ellen bell

The front garden of the house on Llanbadarn Road where they lost a tree when it fell into the road has its yearly flush of snowdrops appearing. It gladdens my heart to see it. The uprooting of the tree last year (was it last year?) has meant that the blanket of white is a little more patchy then before but nevertheless it is joyful in this January blackness.

He brought home some daffodils though I wanted some hyacinths. I love the smell and am always more comfortable with something growing than something cut off from its source of life. Yet, the daffs are lovely and I am appreciative. I spread them amongst as many vases and vessels as I can. I even have some in here. They open so soon in this warmth. I like the bud stage best with all that promise of honeyed-yellowness to come.

There is a Christmas tree in the window of a front room along North Parade. It has been denuded of all lights and decorations yet it remains still green and fresh. Will they keep it forever?

What comfort there is in pattern.

And there was no ice though I took my stick.

I planned to make one, though I’ve never made one before. I was with a group of people, living in some sort of a house, HH was there. I started to make a list of the ingredients in my head. There was a fridge with a glass door and one of the women there kept leaving her food outside of it. I suggested that putting it inside might be better. Oh, do you think so? she said. Then I was in a park needing the loo which was surrounded by people, a lot of them were Orthodox Jews dressed in very dated clothes from the 1950s, some of them were dressed up like cowboys and hillbillies too. I was scared of getting to close and catching Covid-19 so I didn’t go. Then I thought where am I going to get cherries? Then I woke and realised that I never did make the clafoutis.

There is a lake of water outside our front door and beneath our downstairs neighbour’s window. He said that he met them after his walk. They were going to the surgery for her to get her jab. No rain when I walked but the wind was mean and cold. Still winter. I think of those whose homes are flooded. Keep them warm and safe and dry and may their homes be soon habitable. Winter is a hard thing.

The participants were all middle-aged and elderly women. I was either an observer or someone who was trying to make an art piece about one or all of them. Either way it was frustrating me. I wandered from desk to desk looking over their work. Some were doing landscapes, others still lives. I don’t know why I felt out of sorts. There were also a group of them sitting at a table. I woke then to the usual dark and the usual struggling to put my lowness in order. The rain was relentless this morning. I got drenched. I wore two coats, one on top of the other and was very very hot. It was a trudging sort of walk, my body and my head didn’t want to do it. A few cars were about, a doctor, the University warden and a couple of others. A man was out walking his dog. Otherwise I was alone. He won’t walk, it’s too wet. A head down get on with work day then. Fine.

We had a small falling out last night over money. I try to control him, and he, rightly enough, doesn’t like it. Why should he? I try to explain but it sounds ridiculous, as it is. He does understand and we reach a temporary impasse until the next time. Marriage is about finding a middle ground and listening. Is it not?

Chummy (aka Miranda Hart in Call the Midwife) and I were to travel somewhere together, I believe it was by plane. We’d been sewing together making objects (dolls I think) for a business woman who I believed was trying to cheat us out of our wages, claiming that if what we made didn’t sell we’d have what they were worth taken from our pay. I’d gone to remonstrate with her and when I came back we decided to escape. Did you put away my sewing things? I asked her when we’d gone. Then we were at a airport kiosk and Chummy was buying a can of coke. As usual I couldn’t decide what to get so I didn’t buy anything. Then we were in a field sitting in the grass looking at rose hips that had gone to seed. It reminds me of my childhood I said. Sans Michael Jackson I hope, she said. No, I said wanting to be truthful though I knew it wouldn’t please her, with Michael Jackson.

The rain was but a few spots but the wind was strong. Storm Christof, I think. Everything rattles – garage doors, back gates, boat rigging and pub signs. I keep turning round thinking someone is behind me. It’s just the wind. Just the wind.

I was walking through central London carrying a mop bucket full of fresh soapy water and looking for a mop. I was to clear a floor in readiness for the general public to visit an exhibition. I went into a shop selling Black and Decker tools, everything was ordered and pristine and smelling of rubber. The assistant didn’t have any mop heads and was a little put out that I asked. She offered me a rather sad looking feather duster that she’d found in their cleaning cupboard but I said it wouldn’t do, the floor had to be clean. Such is the prosaic nature of my dreams.

