Category: Writings

I’ve never had one before. I used to grow my nails long, like Barbara Streisand defying her parents when they wanted her to learn to type, ‘just in case’. But now they are short, close-cut, so that I can type and make things. And yet, I like my hands to be neat, clean and soft to touch. They are certainly expressive. I use them when I talk.

I like being touched. She has a firm but tender touch. I like to look at her when she talks. It’s not an Aber accent, not really, it sounds South Walian. Oh, your boyfriend is from Swansea, that explains it. I ask about her ninety-year-old grandmother. She has a nickname for her, a pet name, but I’ve forgotten it now. I think she called her grandfather her ‘Dickie’. Her gran is in hospital. She fell and broke her artificial hip. It had to be replaced. A seven hour operation. Poor thing, I say. Now they’ve found an infection. She will be in for months. We talk about hospitals. Hospital food. They gave her an omelette and mash for Christmas dinner, she says. Imagine. The food’s terrible. We take in home-made soups. What does she like to eat? I ask. Puddings, she replies. Rice pudding. If there was a micro we could warm some up.

I love the chatter. I love its inconsequential-ness. It get’s me out of my head. I like her. I like her humour, her warmth, her round lusciousness.

She has a little bit of dementia, she continues. It’s making her a little racist. She’s only nice to the nurses who can speak Welsh. There was a doctor and she kept asking me mum in Welsh, is he English or Welsh? It was really embarrassing. What’s she saying? the doctor asked. He’s probably half and half, me gran said eventually. And the snoring. What your gran snores? I ask. Something terrible, she says. That’s probably why she’s been put on an end ward.

We talk about old age. I’ve no children, she says, to look after me. I’ll probably top myself or go to Digitas or something. I’ll look after you, shouts her younger colleague from the other room. Ta, she says. They should be dry now, she says, touching my nails. Are you ready for feet now?

Pedicure too. What a treat. Have I told you have much I love my feet being massaged? He does it every night. It is heaven.

She brings in a foot spa filled with hot water. The boiler’s off, she says, so I had to wait for the kettle. Is it too hot? You’ll have to do a bit of dancing. Now, pop them up on my lap. She washes and exfoliates them. I watch her. In her mid-twenties she’s an efficient, yet cosy (in an Aber-ish way) young woman. She chatters away. Have you booked your holidays yet? How was Christmas? I steer the conversation back to her. She is happy to talk. And I want to hear about her life. Really I do. Her parents-in-law are getting re-married in Thailand. She wants me to be bridesmaid. I hate flying, she says. Last time I didn’t leave my seat for seven hours. I won’t go to the toilet. I won’t close the door. Me mum has to come with me. Her boyfriend’s in the Navy. He’s leaving in April. It’ll be the first time that they have lived together permanently. God, it’s freezing in here. I can’t wait for me lunch, she says. What will you have? I ask. A baguette or maybe a baked potato. I’ve got a thing about cheese at the moment. I even had cheese on me tuna, yesterday. I go to Chives. It’s all home-made. She tells me about her in-grown toenail. I can’t wear shoes. Are you squeamish? she asks. Shall I show you a picture? Poor love. It is grotesque, and looks so sore. They’re going to operate. 2016 without a toenail, she says.

I like her. I like them both. Small-town girls, happy with their lot. Making their way. It’s their third move. The last place they were only there a couple of months. She put in sunbeds, she said. It was too noisy for our clients. They’re happy in their new place. At least we will be when the boiler’s fixed, she says. You’ve made it look lovely, I say. Thanks, she says. At least it’s quiet this side of the building. There’s only the graveyard out back. Perfect, I say.

Was it an owl? Still pitch. It must’ve been about 4.30am. I was walking home, up through the courtyard when I heard it. It was overheard. I couldn’t see it but I heard it. It made a kind of whaa, whaa sound. Almost a screech. Perhaps it was a screech owl.

He reads the column out to me at breakfast sometimes. That is after we’ve done the birthdays. Jan Leeming? he asks. God, I say it’s been a long time since she’s been on TV. 67, I say. The column is about the day-to-day changes in Nature. A seasonal diary. He reads about the song of the blackbirds. Yes, I say, I hear it on Llanbadarn Road in the early morning. And that of the robin. They bound on the pavement ahead of me. Almost as if they are greeting me, I say. It is lovely, companionable. I call out to them, softly. They bounce along, warily sociable.

