I want to pay attention, if only to still my mind. It starts to fret and needle as I walk. It is worst at the beginning. I try to turn myself outward, outside of thought. I smell the air, always such a surprise when I first encounter it. This morning it is the odour of freshly fallen rain. The atmosphere is still heavy with it. Wetness on the eyelashes. I stop at the breast of the hill by Alexandra Hall and see the beads of dew on the grass. A sort of hard, wiry kind of grass, like the beach kind (it is marren or marron?). Cutting and harsh. The dew hangs like jewels shining in the lamplight. The Promenade is a mess of grainy sand. There must have been high tides. The lights from the pier are ablaze. Pier Pressure is still open at 3.45 am. There are several students eating on benches. Empty pizza boxes lie wet and flattened on the Promenade flag stones. Two girls hover outside the door to the nightclub. She went down to eight stone, one of them is saying. No coats. They shiver as they talk. The hissing clamour of the starlings underneath the pier grows louder. The stink of guano makes me want to retch. I endeavour to close my nostrils to it. Coming from the Castle to Great Darkgate Street there is the usual hullabaloo of students gathered by the clock. The girls wear almost nothing. Miniscule dresses tight across flesh, exposing voluminous thighs. Do they feel beautiful? I watch as two middle-aged men stare. Keeping on walking I pass a group of boys and girls waiting for a taxi. One of the girls in wearing a black and white striped short jumpsuit. I find myself staring. Hello, says one of the boys to me. I smile. Ooooooo, he says. You going for a walk? he asks. I’m halfway down the hill by now. Chain reaction, he is saying. On Llanbadarn Road I hear birdsong. Is it a chiff chaff? Then there is a robin bobbing, first on the road then from pavement to tree.
Waiting for him by the gate yesterday there was a crow then a squirrel perched on top of a fence. We were all looking at each other. A moment of stillness. The crow its head on one side and the squirrel frozen, its paws clinging to the fence post. And me, smiling, holding my breath.
I got so blue talking about it to him on Thursday. I need his good opinion. He is in an invidious position. He is my judge, I make it so. My reader, my editor, my outside world. Outside of my head. And he tries his best to be fair, to be honest and helpful. He wants clarity and I don’t always feel it. I fuss and fiddle over detail. It has always been so. This time it is about the costume. What a great day. I cannot tell you how good it feels to be in corset and crinoline. It felt like coming home. It felt natural to me. The clothes fit. But the top, the jacket doesn’t. Is it because it is too big or just too fussy? I don’t know. I want to be half-and-half. This isn’t just a historical performance, a simple – this is a Victorian woman sewing. It is more than that. It is an experiment in practice. A practice-experiment. I want to know how it feels. I want to see what happens. Wearing the whole costume limits it. Contains it. Provides a full stop. I am still trying to get somewhere. If I make it all too finished, too complete the destination will not be discovered. He argues for clarity again. They will need to know. They will want to understand. Yes, he is right.
What places you take me to, he says as we park the car outside a huge, seemingly derelict, lock-up on the West side of Cardiff. We call them adventures and they are. Me in my underwear stepping into a crinoline and being strapped up into a corset. No heating. Judith, Welsh National Opera’s wardrobe mistress is in a padded coat and boots. I never take them off when I’m here, she says. She doesn’t want me to help. I raise my arms above my head. My body jerks was she tightens the corset’s laces. I am high on it all. It feels right. It feels like home. The restraint of it. My rib cage, my waist all contained. Rigid and hard. Held. Will it work? Will it read? I need to write about it. I need to write it all down. Write it out. It is about associations, triggers. Drawing Room and nineteenth century associations of domestic work, needlework, silent restraint, busy hands keeping busy and the murmurs of voices. But it is also about writing. Forming words, finding words. Writing what you see and feel. And the tension of it all. Am I a writer or an artist? The pull of each. And the domestic part of it. Made at home. Contained in the home. The artist contained, restrained and safe within. Emily Dickenson, Charlotte Bronte and Jane Austen. Domestic writers. It will come together. It will but each stage must be lived out. Felt.
A milky sky. We have coffee out first thing. He asked my name. It is rare. His is enough. He says it now at every opportunity. Bye, he says. Bye.
