He was in the middle of the road. I couldn’t be sure if he was alive or dead. He wasn’t crushed but lay on his belly his legs splayed out behind him as he was going to spring up at any moment. He didn’t. One of his eyes was swollen and red. Perhaps it was a frog not a toad. I’m not sure that I know the difference. I don’t think I could’ve brought myself to pick him up. Maybe it was a toy. The half-light of early morning plays tricks on my eyes.
I want to help her but it is tricky, and I’m not sure that she wants it. He says leave her be. I just don’t know. I never have.
It was very distinct. I smelt it as I walked down Great Darkgate Street. And it wasn’t the smell of porridge but that of Ready Brek. We were given it as children for breakfast in the winter. I used to sprinkle a layer of sugar on the top and wait for it to melt and then dip my spoon in. The layer of sweetness against the cloying stickiness of the milled oats was yum. And I’d think of the advert on the bus to school, the one were the child’s stomach is radiating red heat after eating some. Where had the smell come from? Such a comfort. There was no stink of TCP along Northgate Street this morning. A man sat in his car outside Costa Coffee, his window was open and the radio was on. He was slumped in the driver’s seat and he stared at me as I walked past. It was 4 am. And the light is still flickering in the doorway of the flats on North Parade.
They are closing the zoo. The owners are bankrupt. The lions are to be re-housed elsewhere, what of the rest? It was always a sad place. Most zoos are, though I have always loved drawing in them. They were doing their best, most of the animals were rescued. And then that thing happened over the puma – was it a puma that escaped? They never really recovered. I am sorry for them.
I began it – I made a start on the new beginning. And there was some pleasure in it. I like to write about her, to have her in my head. That way I make her a little bit mine.
Apparently they have never got on. I don’t know why. Is it always the fault of the parenting? Who knows? The funeral is over and the fighting returns. They’ve his flat to clear out and all those things to divide or scrap over. One of them calls him. I can hear her weeping all the way upstairs. He doesn’t want to take sides, is fond of them both. He has always been this substitute Dad – a kind face, a good listener, gentle and funny. He gave all his friends’ children his time. And they remember him for it.
The flowers were still there by the bar, in tact. I wish them peace and an acceptance of what is. Amen to that.
Wherever we have lived garlic has seemed to filter through the walls from our neighbours cooking with it. Living here it is no different. Yesterday it was almost overpowering. Well for me anyway. He calls it a curse, my sense of smell that is. I catch the smell of strangers as I walk, just after they have passed by, it may be a trace of perfume, a smoked cigarette, sweat or like this morning TCP. We always blame our neighbours below for the garlic and sometimes the fried bacon or sweet dumplings, perhaps we are wrong.
It was his funeral yesterday. We watched it on his bed on the iPad. It was a pathetic affair with hardly any people (an effect of Covid not his popularity). His daughters spoke movingly and from the heart. And it was a delight to see his little grandson darting about. The emcee was a little verbose and repetitive with nothing but platitudes to share for he had not known him. I went to see if his flowers that they’d placed by the ‘kicking bar’ on the Prom were still there this morning. They were.
I dreamt I had gone downstairs to a gym which had turned out to be a rehearsal studio. I was invited to take part in a play that someone hummed the tune to (and pleased to be so). I didn’t know it. Annette Crosbie was one of my fellow actors (we’d done her birthday the other day at breakfast when I guess the ages of the great and the good) as were a few other notable men who I couldn’t place. They would carry me through wouldn’t they? The play was to start the following week. My fear was OK I thought when I woke, it didn’t paralyse me.
Is it getting better? I think so. He certainly does. It’s a little scratchy still under the lid. Whatever it is it’s lasted. It’s been over a week now. I have to go and see him again today. Will he still be grumpy?
I think about doing an online course about Austen. There’s no face-to-face just a kind of forum thing. Is it for me? I’m not so sure.