She sounds better. Her Christmas was quiet. The weather’s been awful, she says. I don’t like too much water, she says. I ask what she’ll do today. Read your Have a Break magazine? Yes, she says. Oh, and I’ve started reading a book too about the man who plays the organ. Have you read it? No, I say, but I think I saw an article about him. Is it good? (I keep thinking about Dylan Thomas’s Organ Morgan.) Yes, she says, cos’ I know a lot of the people that are in it. I knew his wife. That’s nice, I say. It makes you feel connected. Yes, she says.  I tell her I have to go to work. We’ll speak longer next week, I say. Thanks so much for calling, she says. I like her, too. Her voice is querulous. A shy woman. I treat her with care, with tendresse. It is an honour to be let in. Let in to her life, albeit it briefly. Have you walked today? I ask. Yes, she says, a little. Just to wake myself up. I wish I could describe her voice. It cracks sometimes. So much restraint. So much held in. Breathe out, I want to say. Have a deep breath. She reminds me of Winifred. Winifred who is so afraid of snow.

One of the windows of Merlin’s Shoe Repair shop has been boarded-up since Christmas. It is a rough piece of chipboard. The windows inside are all steamed-up. A neon sign declaring a Happy Christmas to all flashes on and off every sixty seconds. Someone has spray painted a message on the board, in capital letters. I’VE NOT GONE BUST, it reads. At the top right hand corner another message has been added. Written in felt pen and in lower case, it has clearly been done rather hastily. I just needed a break, it says.

Turning the key in the door I pause for a moment to look out of the window. The black and white cat that lives in the ground-floor flat in the courtyard below is hesitating at an open window. Will she jump out? She turns to face me, catching my eye. We hold each other’s gaze for what must be at least 30 seconds. Then the cat grows bored and turns its head away. I open my door and go in.

They are repeating the adaptation of Dickens’s Mrs Lirriper on the radio. I keen towards Julia McKenzie’s voice. A chortling, happy voice, thick with kindness. She talks of parlours, of pots of tea by the fire, everything cosy and nice. I yearn for such mothering with an ache. I always have. I always have. And sometimes, just sometimes, I found it. (You were always my favourite, she said to me. I flooded with joy. Was I? I asked, I never knew.) Thank you. All of you, for the comfort of you. Other peoples’ mothers, bless you. Bless you all.

He said it was ‘Letter Week’. At least that’s what the researcher told me, he said. I googled it but there was nothing. Nothing mentioned. Is it just a Welsh thing? Shame, it would be a nice to celebrate them. I love letters. Handwritten letters and all of their paraphernalia. The stamps, the post-marks, the address on the back. I think I said that during the 19th century there would be up to five deliveries a day. They could be just notes. An acceptance for dinner that night, a request for an invoice, a bit of whimsy, a billet-doux. The penny post was slow, the three-penny post faster. People used writing desks, pigskin cases that held paper, envelopes and stamps. And blotting paper. Several Agatha Christie stories have Poirot trying to read the impress of a pen on the blotting paper for clues. I remember the flooding of ink. Wanting to write beautifully. The ink stains on my middle finger. It is a concentrated form of communication. A tangible, physical thing. Read them. Read the letters of the past. Read Charlotte Bronte’s, Jane Austen’s and Elizabeth Gaskell’s. They write to amuse, to cajole, to share, to give love. I miss the opportunity. Don’t you?

At 5.10 am man was sitting under the town clock, a bottle of beer beside him. He was talking to himself. His hands were animated, hovering then diving and ascending, like gulls in the air before him.

Happy New Year, I say to her as I shut the studio door. No, thanks I’ve got a key, she replies, not lifting her head as she yanks at the hoover flex. No, I say, I said Happy New Year. Oh, sorry, she says, putting her hand on my arm. Did you have a good one? I say. Yes, she says, but it’s nice to be back at work. To get back to normal. She is always so cheerful. She gets there early and by 6.00 am has mopped all the toilets and hovered the foyer.

