As I age I find it is the small things that delight me more. Perhaps it is that I take more time to notice them, though to be honest as a child the minute and the minature always engaged me. I liked things that I could hold tight in my hand. Now it is the need to supply my desire for things to draw that prompts my collecting or buying or re-finding those little tiny knick-knacks, toys and tools. But it isn’t just small objects that give me pleasure, small events, happenings and sensations do it too. I like to walk into town early with the sun on my back and capture the smells that emanate from shops, cafes and gardens: there’s the salty stink of bacon that oozes from Spartacus Sandwich Shop, the buttery aroma of croissants from Cafe Nero and yesterday, as I walked along North Road, the sweet perfume of an old rose hanging over a garden wall that stopped me still.
It comes unbidden from watching something smaltzy from a box set. A nothingness kind of trigger that brings it all flooding out. I think the worst of it is I cannot find a space in me which likes her. There is love but it is the deep primal sort that is beyond thought, that remembers the smell of her being the same as mine. I cannot tell when it was that I first lost her. Did I ever have her? She has never asked me what happens. Perhaps that things people have told her, things that their silences have intimated, have been sufficient. Will we heal this? Do I want to return that carelessness of hers? I don’t know. Sometimes I don’t know anything at all.
She was quite animated on the phone yesterday afternoon. He makes her laugh and vice versa. They share a similar sense of humour. I listen to the two of them as I prepare supper, sometimes chipping in with questions but mostly I like to hear the two of them reminiscing or just getting closer, it is enough, that. She told us she went to Chair Ballet yesterday. Apparently there were a dozen or so there. Many fell asleep, as is there wont. The music was courtesy of Tchiakovsky’s Swan Lake and another ballet called Pineapple Poll, which I vaguely know about. Was it by Stravinsky? I ask her. It might have been, she says. She told us that they have to sit quite far apart so that when they wave their arms about they don’t whack someone in the face. The voice from the video isn’t an American one, but ‘a posh English one.’ This activity was followed by a meditation. There were images and sounds of the sea lapping, she said, adding, I thought it was a bit rubbish. I mean, who wants to be told when to relax? A no-nonsense woman, like her mother, there’s no queasy sentiment to her, it probably stands her in good stead if one looks at what her life has become. She has backbone. How I like her.
We often spend 5-10 minutes standing outside the coffee shop on the mornings we can go, waiting for it to open. A few regulars turn up and we chat. A few days ago N. told us about his Dad celebrating Burns Night reciting Burns’ poetry. “He likes poetry,” he said. The next day he asked: “What is anyone going to do about the fact that there aren’t any bakeries left in this town?” I mentioned Medina. “Yeh,” he said, “but they don’t do those soft white rolls, its all sourdough and stuff.” Then he mentioned the bake-it-at-home bread that you can buy from Tesco’s. Having dreamt about him the night before where I worried that he didn’t take good care of himself, it pleased me to hear that he cooked for himself.
Three days away from this blog and I am resorting to list-like mode, just so that I can note all the things I’ve seen in between, like the line of off-roader jeeps and full-bull-bar-juggernaut-type land rovers parked outside The Glengower the other day. Covered in mud, excepting the windscreens where the wipers had cleared an arc of glass, they looked like they hailed from The Netherlands. That same early morning a taxi was openly touting for business. He stopped in front of a group of noisy students calling out “Taxi?” before doing the same with me. Was he short? Was it in an effort to make a little bit more before he knocked off work and headed home? Is it in fact legal? There seemed to be a car-chase this morning. First a car drove past me beeping its horn in what appeared to be a rather challenging, if a little cheeky mode. This was closely followed by a police car and then another with its blue lights flashing. Where they went I don’t know?
While waiting outside the coffee shop yesterday the woman and her follower, which he refers to as Sancho Panza,tried the door. It’s closed, sweetie, I said. She smiled at me and stood there, clearly thrown. Now and again she’d whisper into her friend’s ear. When T. unlocked the door she barged through. Her amour stopped and gestured that I should go ahead of her. He said the other he thought she had OCD. He’s probably right and I endeavour to feel compassion. It’s not hard. Why else must she go in there, not buy anything, use the loo (together) and rearrange the furniture, several times in the morning? It is clearly a compulsion. G. the amiable plasterer called them ‘Aber Removals’. It was funny but it hurts to laugh at her or indeed them. They are just trying to live as best as they can. Like all of us.
Valerian is out in profusion, poking between railings in unkempt gardens and sprouting amongst the graves in the cemetry. I love such wild plenty.
