ellen bell

I woke from a dream about the Queen. Well, it wasn’t directly about her. I had been commissioned to do some illustrations to celebrate her visit to a small town shop. The interest of the dream for me is watching myself in my dream state trying to solve creative problems. I hadn’t been given much time so I had to find some short cuts. I thought about basing my ideas on Warhol’s coloured screen prints of her, though in my dream I couldn’t remember his name. My concerns in my sleep state were all wrapped up in printers and scanners and office drawers. I can see as I write it where these notions come from, they reflect, as they usually do my waking thoughts, though a trifle jumbled, as if they’ve been put in a tumble dryer. Nice though – there was pleasure in the work and the solving. And what a busy bee I am in my sleeping.

I’ve finished his quilt. What a job. It doesn’t look so bad. I enjoyed the hand sewing at the end the best. A control thing I suppose, or perhaps the quiet of it is preferable to the jarring noise of the machine.

Listened to Jens Stoltenberg on Desert Island Discs. An earnest man, I think, and a trifle serious. Very sing-song English. I made me homesick.

House cleaned. Tea made for me, coffee for him. Now to work.

It was her birthday today, I think. Such a long time ago. A good friend, a kind friend. I miss her laughter, her blitheness and her courage. Rest in peace.

I saw his fire first, an orange flame on the beach, licking and curling in the slight breeze. I waited for that gorgeous smell of charred wood and smoke and then I saw him. He was curled up in a foetal position against the chill of the morning air and dressed in what looked like a khaki shirt and cargo trousers. He was young, possibly in his twenties or early thirties. He lay close to the wall along South Marine Terrace. Was he asleep? Did I disturb him by walking past. If I’d been him I’d have found a more secret place, but perhaps he wanted to be near people, perhaps it felt safer to be close to homes, to civilisation. Was he a traveller, or a homeless person? He lay close to a bag. Was he just passing through?

I also saw him. We’ve seen him for years walking up and down the Prom with his walking stick, his tall, thin frame and frizz of wild grey hair marking him out as odd, eccentric, not quite right. He knows him. Not well. He has psychiatric problems, he said, poor man. He knows his name. I saw him yesterday morning outside the ‘troublesome’ flats along Mill Street. He was sitting on a low wall. Was he smoking? He didn’t have any shoes on. He was sitting there in his stocking feet. His hair was still a frizz but it was cut shorter in a kind of bob. I said good morning. What else can you say when you pass someone at 4.00 am? He didn’t reply but just stared at me. Fair enough, I thought. The discomfort and obligation to say something was mine not his.

A blackbird seemed to follow me a little along Llanbadarn Road. First it bobbed onto the little wall skirting Cwrt Cenydd and then it bounced down beneath it. And as I continued to walk it didn’t fly away but appeared to bounce along beside me. They stare at you with one eye. Robins follow me regularly but blackbirds don’t, until today.

Wales is open. The harbour was a mass of mobile homes and campervans and the bins along the Prom disgorged fish and chip cartons, bottles and crisp packets. And empty bottles stood abandoned by the sand’s edge. There were more people about too. Three wandered barefoot along the wet sand and a couple sauntered the Prom ahead of me. It is changing. The town is metamorphosing into holiday mode full of strangers.

The book case is still unclaimed though someone has put an empty beer can on one of its shelves. What will they do with their enormous onions?

I think about the change that is coming, possibly of home and work. What will it bring? I try to remain open but I wobble between excitement and fear. Just take it slowly. And breathe. She says she’ll call to catch up. Will it be a slow drawing away?

Always change. They are leaving. She waved at us as we sat on our chairs in the sun in the car park. Her little boy, spruce in his yellow t-shirt, didn’t. She waves in a rather frenetic way, more by way of compensation for her lack of English. We leave on Monday, she said, from her position under the tree, and out of the sun. We go back to China. We’d noticed the wooden dresser-cum-bookcase that had been placed under the same tree – with its notice encouraging whoever wanted it to have it. It must be theirs, he said. Her husband came up the little hill shortly afterwards. They look so young. He seemed weary carrying two full carrier bags. So you are leaving on Monday, he said to him. Yes, said the Chinese man, and then said something about lots to do. I caught a glimpse of their flat through the door as we walked back. Yes, utter chaos, they’ve much to do. But they are so sunny, always smiling. I shall miss them. And the little one. He is so bold, so loved, so safe. I shall miss they way she lays out all her shopping on the terrace outside their flat, in the sun. And her little garden, all growing out of plastic washing-up bowls. And the smells of her cooking.

I lost it yesterday. I’m not good with things I can’t do or understand. And I don’t like machines, partly for those self-same reasons. So I fucked it up. And lost my temper. (And it was a no tea day – which may or may not have been the reason for my tantrum.) Today I am calmer (and we talked of important things and some progress has been made and I can see a way forward – Lord let me not be romantic but help me to remain open to all things) and will approach the mistakes made evenly with my unpicker in hand.

