ellen bell

I refer to them as kids when I tell him of the ones I see roaming about town at 3.30 am. They’re not kids they’re adults, but they seem young to me in their recklessness, their drunkenness and their noise. This morning was no exception, in fact they were more present than ever. Most are visitors, I think. They talk loudly, seemingly unaware of the sleepers in the houses and flats that they walk past. At the end of Mill Street where it joins Bridge Street a group of maybe 10 or 12 lads had gathered. I felt the threat of them. Was there going to be a fight? I heard one Birmingham accent and another lad (all were white) called another ‘bro’. There was much posturing, a bigging-up of shoulders. They made a square then a circle. It was like a dance or a choreography from West Side Story. There was even a kind of uniform – all wore dark colours, mostly black, with t shirt sleeves rolled up. Neat, taut and aggressive. Nothing happened. There was a peace-keeper in their midst. M was sitting in his stockinged feet outside the block of flats watching them. I no longer greet him. There is no point he looks straight through me. Bless him. A troubled man, I think.

Some days I wake and I do not know what or who I am. It lingers. All I can do then is focus on details. The floors are now mopped. And the sun comes.

The Podcast Radio Hour on Radio 4 Extra featured John Holmes who has produced a podcast called The Skewer. It involves a marvellous sophisticated ‘mish-mash’ of sounds and sensations. It made me think about how I love collage. I love bits of things – the way they burst images in my head. I feel the same way about text. In my seeking of first pages of novels I read those of Dante’s Divine Comedy, Marquez’s A Hundred Years of Solitude and Ovid Metamorphosis. Each caught me, whether it be by a word or a sentence. I need to delve me but the tastes were good.

A crane fly has been caught in a spider’s web in the corner of our big window. My heart bleeds for him.

I listened to a programme about William Carlos Williams the poet yesterday as I worked. I’d intended to listen to it for a while now. I’m glad that I did. ‘The local is always universal’, he said, meaning that as an immigrant he paid attention, noticed the detail of his American life and valued it. A doctor and poet, both of which he considered full-time jobs, he observed things. Things struck him. Like the red wheelbarrow or the number 5 on the fire truck. It was poetry that ‘just named things’, there was no narrative, no presence. It was about ‘thingness’. I love it. Everything pared down.

I saw the Chinese girl yesterday. I was doing my yoga by the big window and saw her come out of her front door below and re-hang some clothes she’d put on an airer. It was 11.00 am and she was still in her pyjamas and dressing gown and slippers. She made me think of an animal rising from hibernation or a nocturnal one like a badger or something that lives underground like a mole. Her eyes blinked in the light. Is she lonely?

The signage on the Pier is relatively new but I hadn’t noticed that sentence before. It was underneath all the usual bumph about it being the best views of Cardigan Bay, and an unrivalled sun deck and so on. What did or do they mean by ‘competitive socialising’? Do they stage games? Is it a kind of ‘blind date’ scenario like the one that is often on the TV when we switch to DVD mode? Or do they mean that the views, the milieu or the environment is competitive? God knows.

The moon was huge and round again this morning, though my wee camera cannot do it justice. It was too dark. The light cannot be captured but it lives in my memory. How I love to walk in the early mornings at this time of the year. The sun is going to shine today. Yippeee! I shall sit out and read my P&P.

I had my second jab yesterday. It was efficient as ever. The man in front of me had a large bruise on his arm. Was it from the last jab? Everyone is warm there – I felt held and cared for. We were a motley crew – were they all my age? I am appreciative that we have such things and for free. We are a fortunate race. And now we have the sun. Work first. No, tea first, then work.

I think the programme was a repeat and I believe that I’d heard it before but I still listened with attention. John Lloyd hosted it, explaining how he and Douglas Adams had been flatmates and close friends, even writing partners. Adams’ struggles with the writing process was the main gist of the piece. And how he struggled – spending a year on the first paragraph, as Lloyd said, many times.

Does it help to hear such stories? I do not place myself in his league (though I am not a fan of his genre I can appreciate it’s wit and newness). But whether a genius or a tryer – learning how to deal with the process is the same. The fears are the same. As are the internal pressures. For me it is the discovery that actually I am talentless, a fake, an artist/writer manqué. One could say so what, if that is the case? And that all I have to do is remove the audience, the panel of judges and do it for myself.