She texts him to see if he knows of any podcasts the nurse could play for him. He has pneumonia now but they say they will treat it. I try to bite my tongue. Let him go, I want to say, let him go peacefully, and without pain but it is none of my business and I know what it lose a parent, even an erstwhile one. Another friend, though more acquaintance calls him to ask after the patient. I haven’t heard his voice for over 24 years. They all feel it, that clan, that cabbal of friends. It shakes them. As it does me. Poor man. I couldn’t help but like him.

We were in a field and it was dark. We were being led by a man, a scientist or a zoologist, it wasn’t clear and all of sudden he bent down and dragged something from under a bush. It looked like a hare but it was all flattened out. He was delighted as it was a particular hare that he’d remembered experimenting on. He then proceeded to outline to us all things that he’d done to it. I meanwhile was concerned with a dog that was in my care, for its guts seemed to falling out. He gave it a cursory glance but wasn’t that interested. The rest of the dream has gone. I knew an ex-Head of department who used to paint hares. And this morning I looked into Aberdashery’s window and there were make your own felt hares kits. (Why is it that I continue to delight in such things and yearn to buy and make one?)

He told me he had had some bad news. His friend has fallen and is in Intensive Care with bleeding on the brain. I am sorry. He is a chancer, a charmer, a compulsive gambler, a one-time ladies man but I care for him as does he. I know this, though he hurts him too with his carelessness. I wish him what he wishes – be it a speedy recovery or a gentle lapse into death. Be with him in his need. Now and always.

She gave them to me as a wedding present. There were six and now there is only one. I loved them. They were square-bottomed tumblers almost art-deco in style – very simple and elegant. They were from her. They reminded me of her. And I’ve had them for over thirty years. Alas I was the one to smash it. Well not smash, I caught it on the edge of another glass when I was washing up and there was a large chip and cut. I took it to the glass recycling bin this morning. I couldn’t bring myself to through it in so I placed it carefully on top of the various wine and beer bottles left there by the other residents. It’s only a thing, she is with me in spirit but I like the tangibility of such things. He has bought me two more glasses from Skandium. We couldn’t find a real replacement. They will do as stand-ins at least they will be Scandinavian. What a silly billy I am to fuss over such small things when all this pandemonium is going on.

I saw what I thought was a skull on the Prom this morning. I can’t always trust my eyes at that time in the morning. I think it was from a dog or possibly a badger, it definitely was a creature with a snout of some sort. It made me sad. The sea must have brought it. It was lying by the side of bin.

Nice smells from the bakery this morning. Then Radio 3 decided to change its Saturday morning schedule. Why? It threw me.

I saw it as all ego – that longing for acclaim and notice. It isn’t as strong but sometimes it niggles especially when, courtesy of FB, others’ achievements are writ large. I want to be content. I want to live this quiet, this making behind closed doors if need be, with acquiescence. He made me feel better about myself. He always does. It wasn’t, it isn’t just ego, he said. It was exciting, stimulating – I enjoyed it, we enjoyed it, he said, and it’s only natural that you miss it. Wait and see, wait and see what this new work brings, you don’t know yet. And I don’t. He is kind. Even so, I want to learn to accept what is. And it is a daily task. Even now. Even now.

A new shop has opened in the old Thorntons building. Etched into the glass pane in the door is ‘Newports of Aberystwyth’. He doesn’t remember them, it must’ve been before his time. The typeface looks 1920-ish. This new place is a dress shop and they’ve taken a great deal of care with the window display. Such enterprise – you see it here a lot, all those great beginnings but all too often they fail. And to launch it now in the middle of lockdown – when they can’t even open the doors. Crazy but admirable and it lifts the street – that gesture of hope.

When will it all get better? When will we get better? She writes of her grief. Poor love. Poor poor love. x

It isn’t something I’d usually listen to, it’s a little dated and a bit full of ‘daring-do’ for my liking but it’s read by Julian Rhind-Tutt and therefore easy to digest. And besides Bulldog Drummond isn’t frightened of anything. What a thing, to be without fear. Think of that.

She told me that she keeps rescuing geraniums from the Close’s shared tip. They think that they are annuals, she said. We’ve had ours for years now. They are all woody and knotty but they keep flowering and that’s good enough for me. It’s a sign of life after all.