he said that.

I only have time for a list. A memo for tomorrow, maybe Sunday. I need to get it down. All these threads that may come to nothing but maybe, just maybe they will manifest. Here it is: Charlotte Bronte’s letters, handwriting copied on a light-box, the endurance of the men on Scott’s Antarctic expedition, Victor Borge and my mother laughing, laughing with my sister over Turkey fricassee, food and mothers, and what else? Advent, yes, advent. The saga over the purple candles. I am all about detail. Too much sometimes.

There is a misily rain outside. November rain. Have to go. Speak soon. Juggling plates. A sluggish writing day. Its never wasted, he says. Don’t judge. Not yet. Just keep writing. That’s all.

They used to call them sea-pies. Oystercatchers. They look like pies when they stand squat on the sand. Turning into the stretch of promenade before South Marine Terrace, I disturbed them. A glut of them, hugging close to the sea wall. Hearing my steps in the dark, they started to hop about, moving closer to the sea. Becoming disorderly, pip-pipping, bobbing forward. I moved on quickly, not wanting to upset their slumber. Was it because of the storm that they came closer to land?

It was a wild night. The windows were bending, blowing inwards, I swear. And now all is calm. Gone. A perfect blue sky. Colder though. My fingers nipping with cold, even with two pairs of gloves.

We walked yesterday afternoon, even in all that wind. He didn’t want to but acquiesced. He always does. The sea, what a sight. A churning mass of chocolate brown fury, fringed with white. Bubbling with white. Frothing. It is so powerful. I catch my breath. There is nothing compared to it. So alive. So elemental. It forges its way to the shore, hurling stones, debris. The Perygyl was lost to water time and time again. Two students stood behind a movie camera on a tripod. Making a film. Freezing, stamping feet and chafing hands.

The early morning was silent except for the flump flump of my wellies. An occasional blackbird would dive down onto the pavement before me. A black shape darting. Then gone. No robins this morning. Too cold.

What a rich life. I am replete with it today. Grateful. Content.

We argued over socks. He swore and I sulked. It was over soon. It’s rare these days, generally we live peaceably with each other. A good marriage. A happy marriage. Just over-tired. They always say that don’t they, about children? We were being children then, weren’t we? It’s OK to be so every once and awhile. And the socks? They turned out to be just lovely. Thank you very much.

I have to make lists. Lists of thoughts, experiences, conversations. I write them on post-it notes when I get in from my walk, having chanted them to myself all the way home. Lest I forget. His office used to be covered in post-it notes. Telephone numbers, book references and things to do. Guaranteed that once written down they’d be forgotten. Guaranteed.

I want to remember, to preserve those little snapshots of something like life. The weather for instance. It dominates here. Always has. Wind, rain and sun. The wind the other day. Gusts of seventy miles off the sea. I couldn’t help laughing. Stop giggling, he said. We clung to each other. It pounded us. You feel winded. Literally. Three of the iron railings were uprooted. Just as if they were pot plants. Wrenched from the ground. And yesterday the rain, it was as if someone was just hurling buckets of water at our windows. You can understand our ancestors seeing strong weather as retribution from the gods. The glass rattled in its panes.

There was a hand-written sign in Merlin’s Cobblers and Key Cutting Shop. Closed today, it read, personal issue.

He is often there at his window smoking. It is still dark. I walk towards him, a little frustrated at feeling obliged to break my reverie. We talk about the weather, my walk. I wish him a good morning. It is 4.30 am and he is yet to go to bed. I like him though. There is intelligence, a wryness.

Two identical looking girls stand under a lamppost talking. It’s so much better living with someone, one of them is saying, much better than when I was alone.

A man is banging the flat of his palm against the glass-fronted door of the Ty Hafan Guest House. It is not yet 4.00 am. I find a pound on the ground, later there is a ten pence piece. A figure walks towards me out of the dark. I am safe in my defenceless, I whisper to myself. He walks on, coatless, the leather soles of his shoes sharp against the tarmac. The smell of baking bread from Slater’s Bakery comforts me. It still escapes even though the door is shut. A man is running down South Marine Terrace. He too is coatless, just a t-shirt. By the castle I see a girl. She is barefoot. I shine my torch on the ground, she scurries off. The wind is not so strong in town though The Angel sign creaks and swings.

From a distance I thought they were fairy lights. Coming closer I saw that they were the tricolour. The Belle Vue Hotel lit up red, blue and white. Nice touch. Solidarity. An elegant, restrained gesture.

I watch from the upstairs window as a cat leaps through a window.

It was unsatisfactory as a ending. I kept going over and over it in my mind. Would he have stayed? Really? Was it his child? Did he really sleep with her, after knowing that she was a murderer? I don’t know. Folk are strange. And marriage is compromise. The devil you know and all that. But it just makes you care less. That’s all. Should I read the book? I don’t think so. No empathy. Gone girl. Going, going. Gone.

I sent them off, into the ether. I don’t know. Are they good enough? Who knows. It would be nice but it is just ego stuff that. Mostly it is about sending them out, letting them loose to be something else. And that’s good isn’t it?

He gets back into the car and tells me that he’d just heard a man in Starbucks asking for a roll of toilet paper for the Gents. It’s rather urgent, the man had said to the blonde barista. It doesn’t bear thinking about, the girl had said to him as the man scumbled off loo roll in his hand. I like her, he said, she makes me laugh.

On the TV in the gym a woman in a tartan dress is talking about the Foundation for Peace. Prevention is better, she is saying, though I can only read the subtitles, the sound is muted. Prevention is what we are about. Yes. Amen to that.

I saw the moon yesterday. It has been a while. We are moving into the dark. Advent. I remember the Abbey lit up at the final moment, everyone holding their candle aloft as the great doors opened. I cried, from grief, relief and trepidation. Not now. Not now. My life is warmer now.