ellen bell

He seems to gravitate towards us or as with yesterday, me. I’m not sure why. I have no food for him and he doesn’t encroach too near, but stands, sometimes on one leg and watches me. As I watch him. He is a scraggy fledgling. There is some sort of a mange on the back of his head. Can he fly yet? He does stretch out his wings and preen but as yet I haven’t seen him take off. How and what does he eat? He doesn’t look distressed, doesn’t cry out. He appears merely resigned and watchful. The estate cats ignore him. He is too big for them, possibly. They tend to fight each other. Like yesterday, as I sat out reading. Heidi was roaming about in front of me. Do you remember Heidi, the kitten with the fly paper stuck to her back legs? She is a poppet though very shy. I can hear her approach for she has a bell around her neck. A jaunty sound. Yesterday afternoon she was in a playful mood chasing flies and butterflies, though unsuccessfully. At one point she jumped about a foot in the air after a cabbage white. She continued roaming about amongst the dead rape till one of the Kray Twins arrived (either Ronnie or Reggie, I can never tell) and ambushed her. They both rushed into the undergrowth, only to rush out again The Twin on Heidi’s tail, who dived under our car hissing. Good for her, I thought before banging on the car and shouting BE QUIET. There was no sun but it was good to be out in the air. It calms me.

Working on this proposal fires me up and the old point of tension has returned. I want to do it so much. But can I? Can I pull it off?

I passed an open window as I walked. Jazz music was playing and I heard voices. The same window was open when I returned. No jazz this time but the voices were louder. One in particular, a man’s voice. I can play chess, he said. Other voices, made raucous by intoxication, trying to inject. I don’t play chess well, he continued.

She seems happy. And I can only be glad. She makes the best and the most of life. She is vigorous, energetic and ambitious. I can but admire her. I see her in her too. I’m not sure that I have the same capacity for happiness. I am a quieter sort, more inward. Not always a good thing if happiness is one’s goal. Must it be so? I think peace is preferable. A steadier kind of experience, I think.

They are in the same hospital. I hope she persists as he told her to and gets to see him.

He got a text from his nephew telling him that her husband has also fallen and that he too is in hospital. I am sorry. They were such a happy pair. Everything seemed in place, settled, peaceful. How will they manage? I know it concerns him and he’s alert to bad news whenever his phone rings.

I listened to Amanda Vickery’s podcasts about the Old Bailey archives from the eighteenth century. I’ve heard some before but they are fascinating. Not least for the language – such as dollops (the men who used to smuggle contraband tea in their clothes and carry it to London) and silkworms (women who’d shop – a new craze then – and get the shopkeepers and haberdashers to unravel rolls and rolls of material and not buy any of it). I love the rich layers of such human history. Though the violence is a shock.

A misly day. I think of you all. All of you. My loves.

He managed to get through to his sister. The prognosis doesn’t sound good. Her voice is still slurred and though they sometimes ‘put’ her in a chair, it doesn’t seem like she can walk. My heart aches for her, I know her well enough to know that her kind of diffidence doesn’t suit a hospital ward, as mine wouldn’t. He wants to do something, anything, but he can’t. There is nothing to do but accept.

The rain came and the wind. And the sweet peas are still yielding.

I told him of my idea. I wasn’t sure at first. He is supportive and as encouraging as always. He believes in me. I do believe he does.

He just wandered over when we were sitting out reading (well I was, he was sitting with his eyes shut, his book on the ground). He (we called him a he, who knows really?) didn’t get too close, though when he went in and I was left alone he did inch nearer. He stood still a lot, just occasionally opening out a wing and stretching it out. I don’t know what he was waiting for, or why he choose to stand near us. Was it a need for company, or am I being sentimental? He had a patchy head – was it an infection or had the feathers just not grown yet? He looked forlorn but again perhaps I am attributing human characteristics when there are none. Maybe he had hopes for some food. Should we feed him? I threw him a few blackberries and he ate one but left the rest. Overhead two seagulls chased off a red kite, making a hell of a racket. Brave souls.

Town was quite this morning, though the sea was livelier. The moon was a slither, that’s all. Three youngsters came round the corner of the castle, laughing loudly. It jarred my peace. One of them, a girl in white-rimmed glasses and white ankle-socks smiled at me. That felt better.

