The wind was stronger this morning as I walked. Things clattered about me. Seagulls flew about haphazardly, tossed by the gusts. Signs creaked and a gate leading to the backyard of house on Llanbadarn Road flapped open and shut as I walked past. The latch hadn’t been put down and the wind caught at it, rattling it then thumping it closed, only for it to open again. A jangling sound. A bit like my temper yesterday. Was it the tea?
Things went wrong yesterday, or perhaps it was my approach to them. Both of the main irksome wrongs have been put right, well as much as they can be. The kettle has been replaced for free though we were given a rather bland colour. Can I have a red one this time? I’d asked him before he left for town. There was only one left, apparently. So we are stuck with taupe. We’re calling her Jane, plain Jane. Like it or lump it, eh? And the tap top has been stuck back on, though it wobbles, rather like a tooth soon to be dislodged. Ah, how I hate bodging things.
A good day otherwise. I loved doing the research though I’ve lots to do before I get to the meat of it. Oranges this morning for breakfast. The rice fast has been broken after 10 days. I was good to have something light. And the tea was a joy, even if it made me cross. I shall try harder to be nice today. Onward. Admin to be done, then quilt and phone call, then letters to journals, then baking. Enough, I think.
It was a dream anagram word. I woke with it in my head and lay there trying to work out what word I could make from it. Nothing came. I made him laugh when I told him of it at breakfast. Two dreams. Paul Weller sang of having 22. Is that possible? The first I had to write down at 12 ish when I got up for a wee. Something to do with letters to be carved in stone but couldn’t be made permanent. And then I was in a public loo and I couldn’t turn on the lights. They wouldn’t come on and then I found the central switch and hey presto they worked. The second dream was more comprehensive and it involved a community of artists in Manchester, somewhere like Whalley Range. They lived above their studios but were threatened with eviction. I sat in the downstairs cafe with one of them as she bemoaned her fate. Then the word Pallop came into my mind and I woke trying to solve it.
My nerves are jangly this morning. Two bad things. First a minor one. The taps in this flat are very frustrating, old seventies designs. The kitchen ones keep losing the metal caps that hide the workings. Today the cold one came off yet again. I’ve glued it back several times but it won’t stay. Shall I just leave it? It looks so shabby and shoddy. Then the kettle went. We both like it. Love it sometimes. A retro one, a copy of course but a beautiful shape and hue nonetheless. It’s the element, certainly, for the light still comes on. I get so discombobulated. And then people don’t respond to emails just when I want, no need things to be in place. So we must buy a new kettle and a new dehumidifier which still comes on but bemusingly doesn’t collect any water. Just when things get tight. It’s always the way. Let the abundance come and to cover it. I am happy to work hard for it.
I begin my research today. I’ve no idea how to do it best. Just start. Remember Goethe. Just begin.
I struggled to get off last night. And then when I did the dreams came in luscious detail. I’m getting better at remembering them. They speak to me, certainly. In the one I recall I went off on a walk before a meal I was to have with a group of people. When I left them it was gloomy but when I was out walking it was a clear sunny day. I must have been abroad for the walls that encased the path were whitewashed and glaring in the sun. It was warm. The path took a fork and a woman on a horse was coming towards me from one side, she was bare-back and hatless. We spoke and she asked me the way to somewhere without waiting for my answer, then she laughed and said that she was going to wrong way and took the other turning. I took the other fork and came to a gully that was full of clear water. A man who soon became a woman was squatting by the water, I followed suit. We both touched the water, it was warm and quite shallow. I suddenly noticed that a complex of houses and flats had been built around the water. I spoke to the now woman about what it was like to live there. It was communal but the flats were discreet and private. She was thinking of retiring out there. Then I was watching her performing at an event held at the complex. It was evening and she was on stage with two other colleagues. They were using large cards to cover their faces and singing. The cards were beautifully illustrated with old Punch and Judy imagery and they flowed seamlessly between reality and hyper-reality. I was spellbound and saw the woman in an entirely different light. Such inventiveness. The symbolism speaks to me. There is much there for me to decipher. I write to remember. I hope it doesn’t bore you. Welcome to the inside of my head.
