Illustrated fiction;Julia Green and Esther Coombs

Prose poem: Trains

It’s a movie. There’s a woman on a train. In that book, they ride a train. We all have many, many places to hurdle toward and escape from, and thank god for all these trains. How else would we seek out that important, forgotten place? Or elude the demanding members of our family? On trains, we are happily free to sob and huff and clutch handkerchiefs to our cheeks as the rumbles shake our bowels and the steam whistle echoes our mourning. We stare out at the cows in the fields. Brown and slow, they are firmly rooted in the earth upon which they stand, while we zip by. We long for the cow’s life, chewing the same cud every day, teats manipulated diligently, daily, giving the world milk. We wish to be that purposeful.

But we are not. We don’t even know where we’re going, or why we feel the strange way we feel. All we know is the conductor does not look at us knowingly, and teenage hooligans are caught rifling through bags at the edge of the car. A baby cries and two cell phones ring and it’s too hard to hear the romance of the journey above the infernal din. Someone cracks a window, and the smell of cow shit is everywhere.

Commission anyone?

Hey folks,
I'm about to open up a new part of my etsy shop, a commissions area..!
I've been picking up some great stuff at boot fairs of late and they are just perfect for commissions..
I get many enquires about commissions for gifts, weddings or for your own home, and this is how it will work, purchase a blank item at the full finished price, email me your image and hey presto finished drawn on commission winging its way to you!
I cant wait to be doing all the new drawing projects!
Here are just a few jugs i have right now which would be perfect for commissions!
Hope to hear from you soon,
Esther

My Shed Jug - Illustrated fiction

The garden shed was a strange place to keep a pitcher, but nobody ever moved it, and that, of course, was why it was broken. It was a shed like any other -- a musty repository of hoes, rakes, and spiders -- but the pitcher seemed extraordinary. It was lovely, and I remember the feeling of horror I felt when I saw it at the charity shop and realized somebody had chosen to discard it. I took it home, determined to cherish it. But the cupboards were already quite full, and somehow everyone just took the water straight from the tap, and ignored the pitcher altogether.

So I made Seamus -- who was 15 then and already taller than my husband, me, and everybody else we’d ever met -- put it in the shed, thinking we might use it to water some flowers or herbs in a few months’ time. But we didn’t, and the next time I saw it, the thing was shattered and scattered across the floor.

I assumed it was the work of a critter, some lost squirrel or chipmunk who, upon finding nothing to eat acted out his anger and disappointment by simply knocking things over. I swept up the shards and carried them to the bin by the back door of the house. I went back inside; Seamus was making breakfast, and when I told him about the broken pitcher, his face registered alarm, as if he’d just remembered leaving his keys in the door. Then the flicker of worry was gone. I thought nothing of it then; I was sad about the pitcher, but I’d paid a quid for it at a charity shop, which wasn’t much to cry over.

Ten years later, Seamus got married and when his new sister-in-law got up to toast the couple, she was already quite tipsy and the first thing she said was, "I knew Seamus and Lila would get married after she called me to tell me about what happened in the garden shed." She actually didn’t say much more than that, quickly segueing to the spontaneity and immediacy of their love, which I agreed with. We raised our champagne flutes and suddenly I longed to have a day of Seamus’ childhood back. It wasn’t the innocence I missed, just the opposite in fact. I missed the mischief.

Seed Markers featured in the Observer Magazine

My seed markers are today featured in the Observer Magazines eco issue, in a line of products picked out by the Master of Style Wayne Hemingway, Thank you Wayne!! if you have seen the article and are looking for a link to my seed markers you can by them here! in my etsy shop.

First ever item i have listed for sale on ebay...

And it a real cutie, hope someone gives it a home check it out, click here!

New summer collection

Some great new work has just gone up on my etsy shop and with the summery wedding season soon upon us some of these would be great gifts, and ideal and unique item i hope and lets face it with the current climate a pretty reasonable spend, check out more on my etsy store.

Open studios lovelyness!

I'm showing at Crafts Centrals open studios 'Made in Clerkenwell next month and I'm starting to pull everything together in prep for it and thought you might like to see the very pretty flyer with info....