It was a programme dedicated to L T Rolt. I’m not sure if that is how you spell it. He wrote about what fascinated him, steam engines, bridge-building and all kinds of hand craft. As a child he’d sit amongst the artisans, watching them at work. ‘With handworkers their craft is their prayer’, he said. Noble work. Sometimes I crave it. Just that knowledge. One particular kind of knowledge. The knowledge of how to make something, something useful, something beautiful, extremely well. There is pride in that. A sense of self. Surely.

We finished the film. It was hard. The other two Alan Parker films I have seen have been the same. We watch them in two parts. The first night was harrowing. I took it to my dreams. I lay awake trying to imagine if I could be calm, accepting in the face of enforced suffocation. The second night was easier. There had been love. And a great sacrifice on both their parts. It will stay with me. Laura Linney and Kevin Spacey. They act with such contained power. It is good for me to step outside what is comfortable. To enter the possibility of other lives not as safe or as kind as mine. So be it. Take me there, if you must.

But I must be at peace with my work, myself. This is what I have been given. This between-worlds kind of knowing. Neither artist or writer. A bit of both. A maker of facsimiles. A seeker of truth. Of understanding.

I did it. I wrote 500 words. It was stilted today. It didn’t flow. But I took myself to the page. It is enough, some days. Just to do that.

The darkness is complete at 4.30 am as I walk the Promenade. The occasional light from an upper storey window is Hopper-esque in its bleakness. It is that kind of stark yellow light that shines from a bald overhead bulb, casting ruthless shadows. The light I see out at sea is different. This is a warm yellow, a custard yellow. A beam, with a red and green light below it. They are fixed to a mast. It is the light of a fishing boat. It has just left the harbour. It follows me through the black. A guiding light. As I walk the sleeping streets I look for Christmas trees in windows. Most are switched off, but there is one on North Road that is still ablaze and there is one alight upstairs in the Constitution Hill Railway terminus. I shall miss them come Twelfth Night. No more twinkling kindly lights, though some may stay, I cannot be alone in the longing for light.

Everything is returning to normal. The lights are on in Gwesty Cymru’s dining room.  Breakfast is being laid out for the guests by the night porter. They must be open again. The door of Slater’s Bakery is ajar. The ovens are baking.

It isn’t The Abbey. I shake out my umbrella. The elderly man with the tousled hair greets me. Aren’t you Angela? he asks peering into my face. Oh, no, he says, it’s just you’ve got the same…and he draws a kind of circle in the air around my head. I introduce myself and shake his hand. You are most welcome, he says. I wander down the aisle, eager to be seated and inconspicuous. The congregation has increased a little since last week. We are five, including the vicar, who is in mufti. I’m joining you, he says to the man with the hair, and can you still read the second lesson? A woman priest officiates. She has a soft, moon-like face. Is she Lynn or Heather? Her movements are slow, measured. She makes me feel calm. I don’t recite it all. But I do like hearing the words. The vicar’s voice is loud, drowning out the rest of us. The lilies in the Lady Chapel altar are beginning to wilt. The man with the hair is slightly out of kilter with the rest of us with the recitals. I think he has forgotten to turn his hearing aid on. There are two other women. One reads the first lesson. The other takes my hand at the end, commenting on the weather and smiling into my face. I am cold and longing for a pee. But I’m glad I came. It’s the words, the communion, the time to think. And to be amongst kindness. Are you a visitor? asked the female vicar, taking my hand. No, I said. She waited for an explanation. And then smiled, you are most welcome. Thank you, I said.

I decided to see Jesus in everyone, said the man on Pause for Thought, the smelly, the unkempt, the unpleasant. Everyone.

He told us he was seventy-four. I’m itching to get back to work, he said. I’m a tree surgeon, though it’s not the weather for it. The all-clear has made him buoyant. Though, you don’t do it alone, he says, turning to look at his wife across the café. She is wearing that same hat. Though it’s not strictly a hat, more of a furry head band. I thought it was cat sitting on ‘er ‘ed, he said. I got a telephone call this morning, the man says as he and his wife are leaving. Two friends dead. And now I find out I can’t get a jab for shingles cos’ I’m over seventy. I don’t understand but we offer sympathy regardless, shaking our heads at the lottery-like nature of the NHS. You can join me Anarchy Party, he says, jabbing him in the arm. I don’t think he quite understands the nature of anarchy, he says, once they are out of earshot.