But they never truly disappear, do they?

The moon is surely full now. And still so huge. A wonder.

I am out of sync with whether it is a full or new moon. Is it now? It was huge this morning. It made me think, as I walked, of the song sung by Dean Martin where he likens the moon to a ‘big pizza pie’. I couldn’t see it’s full glory there were too many clouds. Nevertheless it was magnificent. What did our ancestors used to make of it? The wind blows strong. I could’ve walked more but it tired me pushing against it. I wasn’t the only wanderer. I saw the Sikh gentleman too. At one point he crossed the road, a large torch in his hand, heading straight towards me. I wobbled then, what about keeping an appropriate distance? He seemed oblivious – so intent was he on maintaining his pace. He never smiles. Perhaps he doesn’t see me. What has brought him here? Work? Family?

I slept a little better though I am still wakeful and now, as a consequence tired. I long for a holiday where I give myself permission to rest. The commission is begun. Onwards.

I often think about my own death as I walk. It isn’t morbidity but a wish to put it all into perspective, to examine my own littleness, and likewise the littleness of my problems, pains and fears. I go into detail – what my body will look like, whether I will float above it looking down and how long the memory of me will survive in the minds of those I have known. I hope it won’t be for long. I don’t want to be held here. I’d like to think I would soon be a nothing. It helps somewhat though as soon as I get home I am assailed once more by details.

He advocated the management of breath. Count 4 on the in breath and 6 on the out. I tried it last night when I couldn’t sleep for this nausea that has taken over. It is a low-level discomfort but it niggles. And the rain keeps on coming. Where is Spring?

Most of the gardens along the end of Llanbadarn Road are a trifle unkempt. The majority are student houses and tending the front gardens are clearly the least of their concerns. Sandwiched between two of these said houses is ER’s house where the garden, far from a neat and tidy bodge one is a profusion of interesting blooms, including a magnolia tree. However, just up from hers is a student house with a wealth of Michaelmas daisies that are just flowering. How lovely they look, left to their own devices to just bloom. The house at the very end, the old bakery has had its yearly crop of huge red poppies that are now, sadly ‘going over’ as my mother-in-law used to say. Their petals always remind me of crepe paper.

It was a word I’d never heard before. They said it on Radio 4 Extra Podcast hour, using it in a way and without explanation, the assumption being, clearly, that most people would know it. I didn’t and nor did he. He looked it up for me on his iPad. It’s something to do with assuming a fake online identity for nefarious means. Does it relate to cats? Or to catfish? Perhaps the latter – aping their habit of skulking along the sea bed (or aquarium). It’s an evocative word, nevertheless.

Ah, Jane Austen. I joined the course seeking something particular, though what that really was I am not so sure – confidence, a deeper awareness of her language so that I could mimic it in my short story – either way I’m finding something else. I like this delving. I like this uncovering. Her brilliance is evident. And my growing knowledge of it may in fact close me down entirely, that is as far as my fiction-writing is concerned. I don’t know. I don’t know anything except the pleasure I get from learning.

Hoovered (or should I say Dyson-ed) the kitchen floor and mopped, it is enough for my beleaguered arm. I have studying to do today. Tea for me and coffee for him first.

It is trying to clear up out there but the clouds still look ominous.

Don’t go, he said as I lay in the bath, you can give it a miss for one day. But I did. Admittedly, it was wild and wet and windy – but it is never as bad as it looks from the other side of the window. I need to face my fears and a wind storm in the dark is frightening. And I was OK out in it till I was almost home and a gust caught me unawares nearly taking me off my feet. I swear then. But the air does smell good, and different. I could smell wood smoke. Perhaps it will clear the bird shit from the window upstairs, he said. I doubt it, I said. I slept better. With a cushion strategically placed under my elbow and my arm laid across my chest, I didn’t seem to get the throbbing and aching pain that I have been getting these last three weeks. Will it heal soon? It will be a month tomorrow since I fell. Time has passed and the sky hasn’t fallen in. Onwards, as I always say. There is work to be done.