ellen bell

If there wasn’t such a fuss made about Christmas would being alone at this time be so acute? I don’t know. I know many who are and will be. People who are usually with at least one family member, for better or for worse. Some are choosing to remain solitary for safety reasons, others because they have no choice. I am sorry for the sociable ones, the ones for whom their own company has begun to pall. I am not alone, though I’ve had Christmases when I have been. It was strange and a little melancholy but it was certainly made worse by my memories of noisier times and of a sense that there was a perfect Christmas to be had somewhere.

Town is bleak these mornings, only a few lighted windows and with so many shops with signs in the door saying they are closed and will open again soon. It is a sorry time.

There is no certainty. Life is in constant flux but we/I kid myself that it is not. The plates beneath our feet are perpetually shifting, so surprises should not unsettle us but they do. I could look at it another way. I know more now than I did at this time yesterday. So be it. I shall do my best for him, be practical, steady, solid.

There are still nice things. What were they this morning? The blow-up Santa that was tied to a railing outside one of the terraced houses I walk past on the way to the harbour was one. I can’t think of anymore at the moment. It will do. Just that. Oh, there was something else. A parcel in a script I didn’t recognise. A warm gesture. I felt loved and remembered and part of something good. Thank you, sweet girl. I remember holding your head in my hands when you were still a schoolgirl. Tender. Bless you.

Life is a mess. I try so hard to order it but it won’t do. The mess is there. And it wobbles me so. I must learn to yield to it. So many people have it worse than I do. I just want to know what is expected of me and how to do it as well as I can. My other needs are taken care of. I have the time and the comfort that allows me to fret. I know this. And I try to be calm. Now I have a job to do. I’ve done my best to apply order, to ask what is required. Now I must sit still and await this conversation. I want it go well, to be of benefit to him and to me. Let it be so.

They invade my dreams, those words that we ruminate over during our daily crossword-doing. Last night it was effluvia which became a flood of faeces outside a cafe. Then someone was handing me some pills and another woman was talking about her stash of hard drugs in a caravan in her garden. Should I report her to the police, I thought before convincing myself that I shouldn’t because she was a nice, good woman. The rest was lost on waking. A gloomy morning all and all. And then he tells me of the new restrictions in place here. So be it. What will be must be. Can I go and do my review? Probably not. Or get my hair cut, finally? Probably not.

The man who we think is a lecturer on account of the ‘seminars’ he held in car park over the summer has a huge cardboard cut out of christmas tree in his window. I was surprised, it seems out of character, or at least the one we’ve invented for him. He is thin as a rake, a smoker and rather grungy in appearance. But he has a young son who visits at weekends, so perhaps it is for him.

I see many lit windows as I walk between 3 and 4 am. A lad came out of one of the houses along Llanbadarn Road. He had a small knapsack over his shoulder. Where was he going? The Chinese student at no 1 had her light on as did the guy who works in Summit Cycles who is going out with the nurse. And the lights were on in the American’s flat. He’s called Eric, I forget her’s. Insomniacs all?

The council had left a string of lights on by mistake over Terrace Road. It was nice – a surprise whiteness in the black, black dark.

I’m just about to put some up but to be honest my heart isn’t really in it. I used to love it all that. But now I can’t seem to muster the energy. He is sanguine about it. He doesn’t like this time of the year and would rather it passed him by. I, however, do like the lights and the carols and once I’ve put some up I will be more in the spirit. I miss so much of what it used to be and can’t be. Heigh ho. Many are alone or in pain or grieving as yesterday so poignantly showed me.

There’s a pink dolls’ house in the window of the second-hand shop Terrace Avenue. It has been given pride of place and raised on a little plinth above all the other stuff that lies beneath it such as the battered four-stringed banjo, the various model railway engines and Portmeirion crockery. I longed for one as a child but my desires were for a beautiful one full of exquisitely-made perfectly scaled down antique furniture and effects just like that one we visited all those years ago in Windsor Castle. This pink one would’ve disappointed me. It is clunky, the furniture is clunky. And it is too pink. For £25 someone is bound to snap it up for some little girl or other. I hope it gives pleasure.

The widow of the electrician who died in Spain has hung some lights from the eaves of her house. They are splendid. The house across the way owned by the jovial ex-butcher and some-time jailbird has hung some in a tree and he leaves his inside Christmas tree lights one too. I fantasised, as I walked, about making some thank you cards and popping them in their letter boxes to say how much I appreciated the lights as I walked through the dark. But I talked myself out of it. They leave the lights on for themselves not for we solitary ramblers.

A friend of his has died. He told me of it when I came in to wake him for breakfast. I sat on the side of the bed and held his hand. He was a kind a man, a little opinionated, I believe, but kind. He witnessed our second marriage. He wore a sports jacket, I think. Rest in peace. The town will feel his loss. As does he.

I threw it out in the end. It isn’t easy, I grew attached to things. I’ve mended it before even resorting to sewing on a little hook when the velcro packed-in. But it was time to go. He is to buy me a new one today. However, it rained this morning so I had to borrow his. A huge thing and rather cumbersome to walk with. But I needed it. See I can fill up space with nonsense just like Jane Austen’s Miss Bates. It’s that details thing again. The big picture is too much to bear so keep it small. Anyway his umbrella withstood the wind better than my old one. I only saw two people as I walked and both wore masks. Good. Another lockdown to come in Wales. It has to be and we must acquiesce. Roll on next year.

He came to look at the washing machine. He did it all while I stayed out of the way in the studio. He is good like that, better with strangers than I. He does the Welsh thing – Where you from? Where’d you go to school? Do you know so and so and so on. I heard them above me. And the machine whirring and spinning. All is well. It was a ‘load issue’ apparently. I feel responsible. Will I be told off? But I’m glad it isn’t broken. I try to take care of things, even machines that frighten me.

My umbrella is broken. I’d like to mend it if I could but I think it is beyond me. The wind did it blowing it about and inside out over and over again. I swore.

The rain lashes still. He is staying in.

No sign of daylight yet.

I remember a lecturer accusing me once of paying more attention to the details than the bigger picture. I didn’t have the wit or balls to reply. I just took it on the chin. And he was right, to some extent. I see small. I like small. Small is all I can handle, mostly. Up close. You know. Details see me through, or at least noticing and paying attention to them. I notice the small things as I walk, the domestic Christmas trees, the lights, those small attempts at cheer. It sees me through. I celebrate the endeavour. The morning comes now and I’m almost done with the fiddly bits I need to deal with each morning, clearing the decks for the work day.

The library pack up the books for me with a rubber band. A nice touch. What whoppers. There’s my Christmas taken care of, eh?

We talked about ‘naughty corners’ at breakfast and how J used to send her to stand by the fridge when she misbehaved. Then he remembered what I said about taking her to Comet when she was really bad. We laughed. It was nice to remember, though the memories are not strictly mine. I can still see her with her plaits, her back to us and her head desperate to turn round and be forgiven.