‘There’s no reason for her to do anything more, there’s no rule, but now her days and nights feel too small. Something more must be expected; something more must be owed.’ (The Snow Queen, Michael Cunningham)

Colm Tobin is the guest on Desert Island Discs. Be a monster, he exhorts, if Auntie Betty has a story use it. It is yours. Don’t wait until she’s dead. Do it before it’s too late. Don’t take on the big picture, he says (and I paraphrase here), it’s too much for a novel. Work with the small details. The small details. Even if they feel too small? Yes.

I see him on the pavement outside Smith’s. He is drinking from a small brown bottle. I smile at him. There is small earphone hanging from his ear. He must be in his twenties. Dark-haired and dressed in black. Later, I see him walking down Calybeate Street, his two huge bags over each shoulder. Where does he go? Where does he go in the rain? The other homeless man was by Smith’s too. He never begs. He looks like a weasel, rake-thin. He drinks but is never aggressive. His skin is leathery. There is new beard growth, but he is not unkempt. He roams the street avoiding eye contact. See him in everyone. Everyone.

A bitty-day today. That’s OK. Sometimes it is enough just to breathe. Sun now rain. The sky a pale milky grey. The crescent moon got lost behind clouds this morning. A magical white, hidden.

I didn’t get the Amaryllis. They had hyacinths instead. They will do. I need to have something growing. Something ready to burst. And the scent is a heaven. Always. I remember my Norwegian room. She’d bought one for me. She didn’t understand my gratefulness. The small details. The small details are never too small. I promise.

We see her every Saturday morning in Morrison’s. A diminutive woman, in her eighties. She is usually sitting on the bench inside the main doors waiting for her son. Her son, a taciturn man with a long goatee and a mass of tattoos, does her weekly shop with her. Sometimes, what must be his daughter, a pretty, gipsy-like, young girl tags along. We greet the elderly woman. Happy New Year, we say. She smiles, revealing a haphazard array of teeth, chipped, broken and greying, but all hers. She is wearing a see-through pink raincoat. It reaches down past her knees. I’ve not been out, she says. It’s the dizziness that’s worst, she says grinning and leaning against him. I’m on the highest number of tablets you can get. Still what can you do? Old age doesn’t come alone, does it? Still you have him to help you, he says. Oh, yes, she says, looking adoringly at her son at the till, piling her food into bags. Hi, mate, the son says to him, yer alright? He waves assent. It’s love, you know. Love.

I walk behind the temporary manager, a giant of man, listening as he dispatches orders to his new recruit. The new recruit, like the manager is in a striped shirt and trousers. His shoes, long and pointed, curl up at the toes. The back of his neck is red. I want that sorted, the manager is saying, pointing at the aisle. What the tinned veg? Yes, the big man says, if it hasn’t been ordered, order it!

The moon was a half-circle this morning. Shining white. A young man was dragging his suitcase down Great Darkgate Street, its wheels making a rasping sound. He also had a large rucksack and a holdall. He stopped outside Slater’s Bakery to hoist them higher on his back. Should I offer him a hand? I thought, as he caught my eye. Sometimes I just don’t want to break the silence. In a moment he had walked on. A moment gone. A moment of kindness lost. I’m sorry. Next time.

They’ve been doing this series on the radio about notable people who have died recently. The other day it was Brian Friel. He spoke for half an hour, a kind of memoir, a looking-back over his life. A lovely voice. Soft. Irish. Brogue. He did a kind of mock interview with himself, delivering the kind of questions he must’ve been asked over and over again. (I paraphrase here.) What is your favourite of your plays, Mr Friel? None, he replies. What writers influenced you as an author, Mr Friel? No one. What effect do you think the Irish Tax exemption has upon writers, Mr Friel? I’m thinking of my lunch. What post-modern, existential relationship does Heidegger have upon your writing, Mr Friel? I am an old man…… Then he began to tell a story about going fishing with his father. He tells it in great detail, the fish they caught, the lake and the song that they sang walking home. Then he admits that there was no lake, no fish and no song sung. It was a constructed memory, and yet, for him at least, it has become truth. He wanted it to be so, so it was.