I sent him what I wrote and slept while he read it. What did you think? I asked him when I woke. I’m not sure about the Norway bit, he said. You don’t know enough to write about it. He is right, and it smarts a little to hear it said. But I need to write it regardless, if only to blue pencil it afterwards. I’m on a path and I need to get to the other side. I am writing to understand not to explain. But you can write, he said. It’s a clear as a bell. How lovely to hear that. It felt good. And he wouldn’t soft soap me, not ever. See how blessed I am. I have to put it aside for the moment. I’ve a mountain of things to put in place now and I’ve another small writing commission just come in. But at least I know what to continue with, even if I am still in that fog. I will come through it. I will.
He’d stuck a tiny post-it note to his bedside lamp – ‘bulb gone, light kaput’. They are fiddly to change. You have to manoeuvre them out. I tut a little. But what beautiful little things they are. The glory of such inventions. Edison and his 1,000 goes.
Mrs Gaskell is dead. I missed her this morning at breakfast. She died suddenly without warning, falling into Meta’s arms. A heart attack. Instant death. She was only 55. She was happy, life was full, the serialised editions of Wives and Daughters had been well-received and her secret house, The Lawns in Hampshire, had just welcomed them for the first time. (Though she had yet to introduce her husband to it. The first time he sees it will be after her death and he never lived there.) She is long gone. Perhaps she has returned. Either way may she be at peace. What pleasure she has given me.
Harriet Vane and eventually Lord Peter Wimsey are to replace her. I’ve yet to warm to the book. Give it time. Uglow’s biography after all was put down for over five years before you picked it up again and persevered.
I tell him of my dreams and he marvels at what he calls their coherence. Are they coherent? Last night I was looking for a book. Well not looking. I was rummaging through a huge retail outlet full of antiques and ancient things. It was dark, no natural light and I came to an antiquarian bookshop and reached up to shelf to bring down a set of encyclopedias. I often try to read in my dreams. It is a difficult thing to do, at least it is for me. The letters move about or I just can’t recognise them. I was trying to read its title, thinking I could memorise it and try and find another edition slightly cheaper. After all, I told myself I don’t need it in such good condition. I also tried to read the price. It was in pencil and looked like it was in the thousands. It was perfect. Just was I was looking for, full of black and white illustrations, some with huge mouths. Then I was outside and rifling through another book stall where cheaper versions of similar books were stacked. Then I was in a cafe and my friend A was there with her grandchildren. (These are a fiction for now, as she has none.) I had meant to tell her that that cafe had the necessaries for sterilising bottles and warming up baby food. I was glad that she’d found it. Babies and feeding mothers dotted about the place. I was still obsessing about the book when I woke to my alarm.
He told me that ‘one can over think’. Can one? I want to understand. That’s all.
I began it. And there is power in the beginning of something, according to Goethe. And I shall do more today. It’s my world, I can write it as I choose. I get tense at the thought of it and long for tea to lift me. Not yet. Not till Monday. Be strong. To work. Herb tea will have to suffice.
I walked a different way home, up and up through the Buarth. One of the house’s lights were on, in their living room and the curtains were open. I stole a peek. It was a small front room with two two-seater sofas both draped in mushroom-coloured blankets. The imitation gas fire was on in the fireplace and on the wall facing the window was an array of butterflies, mostly single butterflies, framed individually. I stood for a moment, enchanted. Were they real? There were white paper ones too, stuck directly to the wall, flying in-between the frames.
Another heavily symbolic dream, lived through whilst the wind battered my open window. I was catching a train. It was a London one for there were those heavy, clunking doors. I went to the front of the train. Loads of people were trying to board. I was at the back of the queue. I let them all get on ahead of me, including 5 naked young men sans their sexual organs (they were either airbrushed out or they were wearing posing pouches). Then the lights went out and I couldn’t see my way on. I clutched at one of the handles to haul myself aboard as it began to roll out of the station. My friend J was behind me. I got on and she didn’t. I felt bad, should I have helped her? The doorway was packed full of luggage and I had to struggle over it. The front of the train, (that now looked more like a bus with the driver exposed and facing to the right rather than ahead), was full of children of all ages. The driver paid me no attention but talked away to a little boy near her (yes she was a she) handing him an Ipad to explain her point more easily. I searched around for a seat but the children had taken up all the room. I woke then and lay there listening to the wind.
I’m to return to my, for want of a better word, book. It’s been a while. Just re read it, he says. It’ll be better than you think. Read it. Immerse yourself in it. Then write. Good advice. How I long for tea.
Listened to Helen McCrory on DID yesterday. An interesting woman, unusual, I think but very engaging. I’m not an original, she said, I’m an interpreter. Hmm.