But I did try those two new recipes for fruit bread and oat crunchies. The bread was appreciated. How I love to make bread – it is such a staple and the feel of the dough so springy and light is a joy. The biscuits smelt divine but he said that they broke in his mouth. Is that a good thing or bad? Keep on trying, eh?

I have started the machine rolling – let us see what comes. I am open. I am open to the possibilities of this oh so precious life.

Sometimes it is just words, words that seem to float about in my head during my dreams. They are mostly said inside my head, a spoken thought, so to speak. Finding-down eggs was one of them. And it definitely wasn’t referring to the act of coming upon the eggs, ‘finding-down’ were a kind of egg. What kind of egg I cannot say. So evocative, so full of richness. I love this part of me, it is so free of rigidity, of fear, of fear of judgement. I wish I could remember more, but it is quite a thing to wake in the dark and struggle to write things down before they are lost. Equivalent was another word that hung around. Not sure why.

There is a blue sky after so many days of grey, overcast ones. Though the wind is wild. I remember our horses becoming skittish on windy days and galloping around the confines of their field, kicking up their hooves, tossing their manes and flicking their tails. I can see the white flashes on the waves on the sea.

I’ve much to do. And I’m hungry already. So much for oranges, eh? Coloured water, he says, coloured water.

I woke around 9.30 pm needing a pee and happened to look out of my bedroom window. It was still light and the sun had cast a sharp beam upon the piece of wasteland just beyond our block. It was a deep yellow that turned the greens of the grass, scrub and trees into a bright, brilliant lime. When I returned to bed the yellow had gone and the light returned to the dull grey of the coming night. Had it woken me? That light, that temporal glow?

I dreamt of an old friend from my MA days. We were outside on a stretch of tarmac. It was where she used to live and she was explaining where her garden used to be, in great detail. I struggled to follow her. It was gone and I couldn’t imagine how it had been. An earlier dream had involved living in a small, close space with lots of other people, young people. Were we on holiday together? The gist of it was that we all had to keep wearing the same clothes. And there was an irritation in that and the fact that we were packed so closely together. Pictures made from daily concerns. Silly, trivial concerns.

The sun is out this morning. The wind is sharp but there is more light than we’ve had for days. I appreciate it. The commission is on hold, perhaps cancelled. I am disappointed, it gave me a fillip when it was offered. Wait and see. Wait and see.

We did it alot as children, mostly coming home from being away in Ireland or Wales or Scotland. We’d be put in our nighties and tucked in sleeping bags in the back, then carried, when we got home, straight to our beds. How I loved that, that being taken care of, transported from one warm place to another. I also relished being tucked up in the car and yielding to its motion. I adore being driven (if the driver is steady and careful) – that succumbing to going forward, somewhere, anywhere. As a young child I’d look at the streetlights, the motorway lights and watch the line of them flickering as we sped past. But this was a dream. And I wasn’t asleep, no I was very much awake, overhearing plots of assassination. He was asleep, comatose in the car, oblivious to all my fears and concerns. It made me tetchy with him. Is it the moon?

I wake from dreams into the still dark and the shadows of them stay with me as I bathe, get dressed and walk. They linger. The two worlds becoming one. He wants to shake his off as soon as he wakes. Mine trouble me and yet I still want to understand.

I finished it in a day. He was pleased, impressed even. And then there was another email offering more work. I’m glad. I’m pleased and even the fear of failure is so far manageable. Hello, I say to it. You still here? So be it. We will work together you and I. Won’t we? A gentler day today, experimenting with alphabets. Let me make these ideas manifest. Let me open to the possibilities of myself. It is all there. All of it. Within. I need nothing more. Except him. How I shall miss him when he decides to go. It will happen. I will be alone. But not yet. Not yet.

I’d heard the programme before. Radio 4 Extra my favourite station keeps repeating things (perhaps no new material is being commissioned during this time). I don’t mind. To re-hear is often illuminating. Anyway, this one featured Lemn Sissay talking about finding and meeting his birth-mother, I think it was in the Gambia. He writes well, from the heart, it is almost visceral. It’s a moving story, he says. Not moving in the emotional sense but ever changing, in flux. I want it to be that way, he says, I never want it to solidify. He is fearful of self-pity, of telling the tale so off-pat that it ceases to have authenticity. I get that. It is apposite for me. For how does one tell such things, how do they remain as elusive as they are? I want to learn from such luminaries but not be so awe that they make me frozen with fear.

I hear from her. She tells me of the children. The eldest is learning so fast. Lots of words. Her favourite, she tells me is ‘investigate’. How I love them.

The details of last night’s dreams are lost, all I remember is being angry with him. He’d let me down in some way and I was seething. Sorry, love.

