We have an old friend, well he is his strictly but we met through him and his then wife and he was kind to me during those early days, anyway he began a course of chemotherapy yesterday. I have thought of him often recently. He has lived well, embracing all that it had to offer with enthusiasm and courage, I think. As he is doing now, or appears to be via his text messages. I think of the poison filling his veins. I hope it kills the cancer with it its kindness.
She left three messages via the blog portal. They were kind. She’d taken the trouble to think of me and my drawings and respond encouragingly. The kindness of strangers is a constant source of wonder to me.
I wake with it. I think I always have. There have been brief escapes, such as when I thought I was in love, in lust, or when I was on holiday and I’d wake full of the joy of irresponsible adventure, but they are few and far between these days for I know more. And yet, there is trust, there is an awareness of deep, deep goodness and there is joy but the overriding sensation of life for me is fear. Is it so bad?
I can’t quite remember the words but I think the theme song to Cheers starts (or ends) with a sentence something like ‘a place where everyone knows your name’. The coffee shop where I go to draw (and he to read and drink coffee) has become rather like that. Not that everyone shouts out ‘Norm’ as they do when the postman comes into the Cheers bar, but it’s not dissimilar in that names are shared. And I, sitting in my corner, know them now too, though I tend to lend people my own pseudonyms so as to protect their identity. I like to be there. It is a place of challenge and pleasure for me. The bustle helps me to focus. There is energy and life and humour. I like getting to know the faces, their familiar chat, the places that they chose to sit and the drinks they favour. And when they don’t come in, such as the man who services fire extinguishers or the genealogist, I start to fret about them. But most of all I love to draw there. I am safe in my corner, and so far no one (apart from the man who runs the cider bar saying the other day ‘I’ll sit here so that you can get my best side’) really makes any reference to it or asks me to stop (though some do turn their backs to me, fair enough, I say). I miss being there on a Monday where emails have to be faced and admin done. Heigh ho.
Let them find a way to end the threat of invasion. Have we learnt nothing?
There are the precious moments, the ones in which we stop and look and pay attention. I knew that there were a pair for I’d seen their young of the last year feeding from the bird feeders on our neighbours balcony. And suddenly there was one then the other bathing in the big puddle that gathers in the wasteland (for want of a better word) beneath my bedroom window. They are such magnificent birds, plump, robust and with those glorious flashes of blue and white on their wings. We stood together at my window watching them dip and then throw the water over their bodies. He was as delighted as I was. Thank you, he said.
There has been so much clattering and banging and disrupting, both at home and at the coffee shop where I seem to be doing a kind of drawing residency. We’d leave our precious home to the mercy of either a decorator or a carpet fitter only to find that our table in the café was also under siege and taped off (they’ve also got the painters in, refurbishing it while it remains open). It dislodges me. I feel capsized. And then there is all the other swirling inside over my project. And now the man in the sports jacket has just emailed to suggest that I don’t give up on the digital element. Can’t he see that I don’t want it, that what I want is to be authentic? Anyway, back to the decorators. Our table was lost to us, you know the one in the corner where I can draw without attracting too much attention. So we had to sit in the next one along and immediately some shopfitters started to make comments. Don’t stand still too long, one said to his mate, or you’ll find yourself being drawn. They both turn to stare at me. Well, she’ll have to have a big pad to draw me, says his friend with the bald head and rotund belly. A4 at least, he added, clearly racking his brains to remember a particular size of paper. The decorators, who I was trying to capture as they pushed their rollers attached to poles along the ceiling, also stared. Are you drawing me? one asked eventually. I said I was but tried to diminish its significance by saying I was only practicing. I wondered why you kept looking at me, he said. Oh it was all too exposing and yet that is what I’ve decided to offer up. Am I mad? I tried to make a joke by shouting over to him that perhaps it was his ‘strange and unnatural beauty’ that made me look at him. He laughed and said, I don’t think so. And completely missed the Molesworth reference.
What can I say about him? I wanted to like him, or at least feel some human warmth. He was a challenge. Perhaps he found us to be so also. I made coffee, offered water. What was it about him? He was taciturn, unfriendly, and careless of our home. That was it mostly, that lack of care. And how I wanted him done and gone. It took so long. Too long. And then there was the phone call mid way. It is all about how one manages things, people, events, isn’t it? And even now my gut churns about whether I ought to do something or not. And now she wants to come and see the work. Ok, fair enough, then can we have some peace?