I woke from a heavy dream. A dream in which someone had brought me an aquarium, the design (they showed it to me in a what looked like an Argos catalogue) of which was hideous and lumpen, but what could I say? I tried to think about the pleasure and peace I may get from watching the fish swim back and forth (poor captured loves). Then there was talk of sea monsters (I was with a group of women) and they were there before us, alive, yellow and orange, half-men, half-fish, Poseidon-esque, and they are really there in the deep waters waiting for us, one of the women said. I had to walk through a deep dark street to get to this house of women, there were no streetlights and there was fog. I could hardly see where I was placing my feet. When I arrived I was told there was to be a party later that day and would I go. I surprised myself and said yes, but said that I wanted to read before then. What I am not sure. Then I was making this huge bed with the women watching me (R was there certainly) as were the sea monsters. Corner after corner I tucked in. They were the old fashioned blankets with satin tops. Do you remember them? Mum and Dad were involved. I think I was returning to them after the party. It would be late. Was I worrying about letting them know? So much imagery. Some from things I’ve read, crossword clues, things I heard people say on the radio. The unlit streets and the fog is where I am with my work. Going forward, or at least trying to, in the dark. I must do it. I must see it through. But I am scared. Of what? Of failure, of stumbling of being found wanting. Do it for yourself. Better than not doing it, eh?
The stories on From Our Own Correspondent yesterday were heart-rending. Here I am ‘playing-hungry’ with my fast and there are real people, working people, academics, starving with young children on the streets of Bogota having being evicted from their homes in Venezuela. What can we do? What would we do if they came to us? And then the final piece, by someone called Nick Bryant, I think, and his essay to his newborn daughter Honor. Or is it Honour? A homage to the America he once knew. And his saying to her that her white skin is a sign of privilege, that she won’t be stopped by the police and assumed guilty the way of person of colour is. Ah me. I feel my own inner racism, I don’t want it, I don’t own it but I know it is there. I don’t listen to their stories when I should. I feel the difference, know it but don’t want to. We are the same. How long will it take us to know this and make it alright? All equal. All the same. And be kind, be compassionate, be merciful. A heavy day. Let there be some light at the end of that tunnel.
Breakfast of rice and Mrs Gaskell. Soon she will die. And I shall miss her. As I miss her. Eight years ago today. May you rest in peace, always.
They’ve been running a trailer on the radio for a programme called ‘Soul Music’ in which several people talk about their personal connections and love for a particular piece of music. This week it’s been Handel’s Zadok the Priest. How I love it. Anyway, in one of the trailers (there are two, the other, rather bemusingly, is to do with cricket) two of the speakers talk about how the orchestra playing the piece at the Queen’s coronation in 1953 ‘loses itself’ that it is not together. This is not a criticism apparently, for both of them seem to like this aberration. It got me thinking about mistakes, both unintentional and intended ones. The Japanese have a word for it in ceramics, A has told me the word but I always forget it. And I remember the little Muslim boy in that workshop I ran all those years ago in Manchester saying how when carpets are made the makers always ‘make an error’ for ‘perfection belongs to Allah alone’. And there is me with my quilt – that enormous bulky thing – jagging the cloth and ruching it when there isn’t meant to ruching. Can I forgive myself and let the mistakes stand? And I watch the blackening start to come again on my third finger on my right hand. Can I just let it be? Is perfection God’s alone? Can I learn to let the just OK pass muster? I sew and unpick continually. My fingers getting hot and tired. But I am learning. Am I not?
Of Mrs Gaskell’s story, Cousin Phyllis, Jenny Uglow writes: “John, a self-taught mechanic and inventive genius, (is) a man who works out his ideas not for money but from passion, because…..’until he could put them into shape, they plagued him by night and day’.”
I claim no genius status, not at all, but the plaguing, the making for passion and the ‘need to put them into shape’ – that I recognise, that is me. And it’s OK, isn’t it? For at least the ideas come and I and my life is the richer for it. Isn’t it?
Three articles in Embroidery. How lovely. He is proud.
A sultry day yesterday and the morning still holds some of its warmth. I shall crack on with the quilt once the admin is complete. Onwards.
I remembered the title. It came into my head much later. Much later. A delay in memory, as is often the case when we do the crosswords over supper. Sluggish. My brain is sluggish, particularly when I am hungry.