I fell to sleep quite quickly, breaking the habit that had set in of my lying there unable to drop off. Then I was woken around 9ish by some voices beneath my window. I heard the name David and tried in my now wakefulness to ascertain who was speaking. One of the voices was American, or Canadian. This must be one of our near neighbours I thought as I lay there, he and his wife are living here, we don’t know why, perhaps one of them is studying at the University. They are both quite round and small, he has a rolling walk and breathes quite heavily. She always dresses very well, lots of flowing linens. I think he has some health condition. Who was he talking to? Perhaps it was the Chinese man from the flat on the corner. They’d woken me from a dream about deadly deeds concerning the securing of a role in an important role. At least that is the interpretation of the dream that I wrote down when I went for a pee. I think the play was a Shakespeare one. How I was involved, or where the phrase ‘deadly deeds’ came from I do not know. I did return to sleep when the voices ceased. And then didn’t wake until the alarm. I’d been dreaming about my forthcoming marriage. I was sitting on top of a vast moor, in Victorian dress, waiting and crying. I could see the wedding guests advancing towards me across the heather and scrub. It was very cinematic, I was high high above them. One couple had a dog that bounded ahead towards me. Then my sister came. She was looking very beautiful in an Empire Line Dress, dark blue with a ruched midriff. I was in grey. She tried to cheer me (without success), hugging me and saying ‘Do you remember when…’ I continued to cry thinking to myself, surely I am not supposed to be alone on my wedding day. Then I woke.

The blackcurrants arrived in one piece. What a pleasure, though I fear I have eaten to much for breakfast.

I’ve an interview to do today. I always get a little nervous. I know she will be lovely. But I want to hide under a stone. This is the problem with staying in and seeing no one, one gets a little scared of encounters. Though I long for escape too. Just to sit somewhere in a hotel or cafe and empty myself of all thought. That would be good. Wouldn’t it?

I wrote out the brief ideas for the short stories and let him read them in the sun in the afternoon. He was kind and encouraging. I’ve made a start. It’s such a leap. Can I do it? I want to know them, to grow into them and to find my voice. Can I do it? How about if you try?

The cleaning is done, though I wish I could learn to approach it with more joy. I love a clean house. I love the smell of it and the order. You don’t look very happy about doing it, he said this morning. No, I suppose I don’t. There is so much I’d rather be doing. But that is neither here nor there, is it? Keeping order for both of us is important, just as important as more high-falutin’ earning money sort of work. So let it be and instead be grateful that you have a home to clean, many don’t. Like the man I see sleeping rough in the shelter on the Prom. Was it the same man? His sleeping bag was red today. How can he sleep with the howling of the wind surrounding him? He is sheltered from the cold of it but not the sound. Do you become immune to it? The sound makes my very bones feel cold.

I rushed my walk this morning so that I could get back to mop the floors downstairs. Our neighbour was at his window when I went out. At least it’s not raining yet, he said. No, I said. He was smoking, coughing and reading a book at the same time. It looked liked a sci fi or fantasy novel. It was a paperback with a plastic cover, a library book perhaps? I tried to read it’s title. He interests me, a singular man, I think but seemingly most content. I think it was something like ‘Monstrous Revolutions’. I should’ve asked him but didn’t like to.

The moon took me by surprise this morning. I turned the corner onto the Prom, trying to avoid being toppled by the wind, and there it was big and almost full, shining a white-yellow in the sky. There were clouds that scudded in front of it but when they didn’t I could make out a star nearby to it, or a satellite maybe.

I’m glad I went.

She emailed me to say that she’s sent me some blackcurrants. What a treat. And she is so busy and yet she found the time. Well, her husband posted them while she had her hair cut. She says that the PO removed the string she’d tied around them so they may not arrive in one piece. I hold my breath longing for the smell of them, the taste of them. Will they come?

How nice it would be to sit with her, with them, in their garden.

It was all about her slugs and snails yesterday. They are ravaging their vegetables. She doesn’t want to use anything chemical (to protect the chickens) and we discussed a variety of ways of discouraging them from garlic salt to egg shells. Nothing, as yet, seems to work, they munch away regardless. Another friend talked of the impact of the wind and rain on their garden, the vegetables in particular. The cauliflower has bolted and the gooseberries haven’t come.

I didn’t catch hold of my dreams last night, just a residue of the first one before I went for a wee at 10. Something to do with an inheritance and a long cotton nightdress ‘this much wide by this much’. The second one I lost. Gone.

The lifeguard hut has been erected on South Beach. A portent of summer. Wales is open to visitors from this weekend, he said at breakfast. I suppose it has to start sometime. Will it ever be the same again? A broken umbrella had been shoved into a bin along the Prom, just below the castle. Several of its metal spokes lay like spillikins on the ground, the rest of the structure, blue, draped from the mouth of the bin.

Rain and more rain. A grey morning. I don’t think he will walk.