They felt and sounded like she’d put sparklers in my ears. I smelt the burning and then heard the fizzing and crackling. It was strangely restful. She makes me feel calm. We talk nonsense. We talk about light things and I am made calm, emptied out of me.
Our near neighbours in the maisonette just across the shared balcony from us are back. We call them ‘The Americans’. Apparently they live somewhere on the West Coast. They are a gentle couple, white-haired, softly spoken, diminutive and round of body. I like them, though we have rarely engaged in conversation. We have been filling their bird feeders while they were away (something to do with visas expiring). We met her in the hallway over the weekend and welcomed her back. She informed us that they have returned on a tourist visa and are able to stay for 6 months. She’s studying for a PhD in Celtic Studies but her student visa ran out. It is so complicated. Obviously there have to be some kind of controls but can’t this border thing be a little more fluid? They are good people who love being here. I haven’t seen him yet and the bird feeders are yet to be re-filled (we, no I should say he, bought lots of fat balls that will no longer be necessary) perhaps he is recovering from the jet lag. Perhaps dormouse like he is still in semi-hibernation (he has a look of one certainly, and is rather somnolent in appearance, and dishevelled as if he has just left his bed). He is the one I have seen pottering amongst the array of pots they have on their balcony. I hope he comes out soon.
The carpet and the phone call are today.
I walked my usual walk yesterday and it took 10 minutes longer than usual. My hips feel like rusted metal.
Just one more disruption to our household to come (for now). The carpet man is due tomorrow. He comes with a new stair carpet to replace the grotty old one that was such a mess to remove and that I have always struggled to get clean. I have a thing about carpets and to be honest if it wasn’t for the huge gaps in the risers that let in all sorts of cold air and the fact that most of the steps are cobbled together MDF, I’d be quite happy to leave them as they are, denuded. Besides I have grown used the sound of his slippers on the bare boards. It will be weird to hear them muffled. But as they say you have to be careful what you ask for, don’t you? And I accept that he will be here tomorrow (we hope) bashing and crashing about until the brand new soft grey thing is installed. And I have cleaned and cleaned only to have to do it again. So be it, eh?
I didn’t tell you of the MRI scan I had last week, did I? It was sandwiched between so much chaos that I almost forgot. I was booked in for what is for me an ungodly hour, 6.30 pm. I hate to go out in the dark (and since I have ceased to walk in the early hours for the meantime the dark is even more of a big deal). But as the doctor had gone to so much trouble (at my instigation) to push it through I had to acquiesce if only to get it over with. The hospital was ghostly. No one was about except for a few cleaners who poked their heads out of various consulting rooms at our arrival. One very warm one took us to the new MRI room. It’s a brand spanking new one, she said, meaning the scanner not the room, I think. A green button was pressed and another nice woman let us in and told us to sit and wait. Then M. arrived all jokey and smiling and loud. He had to stay behind and I was whisked off to an ante room where M. fired off a series of questions without taking breath. No, no, no, I answered to them all. My coat was removed, my mask changed (I want you to wear this one) and then I was led into the scanning chamber. Boots off, please, said M. I wanted to ask why I seemed about to go into it whole when they were only meant to be looking at my pelvis but his brusque joviality seemed to brush off all my attempts at questioning though I did ask for a blanket. Anything else? he asked as he tucked me in. A teddy bear and a hot water bottle would be nice, I said. And he did laugh, though I suspect he was used to being in charge of the jokes. I think you are beginning to understand me, he said. I noticed that his wedding ring was bronze and his fingernails showed no white. This will take about an hour, he said as I lay down and the machine swallowed me in. There was nothing I could do but accept it. The panic did come as I knew it would. Can I breathe, will I scream, will I ever get out, is it too close to my face, will they forget me? where the questions that initially besieged me but I closed my eyes and tried to slow my breathing. I think I even slept in between the clanging and the knocking and the juddering and the banging that that unearthly machine made. The next thing I remember I was been wheeled out and helped off the rack by another medic. It usually takes 2 weeks before we let you know the results, he said but in your case it will be 2-3 days. Why? I wanted to ask but didn’t. Was the doctor’s letter so persuasive?