The sun is out, casting a sharp, clean light upon the wall of the White Horse. I felt joy yesterday. How do you feel today? he asks. OK, I say, I feel OK. And that is good enough. I am content.

The Prosecco gave me a headache. I had nothing. Not even a glass. Almost immediately, my head throbbed. Toy drinker, he used to call me. Toy drinker. I woke up grumpy, bear-headed. New year’s resolution, no more drink.

I called them. Just to make contact, to touch. She seemed pleased. I could see her, in their kitchen. All that warm wood, the smell of cooking, the bottles of pills, Stella, the dachshund, nails skittering on the tiles. How many are you having tonight? I asked. Just seven, she said, Nils and Anna Lise are in America. What will you cook? I asked. Rype, she said. Yes, I said, recognising the word. I can’t remember what it is in English, she said. I know they have it in Scotland. It’s a delicacy in Norway. They hunt it in December. The wealthy serving it up prior to Christmas. Small birds, a rich, gamey meat. And what will you cook? she asked me. Pancakes, I said. He wants pancakes. Later, as we walk I remember. It’s not ptarmigan but grouse. Rype is grouse.

I called her too. I’ll come soon. I say. When? she says. Spring, I say. Spain? she says.

The gloom that has assailed me for the last week is lifting. But even in the midst of the gloom there is joy. Always. The other day it was the sight of the late winter sun catching the side of a magnolia tree. And seeing the buds. He watched a bird through his bedroom window. She was trying to wrench a large twig from a tree, he told me. Are they building nests already?

He says, “I’ve been going to church…..I don’t pray. I don’t stand up or kneel. I don’t sing. I just sit there, a few times a week, in a back pew……It’s pretty plain….It’s quiet. It has atmosphere, even this crummy old church. I just sort of sit there wondering if something will… arrive.” (The Snow Queen, Michael Cunningham)

I think I might go again on Sunday. It isn’t the Abbey. That’s for sure. But there is silence, a stillness. I will try it. Something might arrive.

Walking at 5.00 am, and I’ve just kicked the bar. A young lad lurches towards me wearing a short sleeved shirt. It’s barely 2 degrees. Excuse me, he asks, I’m looking for the Coopers’ Arms. He is swaying and can barely keep his eyes open. He hiccups as he talks. Oh, dear, I say, it’s the other end of town. Really, he replies, downcast, I’ve been walking around for the last half and hour looking for it. I give him the directions, walking part of the way with him. Thank you, he says, still hiccupping.

Then I am on the Perygyl. Perygyl the Welsh word for danger. We call it that. A wooden slatted walkway built over the sea. It’s almost 5.30 am and still pitch. As I walk a car’s headlights are switched on. They catch me, making my shadow bleed black down the Perygyl. I think I hear a voice calling. I continue walking, head down, watching the motion of my shadow as I do so. The wooden slats are wet, I walk slowly, gingerly. I have fallen before now. I reach the end and turn back. Then a figure is before me. I catch my breath. A shock of fear runs through me. Breathe. Can I help you? I ask. A soft voice, Irish. Sorry, he says, I was looking for a girl. Then I’m not her am I? I say, not bitterly, but kindly. He turns and runs away. I hear a car door close. The rolling of tyres on sand-ridden tarmac. The beam of light turns a semi-circle. Then black.

Up past the castle and I see that The Angel is still open. Small gatherings of bodies stand around outside in the semi-light. Voices are slurring, there is a stink of beer, stale and warm. A lad with a girl in a short pink dress and fake mink stole, go back inside, ducking their heads through the doorway. The pavement is littered with streamers from those champagne bottle shaped poppers. I come upon not one but two pairs of American Tan tights, ruched-up and strewn across the tarmac.

Walking home along Llanbadarn Road I hear the whist whist of blackbirds and the click click of robins. It is still dark.

Later in the coffee shop, Pete comes over. It’s my birthday today, he says. And I’ve had the all clear. What from? he asks. Cancer, says Pete, bladder. Well done, we say and congratulations. It’s all down to PMS, he says, grinning. PMS? ask. Positive Mind Set, he says. He goes back to his wife. I like him, I say. Terrible teeth, he says.

