ellen bell

I spent the day going from cafe to cafe. I sat and watched mothers and babies, friends chatting, old men reading papers, lovers with lap dogs. I sketched the old men, wrote of my sadness and day dreamed of other people's lives.

Here I am nursing my melancholy with milky coffee in a cafe in Oslo and at just the same moment my dear, dear friend in Wales is anticipating the death of his mother with a hollowing despair, while other friends in a little village just outside Bath are feeling something like real joy with the advent of their marriage next month and my sister in Surrey is glowing with love as she feeds her new baby boy. Life in all its potency. The difference a day makes. There is no room for complacency. Life will take over.

'Live' she said to me last night. 'Live'. I wish I knew what she meant.