ellen bell

Just a short walk this morning having had too much to do before hand. So I strode pushing against the North wind towards the Prom, did a round trip and turned back. I kept an eagle eye out for new sightings of trees. Capricorn Gowns had one in the window that flashed on and off rather too quickly. And Rees Astley Insurance Agents, though empty (I’ve never seen anyone in there even before the pandemic) had one too. Everything is done very elegantly there, the frosted window, the minimalist decor, very un-Aber and the tree follows suit, with one colour and lights that don’t flash. There was also a new one in a house on the corner of Llanbadarn Road – that one was flashing furiously in tandem with a line of blue lights. Let it be, the more tackier the better with the dull mood I’m in. Oh, and what used to be the Barnardo’s shop now has two trees in the window but they are bare. Perhaps someone will be in there today to deck them with bright things.

I thought it would be a breeze this piece but it’s not. So be it. I’ll make some tea and be at it now.

I like to look in other people’s windows, I’ve always done it, particularly in the early morning when I walk. I’ve done it too when I was without a home and looked then with longing. Now I look for Christmas trees, lights and decorations. I need the cheer, the lift. They’ve a tree in all flashing glory in one of the flats opposite, though this morning it’s not been turned on. And in a top room in one of the houses along Llanbadarn Road I saw a rocking horse. It wasn’t a very elegant one, a little chunky, but nevertheless a lovely site. I wanted one as child, not to ride especially but to just own. I think a rich friend had one. There used to be one in the window of the middle house along St David’s Road but I haven’t seen it for awhile. I walked a different way this morning, mainly to avoid the wind turning my umbrella inside out. It makes me ratty, it’s such an inelegant thing, like one’s skirt blowing up – all knickers showing. So I saw unfamiliar window displays, one had cotton wool for snow wrapped around the base of two fake trees. There were pine cones frosted with spray-on snow (my mother used to use it I remember the smell), plastic snowflakes stuck to panes and a silver glittery horse in the window of the nail bar on Mill Street.

Ronnie has been found. He was holed-up in a shed and she heard his mewing. I’m pleased. All is well with that part of the world, at least.

As I walked I continued my hunt for new lights in windows or trees freshly put up. There were none that I could see. Two of our neighbours were pulling a trussed up tree from the boot as we left for an appointment in town (he was wearing remarkably tight cycling shorts). And last night, I noticed that that house of the now deceased architect on the hill opposite us has a tree lit up in their living room. The room has a floor to ceiling window in the Scandinavian-style, and the lights, like a white block of brightness, shone out in the darkening afternoon.

The morning was quiet and muted. The moon was revealed between the clouds for a short time and then was gone. I noticed some strands of red and green tinsel on the pavement as I walked the Prom.

We talked of the ‘dirty-clean’ sketch at breakfast and he suddenly remembered the name of one of the comics who performed it. I thought that they were husband and wife, apparently not. Sid Caesar, he said, and then scanning his Ipad proceeded to tell me the name of the woman who did it with him, Imogene someone. It was all black and white, he said. Yes, I know. Lovely.

As I walk I watch out for new Christmas decorations I haven’t seen. The Marine Hotel has huge lighted snowflakes in each window. There’s a row of them, looking like giant rosettes. Most festive. And trees have sprung up in several of the student’s rooms in halls and in houses. They leave them on all night, as I would, falling asleep to the glow of them. It helps in this winter’s dark. It does. As does the moon, who even now is shining full through my window.

Do you think Ronnie has been found? I asked him yesterday, for the flyer announcing has gone. No, he said. But why have they taken away the flyer then? Because they’ve probably given up on him. I hope not. I really hope not. These seemingly small griefs hurt us. Greatly.

I thought it was a stuffed toy, and I stood in my bedroom looking at it through my window for some time waiting to see if it would move. It did. I’ve seen it before. It sits in one of the flats opposite, in the window looking out. It’s a black and white cat, like the kind you see stuffed with kapok and made with fake fur. It stared back at me, holding my gaze. What was it thinking?