I listened to the new radio adaptation of Miss Julie. I’ve never seen or read it. Hard to imagine what audiences of the late nineteenth century made of it. As shocking as Ibsen’s Ghosts and Doll’s House and Hedda Gabler must’ve been. And equally bleak. There was nowhere for these transgressing women to go. Death was the only option. Or self-annihilation in Nora Helmer’s case. It was beautifully done, recorded on location in some mansion in Denmark with all the echoes therein. I’m glad I listened but it was bleak. So bleak.
Sitting in the sun afterwards helped. Our ‘garden’ has been bulldozed along with all the sun-yellow weeds, insect life and butterfly life. Flattened. So we sit on our new little chairs like a couple of sunday-trippers parked up on a hillside pull-in in Derbyshire in the estate’s car park, hidden from view. We make do. Getting old seems to involve a lot of that. We talk. Yesterday it was about revenge and forgiveness, truth and reconciliation. He’s for revenge mostly, I take a more liberal view. He wants retribution for the loss of life over this virus, I want some good to come out of it. It’s good for us this though, it sharpens both our brains, I like it.
I long for the taste of things in my mouth. Yesterday it was fresh raspberries. And grapefruit juice. Shall I get you some? he asks. Get thee behind me. Leave it for another week. I want to be strong. The rice fast continues and my stomach still gnaws at me, hungry, eternally hungry. I think of that Hispanic man in Boston airport’s departure lounge taking his lunch break from working in the newsagents, opening up a tupperware and eating just rice. Cold rice. Cold white rice. Hunching over it, fork in hand, shovelling it in. And then raising his fork to great a colleague across the way from him who also had a tupperware container with what looked like pasta in it. Cold pasta, no sauce. I don’t need to do this but it makes me think. And that is enough. To know a little of hunger. We who need never go hungry. Though I have, and not always through choice. It stays with you, like the Auschwitz survivor who always carries bread in his pocket.
I dreamt of my friend. I was going to work for her, to do some teaching. I was travelling there by train but I forgot where her university was and got off at the wrong place. I asked for it when I got out and knew it was wrong. And then I was with her telling her that of course I knew all along she was in Leeds, how could I have forgotten? She was teaching pupils with Downs and it involved carrying lots of their belongings, mostly clothes. One of them was very ill, a lump on her leg. The rest is a blur, except for images of stations, of travelling, of journeying, of being on the move, trying to get somewhere. No, he says. Not yet. Not yet.
The short stories and book and the other book cook away in my head. In awe of Gaskell, I will try to push them through into life, into being. Write them for me, he says, I’d love to read them. Yes. That is enough. It is enough. All of this. Enough. A big enough life.
The sunrise was a gentle pink. The air warm. And it was light by 4.30 am. What a joy!
He calls me singular. She used to call me rigourous. I suppose I am both those things. I am certainly an ascetic. Or at least I lean towards asceticism. A Puritan, like the American in one of Oscar Wilde’s plays, though I cannot now remember the title. Something about a woman (played by Diana Rigg in the radio adaptation and Martin Jarvis was her ex-lover and he was the one who kept calling the young American girl the Puritan). The birdsong this morning is delightful. They command the morning time. (A collared dove has just landed on the television aerial outside my studio window. And I can hear its mate calling to it. Off it goes.) The rooks sit on the pan tiles of the roof opposite. They preen and stare, preen and stare and then fly off. The sky is clear, a beautiful day is promised. Why am I singular? I set such tasks for myself, they are tight, uncompromising. A test of strength, perhaps, usually to do with food. My head is full of ideas. Help me to see them through, to let them waste away through a lack of air is painful to me. We finished Wives and Daughters last night. It was moving and funny at the same time. Francesca Annis is splendid as Mrs Gibson, verging on the grotesque but strangely pathetic too. As is her daughter, the lovely Cynthia. And Michael Gambon as Squire Hamley is spell-binding. I loved it. Tonight we begin our revisiting of Cranford. The sun is such a joy shining through into the corners of my darkness. I miss her. I had such a longing to be held and to hold her this morning as I walked. Eight years dead. I wish she could have had a happier end. I know she is safe now. All sadness, grief and bitterness gone. I cannot ask for more. Help me to be all that I can be. Help me to overcome my fear of failure, of not being good enough. It was your hand-me-down that. I understand why. Let me be free of it. As much as I can. He’s left for his walk. And I have work to begin. Much. How I long for tea. How many days is it? The Gaskell bio continues to engross me, with Meta Gaskell, the eclipsed daughter, the artist with her portfolio of unfinished drawings, asking her friend, What shall I do?