I shall miss the Christmas lights. Several houses leave their tree lights lit through the night. One on St David’s Road and another on North Road. They lift me. Such gladness. Fairy lights. It has turned. January will soon run into February, then March and it will be Spring. I wish for no rushing though, I am content with these slow passing of days. I am content. Blessed, in fact. Happy 2016. May you be fresh, she said. I’m translating it from Norwegian, she said. I mean, may you be healthy. And so say I. So say I.

I like it. I like it when things seem to connect. A crossword clue first in one paper then another. A word heard on the radio that comes up in a sentence in a bed-side novel. It makes me feel connected, wrapped-up, held, attached to something other, something bigger. It may be fanciful. But sometimes, just sometimes serendipity is almost like faith.

The rain has begun again. I remember meeting a Catholic priest in Spain. He was the brother of a friend of my mother’s. Paul was his name. A gentle man. He lived and worked in Ecuador. It had rained, he told, non stop for five years. It must feel like that for those stricken by floods up North. My window runs with it. The windows can’t keep it out. On days like this I must put cloths under the frames. It oozes through.

Storm Frank. The residue. The other morning there was sea debris all over the road. Sharp pebbles, grit, blackened sand make me unsteady under foot. A mess. Cars are moved. Away from the sea front, pavements are peppered with wheelie bins capsized by the wind, their lids gaping wide. On South Beach a fringe of the sea’s jetsam. Twigs, tree trunks, plastic bottles, oil containers, string all twisted up, edging the beach. People forage, dogs snuffle. I even saw two men with metal detectors. We could see them from the Prom. What are they going to find on the beach? he asks. We watch as one of them stops, rolling his detector in a circle around a particular spot, his spade in readiness in his other hand. His companion joins him, doing the same with his machine. Twats, he says, and we resume our walk.

We’ve bought a tiny bottle of Prosecco. I just want a taste. A taste on my tongue. A fizzing of something like celebration. A New Year. Will you join me?

Have a happy one. See you next year. 2016. I wish you peace.

Sunday’s are my making days. I sit in my studio, radio on and give form to my ideas. This morning someone is talking about an ash tree. He has felled one and intends to use every last bit of it. And he watches and relates as wheelwrights, wood-turners, toboggan and tool handle makers work their magic. His prose is gorgeous. He talks of the smell of the wood, smoky when cut, its colour, creamy and lists its ancient usefulness. I respond to such focussing-in on the detail of life. He talks about his bouts of depression and how he takes himself off to the woods when it strikes. There is such self-loathing, he is saying, that I cannot work. I need to find out his name. Read more of his work. I tell him of it during our afternoon walk. Was it Richard Mabey? he asks. No, I say, it wasn’t. I’ve read Mabey’s work and attended his talk during Bath Literature Festival. But they have much in common. Both writers of the natural world, both self-confessed depressives. Perhaps it is part and parcel of being sensitive, I muse. Yes, he says, it probably is.

In The Psychiatrist’s Chair, Professor Anthony Clare is describing his guest, Yehudi Menuhin as serene. Yes, Menuhin says, probably for I cannot tell you how happy my childhood was. I cannot tell you how happy. Do we not have words for it? For happiness? Tell us do. And later, days later, in The Listening Project, Syrian refugees converse. Much of it has to be translated. The translators voices are wooden, stilted. And yet, as I listen, a warmth, a humanity begins to come through. I forget, we forget, do we not, that they used to have lives like ours. There is a student, a male nurse, a housewife. One of them yearns to work for the UN. One of them cries over the loss of her home. They are as you and I. War has been done to them. Imposed upon them. They just want to go home. To go home to a home that once was home.

I have to think of a hungry dog, Jude is saying, shutting her eyes and pausing in her relentless showing of our merchandise to the blip, blip machine at the till. She has just told us that her mother is in hospital. It’s some kind of bacteria, she says, we all have it under our skin. It’s called something like streptococcus. That’s it, he says. I couldn’t enjoy my Christmas meal, she says, I was too worried. They’d gone to The Starling Cloud. We went last year and the meat was dry. So we booked for the earlier sitting this time. How was it? I asked. Awful, she said, resuming the conveying of food, we shan’t go again.

The local milkman drives a pick-up truck. He drives past me as I make my way home. The milk bottles, lodged in blue crates, rattle in the back.