I don’t know what to do, I never have. I just try to do what feels right. I asked her and initially she was hesitant but then warmed up to the idea. Have I done the right thing? A regular income would be nice but can I do it, do I have the physical strength and how will still be able to do all the other stuff that he and I expect me to do? And then there is this resubmission. The project changes as he and I talk about it. I like the changes but will the galleries and indeed the ACW? I talk to the man in the sports jacket tomorrow. So we shall see. Shan’t we?
She’s drawing you, said his wife inclining her head at me. He turned to look at me and then turned away. Let her, he said.
There are no shoulds, he says to me, time and time again. And I know this, or at least I want to know this but the feeling that there is something I ought to be doing has such a power over me. I have learnt my lesson well.
The discomfort, that inner fighting has eased a little – a combination of literally getting my house in order and tea and beginning to detach myself from the problem a little and allowing other ideas to filter in. And with it comes less physical stress epitomised by waking with a headache and indigestion in the middle of the night. I didn’t last night for the first time in a week.
I am scared of him. I am not sure why. He represents power, he is one of those panel members who I see in my mind’s eye judging me, always judging me and finding me wanting. I have invented this jury and I carry them around with me. And he is now a firm member, he in his tweed sports jacket and brooch. I want to do this my way. Is that allowed? I want to be truthful, to keep it small, manageable, containable but brave too. And then there is the other fantasy of a small job that would pay my way and leave me free to allow myself to create the rest of the time. Could this be? Have I the energy to do it? It is a warm environment. I might be happy there. Oh, how to live. I have never known this.
Is my agitation about them real? Or am I remembering hers? It was virtually empty when we arrived. And the receptionist, though a trifle offhand allowed him to stay (regardless of all the notices saying that outpatients should be unaccompanied) with the proviso that if the radiologist said he had to leave he must. In the end he wasn’t able to come in with me. The radiographer was apologetic pointing at the sign saying that only 3 people were permitted. The number three was in red. He was a nice man with a tall, rangy body. Every patch of bare skin was tattooed, including his shaven head. But his kindness and compassion was evident in the way he treated the elderly lady they wheeled out prior to my going in. She looked so frail, though her body was not insubstantial. Her skin, though pale, was bruised. It is a place of pain, sickness and dying. I felt the heaviness of it. The room was clean and neat. I lay on the bed and revealed my stomach in readiness for the cold wetness of the gel, and stared up at the muted ceiling light. I instantly forgot the doctor’s name, though the radiographer introduced him to me. He was colder than the other man and gave little away other than to ask if I had arthritis in my hips or if I’d ever had an MRI to look at them. I wasn’t expecting that. Shit, I thought, is that the issue? No, I said, to both questions. Nice coat, said that radiographer as I got dressed. They cost about £800 in this country, he said. Yes, I said, I bought it in Norway and it was like taking out a second mortgage. Another pee and then we went home. We walked later and sat where I’d sat the day before and looked out at the sea.
She was waiting outside the coffee shop when we arrived. Another early bird, she said, what gets you up so early? She was of late middle-age, well dressed and well-coiffured and a stranger. We struck up a conversation while we waited for someone to open up. She’d be visiting the town and had stayed the night before in a B&B on the Prom. She’d not been impressed. The walls were thin, she said, and the mattress was lumpy and I could hear a couple in the next room arguing, coughing and then he began snoring. I think he was quite drunk. We talked of other places that she could stay. The Premier Inn was too expensive she thought and she really wanted to stay somewhere with a sea view. We asked what brought her here and she said that she’d been given respite. My husband is quite frail, she said. I thought about her as I drew her (she sat at the little table ahead of ours and read her phone). She was self-contained and elegant, of strong mind I think. That’s how it will be for you in a few years, he said. Perhaps, I said.
Another Monday and he is due soon. I’ve emptied my bedroom and bathroom the discombobulation of last week returns with a vengeance. It isn’t for long, he says. No, and there are so many more important things going on in the world for me to make such a meal of this minor inconvenience. For it is that, minor. So be it. I accept.
