ellen bell

Would most put my curiosity about how other people live their lives down to nosiness? I hope not. I believe it comes from a place of interest but also of compassion. I walked along North Road and down to the Bar this morning and thankfully it didn’t rain. The air smelt good and it was nice to both feel and hear the breeze as it rustled the leaves along the roads and pavements. Trudging up the hill behind Alexandra Hall I heard two voices. ‘I’ve a lecture at nine,’ one was saying, ‘then a seminar at ten….’ I didn’t catch the rest. It was then about 4.30 am, when will they get any sleep? I thought. And then coming back on North Road I saw the student I’ve seen before in the top room of the house at the crest of Vaynor Street. He had his headphones on again and was hunched over his computer. What is he studying? I wondered, trying to get some clues from the images pinned above his desk, but they were too far away to decipher. Bless him, bless them all, so young and with so my life to work through. As have I, still. Go to it then.

I went prepared for rain. It was a 75% chance when I left home. I had two layers of waterproof trousers but nothing else under my waterproof jacket. My skin can cope with a drenching, my clothes take longer to dry. But after all that planning, including gaiters over my boots, it was dry. So be it. My hips jarred painfully all the way there to the harbour and all the way back. I walk with a distinct hobble now. Not a good look, as they say. Two kids in their early twenties where attempting to climb over a short wall near where we used to live. I saw them as I limped down Llanbadarn Road. He got over all right, but the girl, a large pizza takeaway box under her arm, took a little long. She had shorts on and a black leather Donny Osmond hat.

The weekend-father, who we’ve named smoker (2) on account of smoker (1) aka the lecturer/PhD student having left the estate, wakes early. We can see him from our upstairs window having a cigarette through the window of his bedroom. His bed is all black; black sheets, black head board. He keeps his clothes airer out all the time. I saw him sitting on his bed this morning, chest bare. I feel for him. There is a loneliness to him. Or am I just imagining it. In his kitchen downstairs he has a row of neon lights that shine through the venetian blind.

So much work to do. But I look forward to spending the day with her voice.

It didn’t rain this morning as I walked. A rare thing on these autumn mornings. And there was hardly any wind either. It was nice. And my hips weren’t so stiff so I walked fast. The pavements are strewn with wet leaves but the air smelt fresh and clean. There was nobody about except for a man running with a body torch strapped to his chest. He ran towards me making for Constitution Hill and I dodged to avoid him. Sorry, he said, sorry, I said. I have to lift each of my legs to kick the bar. Oh, well, at least I can still do it.

I like to see the lighted windows. Like a Hopper painting, the yellow light rings out in the black dark. It’s comforting and I like to think and the non-sleepers in those rooms working or reading or dozing or worrying.

I’ve much to do and my body responds but tightening and creaking. Poor love. There will be rest soon. I promise.

Our neighbour downstairs had a fall. She is nearly a hundred and four, as I think I have said. She fell in the night and the carers found her in bed (she’d managed to get herself back into bed amazingly enough) blood everywhere. A nurse came and organised for her to go to A&E to be checked out. Apparently she wasn’t happy when the ambulance men came for her on account of being still in the middle of her breakfast. They kept her in all day. When is the car coming for me to take me home? she’d ask repeatedly. When she was finally delivered home he went down to see her and heard her on the phone to one of her sons saying, “They kept me there for hours though they did feed me. I had a very nice pudding.” She’s survived to see another day (I wonder if she cares either way), though her head is still sore. A remarkable woman.

He calls another remarkable woman every afternoon while I make our supper. She lost her husband and had a stroke within the same year. She’s in a home now and gives a daily run of life in that ‘benign prison.’ She went to a quiz last Friday. Not naturally gregarious, she felt she ought to ‘show willing’. “It was awful, “she said, “all the questions were scientific. A room full of oldies getting tipsy on Proscetto. I hate Proscetto.”

He was there waiting when we arrived at the coffee shop last Friday. He told me of his music video that he’d made. He’d been there, waiting outside the shop for hours, well before it opened. “I’m on medication, ” he said, “I wake early and have to get out cos I can’t stand my own company.” I feel his sadness, and his, and hers, and hers…………..

Two very intense days. But how marvellous they were (in the end and somewhat in retrospect). I managed not to lose it too often. I get ragged with tiredness. But I am so grateful for the opportunity. He accuses me of being obsessed with drawing. Yes, I say, I am.