I made a start. There is magic in the starting, Goethe said, or something like it. Five hundred words. It is a start. It is enough, for now.

We didn’t know it was a Bank Holiday. He calls me from town. Everything is shut. No wool, no hemp powder, no seaweed. Can it wait? he asks.

No rain today. The sky is still white. I walked in moonlight this morning. Is it beginning to get lighter? The Norwegians have a word for this time between Christmas and New Year, Alex Lester said, though I didn’t hear what it was. I just want everything to get back to normal, he says.

I hear him laughing. He is on the phone talking to a friend about another friend. He boxes and coxes with these visits, groaning. I wanna stay home with you, he says. I know, I say, I know.

I took them. I wasn’t sure whether I should. Tying them up with a white ribbon, I attached a little red label and wrote a small X. He was in the Promenade shelter, lying prone on the seat wrapped up in his sleeping bag, his face turned towards me. In the dark I couldn’t tell whether he was asleep or awake. I step forward tentatively leaving the little package on the ground beside him.

Boxing Day was traditionally a day about giving, she tells us. St Stephen’s Day. St Stephen stoned to death while he prayed for his enemies. A day for giving not spending. We fill the space, it is our compunction. So uncomfortable with the void. That black bag of Robert Bly’s. See how it has grown.

The wind had dropped. The air was mild. Lots of kids about. The Pier Pressure night club was just spilling out as I walked past. Cocooned. I am cocooned in my waterproofs and muffled against noise with my headphones. Ipod on shuffle. We will rock you, rock you, rock you, carol singing in my head as I pass the open door. We are on parallel planets. They whirl about in slow motion, shouting, barracking. Most are in t shirts, short skirts, heads spinning. One boy runs up the street in a wavy line, a girl hangs over the Promenade railing, her legs akimbo. Hello, a young lad says to me. Hello, I reply and keep on walking. The harbour is quiet, only the oystercatchers pip pipping. No wind. I walk fast, striding. Soldier, she’d said, soldier. Then up through the Castle gardens and down Great Darkgate Street. By now they’ve all pushed along Pier Street and stand in a mangled mess before me. Seems like hundreds, there maybe twenty or thirty. They make such a clamour. Sounds that are wordless. A kind of keening, a moaning, as they lollop about, falling as they walk. Some cling to each other, others lean against shop fronts. Their clothes are skimpy, bare-legged girls going blue. As I stride down the hill a girl follows me. She catches up, her stride matching mine. She carries a mobile phone in her hand. It is lit up, illuminated. Ah, she is mimicking me. She turns to catch the eye of her friends. I feel a frisson of irritation. Usually I am ignored. Usually I am invisible. Not now, not this morning. I keep walking. I remember a time in Covent Garden. The same thing happening. One has to succumb. You have been selected as the fool. So be it. Play it. Succumb to it. We reach the junction opposite Tesco Express. I cross and she turns left. Bye, she whispers.

I’ve never considered myself a bona fide author, says Agatha Christie. (They are playing some recordings of her on the radio.) My profession was a married woman, writing was a side-line.

Then it is Marguerite Patten’s turn. I am preparing supper and he has joined me upstairs. He kisses my cheek. I’ve always thought it rather odd to have cooking on the radio, he says, looking up at me from his paper. I like it, I say. And I do. Especially her. She is making dishes from the 1950s. He was a child then. Lemon Meringue Pie, Crepe Suzette and Steak Dianne. I remember my mother’s cookbooks with their monochrome photographic illustrations. They weren’t the luscious, coffee-table cookbooks of today. The print was small, utilitarian. My first was by Marguerite Patten. I felt so proud of it. It was useful, easy to follow. Calm. Like her. Like her voice, steady, cool as a marble rolling pin. I bought her book when I started studying Domestic Science at O level. It terrified me cooking under the eye of our DS teacher, Miss Macgregor. She was a giant of woman, a Scot. A mannish-looking woman, she wore glasses and thick American Tan stockings. Everything had to be just so. The kitchens spick and span. I could do that. I was always tidy. But the science of it all threw me. I cook with feeling not reason. Nevertheless, I learnt much. But how I wish we’d had Marguerite instead. A little less fear would’ve been good. Now and always. Yes. A resounding yes.