I like this bit – this part of a project. The not quite beginning bit where you’ve made a start and everything is still possible and you haven’t yet exposed those germs of ideas to others’ scrutiny or indeed tried to shoe-horn them into the Arts Council’s funding criteria. Can I do it? I long for simple authenticity – to do what feels right. Can I pull it off?

They catch the light of the moon and that thrown by the street lamps and glitter. They are gewgaw stuff – bits of flotsam (tin cans, bottles, cellophane wrappers etc.) dropped, discarded or left on the beach, pavements and roads. Nevertheless, they glitter and, magpie-like, my eye is momentarily caught.

Were they bats that I saw swooping and swirling above the beach – black and fast?

The little child’s trainer is still there, impaled on a railing top along North Road.

I saw a jay just now. It came to the guttering about the Americans’ flat. Perhaps it intended to fly down and partake of one of their fat balls, but it didn’t. Instead it flew to an adjacent rooftop and perched there for a moment in all its grace and magnificence. An acquaintance once told me that seeing one was auspicious.

I wake to a greyness – a sinking feeling. I just need to let it be. To let that be the colour if it must be so. I use up so much energy trying to make what is something other. It is too much. There is nothing wrong. Just let it be.

Lots of people have said it, I’m not the first (in this or anything) but there is no real silence. There is always noise. I don’t mind. It is a confirmation of life. And even when the world out there is seemingly quiet my own body will groan or whine or creak. It is OK. When I walk there are screeching seagulls, piping oystercatchers, rolling waves and down by the harbour the hum of generators. I like it. It is a rhythm, the purr of time passing.

This town is shabby. It has always been so, at least in my memory. And the Belle Vue hotel is still to be renovated. There it stands, the place that we used to go when I visited him or his mother here, its windows glassless and doors boarded up. The fire, dreadful though it was, was years ago. Will it never be done up? There is no care there. We’d sit in the window and watch the sun go down. It’s in the middle of the Prom, a prime spot. Won’t someone do something about it? Or are we to stop caring?

It was the wrong direction – morning was rising from the wrong direction. Or was it something else? It was an eerie light. A light that looked wrong. Was it a fire? Was that smoke? I keep my nose trained – lifting it up to pick up that sharp rancidness. Were my eyes smarting? Or was it all a figment of my imagination? Perhaps morning had decided to rise in the West instead. It swirled around. I could see it caught under the streetlight. A mist. Not smoke but mist. It hung heavy until about 6.30 am when the sun from the East began to catch the eaves of the roofs on the houses beneath Cae Melin. It’s all gone now and the sun shines.

I sat out again yesterday afternoon, reading. What pleasure it gives me. I didn’t expect sun, but it came. As did a wasp. I’d used a body butter with Japanese Strawberries (whatever they are). Was the wasp smelling it or them? Was I sweet to him? Did he or she think me a flower, a bloom, ready to yield nectar. It hovered, it landed on my toe, my ankle and my calf. It came back a few times, hovered and landed again. I kept still. My childhood self was curious not frightened. It used to be. But not now. Would she approve?

He was told of her cancer. A young woman still. Her father would’ve been devastated. They are fond parents. I wish her well, though we barely know each other.

A bitty day today with odd jobs and ideas to get down. It must be done, else I am all cluttered inside.

I dreamt that someone was moving house. Was it us? I looked in through the windows of the new place. It was palatial but empty except for a lot of chairs, the old-fashioned kind, turned-wood and with curved backs. It’s an odd sensation looking through windows in a dream. It almost can’t happen, like looking in a mirror.

Speaking to the nurse yesterday, though brief, threw him. She isn’t improving. Not that she said that exactly, but that was the implication. They are not particularly close, but there is a connection between them, perhaps more than there is between his other siblings. I wonder. I don’t know her well, but I wonder if she isn’t just too tired with it all. Her back had become bent, she needed to use a frame to walk. What do I know, but I wonder if it all had become too much? The weight of him, of children, of grandchildren, life. I am sorry for her, truly. And hospital won’t suit her. She is diffident, self-contained. I wish her grace and kind nurses. Let it be what it has to be, but let there be no pain or humiliation. Will she recover?