Summer is coming. The Prom is showing visible signs of its onset. One of those huge deckchairs has been nailed to its pavement and the lifeguards’ huts have also been put in place. I’ve never seen them arrive, do they wheel them out there in the dead of night? And the students are beginning to migrate home. I saw one, or at least I heard the wheels of her suitcase first, scraping along the tarmac – a kind of chundering. Bless her, a stocky little thing, she was in tiny shorts and a t-shirt, and it was cold this morning. Coming down Penglais Hill from one of the campus accommodation blocks no doubt, her suitcase whirled about chaotically. Should I help her? I thought. I wobble about offering aid. It’s a selfishness on my part, I want to stay within, I don’t want to talk. I used to be the same when I’d see P. at his window smoking. My heart would fall, as no doubt his did. We both valued peace, silence, I think. May he rest in peace. He was kind.
She was sitting on the little wall outside the cyclist and mother of Ron/Reg the cat. Her hands were gripped over her stick and she was staring up at the sun. I said hello and commented on the loveliness of the weather. She looked up at me her eyes missing me, her head turned in slightly the wrong direction. I told her who I was, using his name as a way in. She remembered and asked about the drawing. I used to be rather alarmed by her. I’m not now. I touched her shoulder, her hair, as soft as a babes. Can I draw you again? I asked. Of course, she said, any time. I only wish I was more responsive, she said. Oh, you are, I said. You are perfect. And you are.
There’s a man who comes into the coffee shop he and I frequent who we call the tracksuit man. He’s always wearing them now that he’s retired from his job at The National Library. He wears the full kit, tracksuit, neatly tucked into the waist band, trainers and baseball cap. A sports enthusiast, his enthusiasm has one peculiarity, which is that all the players. and games he follows must all have some link, however tenuous, with Wales, and preferably Ceredigion. He brings books into the coffee shop, not just to read himself but to leave there. A kind of sports Gideon, he places them on the book shelf in the corner of the shop. They’re all in Welsh, and, as I’ve said about sport (though there are also some about local celebrities).
Town is littered with kids first thing. I think it’s exam time and the evenings and the early hours are clearly their wind-down time. They wander about in differing states of dress, the girls in shorts and mini-skirts and revealing as much flesh as is humanly possible while still remaining dressed. They look cold. One girl in a boob tube, tiny pelmet and ankle boots stood on the corner of Bridge Street talking to a friend. Another lad stood a little apart from the group, the hood of his hoodie over his head against the rain. He saw me and raised his right hand in a tiny gesture of hello. Hi, I said back. Most of the time I think I am invisible.
I saw him. He ‘d just left his house on Queens Road and was heading his way to the paper shop. I haven’t seen him for a few years now. He looked older, shrunken and curved around the shoulders. I hugged him. Love poured out of me. He smelt musty, tired and sad. He’d had a fall he told him over the phone later, black eyes and everything. He’s in his late eighties now and feeling it it seems. The former strength and dogged independence is waning. I want to draw him. Will he mind?
We walked together as is our wont on a Sunday. The sun came out. It was unexpected, and lovely. The steam train was just about to leave the station and we waited for it to come past, the vapour from its shiny engine billowing around our legs. I felt like a child filled with glee at being in the presence of something marvellous. A little girl with a hair band festooned with Union Jacks waved at us as the carriages trundled away. Turning down the path alongside the river I saw a Small Blue butterfly sunning itself on a leaf. Another marvel. I was filled up.
I finally got round to listening and watching Joan Halifax’s TED talk on Youtube. She is a rousing and spine-tingling speaker. Every so often she stops talking, places her hands in a position of prayer and raises them to her mouth. No doubt gathering her thoughts and perhaps praying for guidance. She talks about compassion as an active feeling, as an emotion that is not about pity or moral outrage but one that moves within us so as to heal. She quoted the Buddhist notion of a hard back and a soft front, of keeping your heart open to life, to others but remaining grounded, centred in oneself. I need to learn this. The suffering of others touches me deeply but I am of no use if I am weighed down or hobbled by their pain. I want to actively sit with it, witness it but still be able to be strong and vital so that I can offer clean, pure light-filled healing. She put it all so eloquently. I cannot. Help me to do some good, in whatever small way I can. Not as a stroke to my ego, but a genuine detached, non-self goodness.
The Carlton Cafe is to close. He read about it in the local paper. It is sad. He’s known the owner for a long time, from when she used to be a waitress in a restaurant he and his mother were fond of. She and her partner worked so hard to make the cafe nice. The food wasn’t wonderful but is was filling, and of the kind of fare that the sort of holidaymakers that come here wanted. The portions were generous, with plates piled high with chips, beans or roast potatoes. Milk shakes came in the tall, fluted glasses that I remember knickerbocker glories being served in as a child. Builder’s tea was delivered in little metal pots, and coffees were weak but milky. And there were the banquettes. You could look down on the high street below from them. And there were always help-yourself tins of hair and body spray and tubes of hand cream in the ladies loo. She cared, as did he. The lockdown, Brexit and the cost of living have all taken their toll. I shall miss it. And them.