Now its Desmond Morris on Inheritance Tracks. His voice is not what I expected. Posh. Reserved. Polite. We married in 1952, he is saying. People ask me how our marriage has lasted so long. Separate bedrooms, I tell them, he says. Separate bedrooms.

For now the rain has ceased. Not so in Leeds, York, and other parts of North Yorkshire. My heart goes out to them. Here take it. May it make you dry. We have had floods before. We will recover. So too Australia and their bush fires. Two extremes. We will recover. Your suffering is mine. Here take it. My thoughts, my love.

I’ve gotten into the habit of doing it, of pouring anxiety into that space, that gap that is this holiday. My back tenses. The muscles grow rigid, immoveable. They feel like fashioned iron. Boxing Day. A nothing day, really. An anti-climax, Christmas gone. What else is there to say?

We had to shop. We needed fresh. The shelves were empty. Everything is topsy-turvy. Neither of us do well under such conditions. We like the tracks, the well-worn directions.

I sew, teaching myself cross-stitch. Idle hands. And I listen to Clive James talking to John Wilson. His father, a soldier in the Second World War, was taken prisoner by the Japanese. He died on his way home from being released. I had to be the man of the house, James said, I was scared stiff. I’m still scared. James is dying. I’m at the terminus, he says. He is open about it and without self-pity. He talks about his work. I wanted to be good so much that I didn’t enjoy anything. He lives in Cambridge. We would pass his house on our way into town. There was an Euan Uglow painting visible from the window. It was of a lemon.

We go for coffee. Is your name Mark? he asks. Mark is cheerful. Yes, he says. You may know me from the Post Office at the SPAR. I work here now, he says, collecting our empty cups. Everyone is cheerful. Sam and Emma have had good Christmas Days. Though Emma’s oven broke. We cooked the turkey the day before, she says, thank God, every thing else had to be mashed. On Christmas Eve all the staff dressed up. I love Christmas, Emma said. I’m going to dress up as a Christmas Tree. Sam had on a bowler hat and sequins stuck onto her face. Ta-da!, she said standing before us, her arms outstretched and looking like Liza Minelli in Cabaret, I’m Jack Frost. Toby was an elf.

Is it morbidity? This obsession, or let’s say curiosity, about death. Surely it would have an ia at the end, like other anxieties, he says. Maybe, I say. Morbidia? he suggests. I noticed it last night as we watched Call the Midwife. Sister Monica Joan was lying on a makeshift couch, nearing her end. I wanted to be her. I felt it. I wanted to be near my end. All that stuff sloughed off. That minutiae, that background noise of care and worry, that is really nothing at all. I wanted to be in a state of recognition, of paying attention to what is important. I wanted the focus of death. Of course, I have a romantic view of it. Was it Camile? Or Candide? Or the Lady of the Camelias? Lying on her chaise-longue looking ‘interesting’ in her state of near death from consumption. In reality there is pain, loss, fear. We cannot ever know how another truly feels. I watched my mother-in-law and my father, both twitching with it, their bodies not knowing how to be peaceful with the process, not, that is, until the very end. How can the living know? But how I seek it’s calm. That final succumbing.

She had her arms full. Five rolls of it. Wrapping paper with Seasons Greetings printed all over it. It’s Boxing Day. Is it a cost saving exercise? Stock up for next year? Her husband looked like a farmer. There was another man. Hi, he says, as we get into the car. How’s it going? I went to school with him, he says, shutting the door. The woman is small in stature. Her mouth is open staring at the two men talking. She grapples with the rolls of paper. Her mouth is open and in her bottom row she has only one tooth.

He stops the car and bounds out. Is a fiver OK do you think? he asks. He’s sitting in the doorway just beyond Smiths, a paper cup outstretched. He re-enters the car. I think he’s a bit drugged-up. Not that I can blame him, I’d do the same if I was sleeping on the streets. I think I saw him this morning sleeping in the shelter. I wish I’d brought the biscuits. I’ll take them tomorrow, wrapped in a red bow. Merry Christmas. Someone thinks of you. He always looks so sad, he says.

No sun today. The sky is a grey-white. A seagull flies high above the roofs, circling.

It’s all about words, James says, all about words.