Four lads were across the road from me just beginning to walk up Penglais Hill. I’d heard them before I turned the corner into Northgate Terrace. One of them was making a kind of high-pitched keening noise. It was possibly the same one who shouted out to me: ‘No walking sticks after 12pm.’ His friends laughed and I ignored it. (I’ve been using a stick as a ‘safety net’ against the annoying stiffness in my hips – sometimes they just seize up.) He continued. ‘It’s not acceptable, darlink.’ His mates loved this and laughed even louder. I let it go. He thought it was funny too when I told him about it on waking. Perhaps I have no sense of humour. I’d just rather they didn’t talk to me at all. It is my quiet time, my inward time, my communion with the terrible dark.
It was the same yesterday when I was drawing down by the harbour. ‘Are you writing verse or drawing?’ I heard a voice say. (I’d been concentrating so fiercely I hadn’t noticed a man and his wife approach.) He came behind me and peered at my sketchbook. ‘Ah, drawing,’ he said, and then continued to fire questions at me. Are you a professional, do you sell? I didn’t want to talk. I wanted to draw and was uncommunicative. He didn’t seem to mind and she joined in as well telling me how she’d just drawn their boat and that she dabbled, wasn’t any good but it was fun. In the end their enthusiasm, meeting no match in me, dried up. And we said our goodbyes. And then I felt bad. I hadn’t friendly or warm.
I’m trying to improve. The decisions I make are often bad ones. I want to concentrate. I need to. I asked him at breakfast if he knew anyone who would sit for me. He didn’t, and seem to think it would be too much to ask. What would they get out of it? He is right. Nothing. I wouldn’t even want to show them the work.
Keep going. Just keep going. It will become clear.
Language is better, said Will Ladislaw.
By the way, did you see the moon this morning. It was huge.