The pain eases. She just forgot and I have been imagining all sorts of things. And I could never tell her. Could I?
It looks like a bite, said the optician. Is there any discharge? No, I said, thinking he meant, pus or ooze or liquid. He looked in close using that machine that shines bright lights and makes you blink. Yes, he said, its huge with a big head on it and there’s loads of discharge. He seemed grumpy. He was sharp. So you haven’t seen this before? I asked, responding to his uncertainty as to the cause (it might have been a spider in the night). Of course, I have, he said.
You should’ve told him you’re my wife, he said when I got back into the car. I’ll come in with you next time. You can’t, I told him, they’ll only let a certain amount of people in the store.
I like being me, unrecognisable in this town, unknown and unimportant. He called my name out. I’ve seen him several times but he never remembers. That is OK. And I can cope with his sharpness and grumpiness.
Is it a bite? I think it’s about the grief that still continues. No word. But I can’t tell him that – he’s a scientist, a realist. I’m with the witches. I believe in all sorts of illogical things. What am I not seeing, or not being willing to see? The loss of her, perhaps? I’m scared of it.
A young lad came out in his dressing gown and baseball boots and socks as I returned home along Llanbadarn Road. He was putting something in the bin. It’s bin day. The wind had hurled the rubbish along the pavement on North Parade, mostly litter from Kentucky Fried Chicken. Boneless fillets one scrap of paper read. Tin cans rolled and clattered. But it was 40 mph more like 12 or 15. Nor did it rain.
What are they doing those seemingly restless souls that are out at 3 or 4 in the morning? They are not striding like me but shuffling, ambling slow. They have no purpose. Is it insomnia? Or homelessness? Or something worse? This morning there was a man in a huge hairy hat snuffling about in a dustbin. And then later I saw an elderly couple walking together down Llanbadarn Road towards town. She was all muffled up, but elegantly so. She was tall and stately with a grey bob. He was more bent, wore and anorak and carried a small overnight bag. Were they going to the station? Surely not, there’s no train till 5.30 am. They too walked slowly, and apart.
I watched the van from No 21 the florists on Chalybeate Street drive up to one of our neighbour’s houses yesterday afternoon. The driver dashed out with a large bouquet in his hand. A nice gesture. I would’ve thought it of him. Is is a sign that they are still in love after all these years – what is it 30?
I woke from a dream at about 1.00 am. I’d been sitting in the back of Terry Wogan’s car listening to him interview Yoko Ono. His steering wheel was on the left rather than the right, and I thought I must tell ‘him’ that he’d bought it in France. We were driving very slowly through a suburban district and the sun shone. Again, I remember thinking in my dream that he drove rather like my Dad.
We have a running joke about deafness, he and I. It’s mostly a way of deflecting my irritation at having to repeat myself sometime three or four times. I have a quiet voice, apparently. Anyway, as I woke the voices came in again. I told him of it at breakfast. One said: ‘Mushrooms?’ and the other replied: ‘No, Saturday.’
It’s still there. He says that he thinks it is getting better. I’m not so sure. The radio doctor, Sarah Jarvis, says it could last 6 months. So be it. It will teach me much. Nevertheless, he has booked me an appointment with Specsavers. G. is to be trusted. And it will put both our minds at rest. And besides, I need to know should I use a cold or a hot compress? Old knowledge, eh, we’ve forgotten so much. And one website suggested cider vinegar. Really?
He tells me how he greets his old friends as he walks through the graveyard every morning. Morning, Kyff, he says.
I woke up thinking that it may have dissipated. It hasn’t. And now he reads that it could last up to six months. Heigh ho. A good chance for me to practice my stoicism. It doesn’t hurt but it is uncomfortable and unsightly. I look like I’ve done a few rounds in the ring and lost. I can’t help connecting with the grief. Will that too last six months?
The wind is bitterly cold. And someone’s coming to check our gas appliances today. Why now? Again – be stoic. Let it be.