Only a short walk this morning, just a round-the-block kind of walk. A quick smell of the bread baking in The Pelican Bakery, then up Edge Hill and home. A man was ahead of me, and he kept turning round and staring. I slowed down to let him get further on before turning down Thespian Street.

I’ve decided that the only way to get through this low period is to concentrate on the sensual. Yesterday I was low. It’s a kind of gloom that I do my best to stay above, like floating over the mist you see over fields on an Autumn morning, but by lunchtime I had sunk into it. He tries to help and I snap at him and then am very remorseful. He is so kind and attentive and he knows my moods. We went out into the sun and I cut his hair. A little short but he seems happy. And the sun helped a little. Then I came back in and hemmed cloth pieces. That helped too. I like such work. No real thinking or solving is required and I watch my hands as I do it.

Yes, to concentrate on the sensual. I began this morning by trying my new body butter, warming vanilla they call it. A new smell. I watched my hands smoothing it over my skin, slowly. Then I smelt the smokiness of the Lapsang Souchong tea bags I put in the teapot in readiness for later. Then I paid attention as I peeled the paper cases off his muffins (sans blueberries like a dope) watching the sponge spring back, though not as much as it should. I missed the smell of toast though. Tomorrow. Enough. It was enough, for now.

There was a bird calling out in the dark as I returned home. A new call. A kind of whish, whish. What is it?

It’s written on her wheelie bin. I don’t know what it means. Perhaps it is the Welsh for rubbish or bin or garbage or somesuch. It looks like a phonetic spelling of tough. I like that.

The Chinese girl in No. 1 has finally taken in her parcel. It has been leaning against her back door for oh, ages now.

A discombobulating day yesterday. There is so much to process, to put in the right boxes in my head. And always it comes down to a letting go of ego, of dreams and of fantasies. This is what is. And it is enough, if I let it be so. I try to focus on the detail. Even when I am doing something I’d rather not do, like cleaning. I concentrate on the action of my hand, sometimes watching it or just feeling it, or the smell of the wood polish, like rhubarb and almonds, or on the end result and how I love to have things, clean, neat and ordered. It helps that.

And there are other compensations – such as my current joy in the re-reading of Austen’s canon. I thought I knew them inside out but with each re-reading there is a new spark, a new bursting of something marvellous.

I dream and dream, no doubt down to the moon, just as shining this morning but a little more round, but I cannot remember them at present. I feel a little lost at this unremembering. What if I am losing some much needed wisdom?

It was huge, or so it seemed and a little squidgy – not a neat circle. I love walking under moonlight – it’s an eerie, very white light that cleanses me of all greyness. A few mobile homes clustered around the harbour. They shouldn’t be there, he said at breakfast when I told him. I feel the same and yet I understand that need to be off and out on the road, I’d do it if I could and those vans do look cosy. I think of them sleeping tight as I trudge past. One had a little light on outside, like a house, a home. Neat.

We couldn’t go into the hotel for tea yesterday. Well, he didn’t want to and I get it, I do. But how I long to have a pot of tea served at a table, and watch him pilfer my little piece of shortbread that they place on the saucer. We had tea and coffee out of flasks in the car instead. A not unpleasant thing but not the same. Not the same. I waited for him while he abluted in the public toilets and let the sun shine full on my face.

I thought about my work, as I do all the time. It is easier, no more satisfying if I work with someone in mind. Later, as I walked I thought about words, made, formed letters. There may be something in it.

I heard the whooshing chattering hiss of the starlings roosting under the pier, and caught the stink of guano. And there were the pip squeaks of the oystercatcher breaking in between the cacophony. The night is alive with birds.