I always anticipate ‘5’ (a numerology thing) days with some trepidation and yesterday was one of them. I try not to make it happen (but perhaps I do subconsciously) but they make me fractious. And I did indeed behave like a real crosspatch, even going so far as to snap at the lovely ex-nurse who wanted to show me pictures of her granddaughter’s album of made-up faces on her phone when I was in the middle of making a drawing. I’m drawing, I said, but she didn’t get it, why should she? I did my best to make it up to her afterwards. Did I do alright? I asked him. You did it brilliantly, he said. It’s rather a surreal thing what with me doing my drawing (real work as far as I am concerned) and the rest, like the ex-nurse and the ex-butcher and the ex-headmaster, all gathering together around a table to drink coffee and chat about how best to keep carrots in the fridge. Then there was the discussion about the Mona Lisa. No, he said, it was The Sunflowers that was attacked not the Mona Lisa, that’s in The Louvre. She had no idea what he was talking about. She meant the shop called Mona Lisa on Great Darkgate St., they were all agog with it, apparently two lads went in there with a knife. And then the ex-headmaster started talking about ‘The King’. No, it wasn’t Charles but D. K. the local thug from way back. He’s in a wheelchair now (last seen being pushed across a busy road by D. Spot). All this while the hover around us waiting to nab our table when we go.

In his note this morning (purported to be from John Kettley the Kettler) he wrote of 40 mile an hour winds. Nope, wrong again. I’d say it was about 20 but things still rattled as a walked by, and leaves danced along the road and rustled on the trees. A garden gate on Llanbadarn Road bashed repeatedly against its latch. I saw a student working at his computer in a top floor flat along North Road, his headphones planted firmly over his ears.

I thought about the two of us bathing her all those years ago. It was an act of love and compassion.

I’m not good with chaos, either external or internal. I suppose most people aren’t, though some appear to thrive. Oh, this eternal need for order and yet I know deep down that there is no such thing. The day has only just begun and I am already tired what with cleaning, washing and setting our home in order. And now I must make something of the article I began yesterday – a mere jumble of words it seemed to me when I left it last night. Oh, and I how I miss drawing…..

A busy few days, full of inexpert and anxious juggling. I stole 15 minutes though to sit in the sun. And what a gift it was. I bared my skin to it, raised my face and closed my eyes. I heard bird song, distant traffic, a chainsaw and a gaggle of school children coming down the back lane from swimming. My heart slowed. It was glorious.

We went to visit her in her ‘benign prison’. Her walking is improving, she is determined that it should be so. She looks more aged when she stands. He is not keen on her hair being so long. Strands of it catch on her cardigan. I watch her feet in those peep-toe shoes as she walks. She has much grace. A feminine woman, I think. We talked as I drew her. She told us how many of the inmates use Alexa to turn on their music and so on. The woman in the room next to hers loves The Sound of Music soundtrack apparently and asked Alexa to put it on. She did so but so did all the others inmates’ Alexas and soon her corridor was filled with it. She groaned, I hate The Sound of Music, she said.

He was outside the coffee shop as usual, looking furtive under his hoodie. He told us of a cat that sometimes comes to greet him and sometimes doesn’t. I asked him if he had a pet and then went on to list the ones he’d had as a child including rabbits, hamsters, stick insects and snails. He fancies getting a polecat. You can walk them, he said. We talked of foxes. I told him how I’d seen two in Aber. I love his brightness when it shines, as it does, now and again.

We put the heating on last night for a delicious half and hour. It felt dangerous. But the smell of the warming dust from the radiators was so comforting.

He came to visit her at the weekend. Finally. She looks better for it, not so blown through.

It was a quiet night-time-into-morning as a I walked, the wind was a slight buffeter that was all. I saw two elderly men as I wended my hobbledehoy way. The first was by one of the bins on South Marine. He was emptying something into it and was still in his dressing gown but also wearing a woolly hat. The other was coming towards me along the Prom. He had no coat on. We nodded at each other.

We sometimes stand by the coffee shop door with him as we wait for it to open. He reveals more and more about his life. He’s been in prison twelve times. He told us about The Parc prison in Cardiff. There were several inmates there who used to wait outside my cell waiting to beat me up, he said. I used to just stay in my cell. My heart bleeds. He is clean now. And supported by a host of support workers who meet him in the café for coffee and counselling.

We are going to see her tomorrow. She’s started chair ballet again. How many were there with you? he asked her during one of his nightly phone calls. Three, she replied, though one man was there by mistake. He thought he was going in there to watch Only Fools and Horses.

She is losing weight, my sister told me. She’s having tests. Is she depressed? I asked. I don’t know, she said, but they only seem to be eating salads.

So much sadness. Our hearts will break.