They are not really encounters. They are more like parallel happenings, like ships sailing past each other. We are both there, here breathing the same oxygen, possibly smelling the same smells but our experiences are so different, so a relationship is unlikely. Nevertheless, I see them and they seem to see me. Take the moth for instance. I saw it in the dark, just at the top of the hill where I turn down behind Alexandra’s Hall. A white flying spec, tiny. And yet, it appeared to be following me, flying alongside. And then there are the robins. There must be several not just one. They are everywhere, and they do feel like they are engaging with me. Hopping along as I walk, or stopping and leaning their heads to one side as if in wonder or bemusement. I sometimes stop my striding, my always rushing to get somewhere or something done, and listen. I listen to the birdsong, or watch the female blackbird that has just bounced out of the undergrowth in front of me.

And I forgot to tell you of the seagull flying high above the Pier and how its whiteness was tinged pink by the perpetually changing roof lights. Oh, and of the orange lorry from Redruth in Cornwall awaiting the arrival of the fishermen at the harbour, lights full on and blazing like a dream.

It does sound like that sometimes, particularly down by the harbour, like the air, the world, the cosmos is holding its breath. Waiting. Waiting for something to happen. The day? The coming of morning? And yet, there isn’t silence. The sea is a perpetual noise, this morning it was a rolling, not a crashing but a turning, a folding kind of rolling. And then there is the hum of generators. I don’t know where they are but it’s there nevertheless – that humming, low-pitched and endless. I hear it more in the dark.

They were sitting on the low wall outside a block of flats on Llanbadarn Road, talking. Students probably. They were young, in their early twenties. They stopped talking and stared at me as I approached on the opposite pavement. But they soon grew bored of me and resumed their hushed murmurings. They were still there when I returned an hour later though they were standing now. She was coatless and her arms were bare. He had on a coat yet he was still alternately banging his feet on the ground in an effort to get warm. They stared at me again and I crossed the road. Were they lovers struggling to part? Another couple parted on South Road, he waiting on the pavement to see that she got in safely. She was polite to him, speaking English with in an Eastern European twang.

I want to do something repetitive today – even a little mindless. I have much to do, much to solve but today let it be a flow. There is promise of more work which is always gratifying. I yearn for the gap, the space in which something could happen but I am fearful of it too. Let it be. Let it be what it is.

I think of Christmases of the past, the homes I have spent it in, the other families who have taken me in. It was nice. But it has gone, all that fuss, noise, food, games and bustle. It is OK like this. And I can dream of the other, can’t I?

He told me I was wrong. It is Ronnie not Reggie who is on the run, or captured, or ransomed or lost or dead. He told me that for a time she had one of the padded ‘cages’ she straps to her body to transport them about or collect them in when they go walkabout out by her front door. Perhaps she was hoping she’d wake up one morning and he’d be snug inside it. It wasn’t there this morning. Has she given up hope or has the prodigal returned?

I think of such things as I walk and of work and today the piece I’ve just written. Are they ever good enough the things we give our time to? I’m weary this morning, my hips ache and walking was a chore. I took a detour to the Market Hall to see if there was a cobbler there. I’d thought there was but it seems we are bereft of one here. How can that be? Don’t people still need their shoes attending to? Or do we just throw them away when they become a little down at heel? Shall I learn and take up the trade? I still fantasise about being a baker. Silly, I know. I saw the baker stride across the darkened road to go to work this morning at 4 am. The girl with the ponytail is usually in there before him and the smells are there too. Does she switch the ovens and machines on? Is she a baker too? What is his role then – a master baker applying the finishing touches? Today the smells were of fruit loaves and hot cross buns. Yummy. My soul is comforted by such scents as it is by the lit Christmas tree twinkling in Sophie’s Cafe. He will have to take my shoes to Mach and I shall have to manage without them and clump about in my walking boots. So be it. At least I have a choice. Are you well shod? she asked the maid servant. My parents keep me well-shod, my lady, she said lifting up her skirts to reveal her boots.

I’m re-reading Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. I tried to read it in Norwegian all those years ago, translated it word by word. This is clunky translation. How could you let your child be raised by strangers? Nora asks her nurse. Surely your daughter has forgotten you. No, Anne replied. She hasn’t, I heard from her just the other day.