Dear tepocates,

I know some of you would have been delighted in the +30º heatwave and I am happy for you, but happier still that it has passed. I am tropical from the mountains; I don’t do heat very well.

The way I do heat well is to move as little as possible and save the tasks for the respite of the evening. This is a very effective way to run out of stuff because shops close whilst we are still baking.

I get into my car and the window is fuzzy with pollen and dust. There is also the odd caked starling or pigeon souvenir, the downside of parking under the shade of a tree. It is unfortunate that the very dishwashing liquid I would use to deal with bird poo has run out and is the reason I am driving to the other side of town, with four empty bottles of different sizes to refill. I will feel triumphant about keeping these bits of plastic in use and not free range to go torment some sea creature or other. By far the easiest thing would have been to walk to coop and get a new bottle. The real reason I am driving is to avoid working on the book I am sharing with my editor early next month, which is technically next week. Probably the same reason I am writing this post.

So I get into my filthy but reliable old car and drive to Romsey. We used to live there. It was my first neighbourhood in England. A small part of me fits right in. That small part does not include the car. There is nowhere to park. So I walk a good way round the old terraced neighbourhood where things are recognisably not not what they were twenty years ago. This scenic urban walk with empty dishwashing bottles on tow is a lot longer on the way back. There wasn’t enough refill to fill all our bottles but thankfully enough to make this trip unnecessary for a while.

I am sweaty and annoyed by the time I get back to my car. I am confronted with bits of bird poo I had not seen from the inside and I consider perhaps mine is the filthiest car on the road. This is not my own annoyance, mind, it is more my father’s, who in life was a car fanatic and would probably rather die again rather than be seen with bird poo on his bonnet.

I drive back home with car washing intentions through Elizabeth Bridge. I approach the speed camera feeling unnecessarily guilty as I feel every time I drive past a speed camera, or walk next to a police officer. A part of me would really like to floor it just to see the flashing light. To be guilty and not just feel it. Thankfully that part of me is neither my right nor my left foot, so pedals remain unfloored and the car moves along innocently and well behind the cars in front. At the roundabout most of the cars go straight or right and it is only when I turn left that I notice the car in front of me is a hearse, a smart vehicle constantly refilling.

I am now driving ever so slowly in the heat, in a filthy car, behind an immaculate hearse

It is a Volvo, it is black, it has tall shiny windows all the way round; a dry moving fishbowl. Every single surface is clean, gleaming, spotless. Everything is reflecting on the curved surfaces of the hearse, as if reality has been liquified and it is slipping off the back window slowly and smoothly, uninterrupted by even a single speck of dust, dripping in whole images: a serene river of blue sky, tree canopies, traffic lights, lamp posts, white vans, a dirty blue car.

At Mitcham’s Corner the hearse is unexpectedly on the middle lane, so I ease next to it to turn right. The driver and the assistant are both wearing dark uniforms with little shinny buckles, black caps and gloves. I wonder what it is like to work in ceremony every day, to polish every surface to make it special for the departed or the family of the departed; to operate everyday in precise pristine predictable ritual. Every material in the hearse could be new. Brass handles on a walnut coffin held in place by adjustable chrome brackets. Unlike other work vehicles, I don’t reckon this one is ever doing weekend runs to Ikea. A hearse must have a very limited range of trips. From the morgue to the crematorium or cemetery via perhaps a place of worship and then back to base to get clean and polished some more for the next passenger. A moving container, for the wood containers of the no longer contained.

The hearse driver has realised that they are in the wrong lane and is now signalling right. I do wonder, as I let it in front of me again, how undertakers operate in a kind of different time. I have the opportunity to go in front, I know that driving behind the hearse will mean driving at hearse speed, but it just doesn’t feel right to overtake a person in a coffin. We are all going where they are going.

Do I really need to get anywhere fast?

As I drive behind them on Victoria Avenue, I can see the coffin is of standard size (or what I imagine to be standard size). I could easily fit in there. At the traffic light I can see the chrome brackets have a lot of room between them. In death you can be a lot wider but perhaps not much taller. Sometimes there are big garlands of flowers next to the coffin spelling grandad, or mum or the person’s name. This time a smart simple spread of red roses and white flowers and foliage cover about half of the coffin with nothing on the sides. There are two hand written notes on top of the flowers, one of them is pink. I can almost make words on the notes, were it not for my middle-aged eyesight, pollen on the windscreen and that I really shouldn’t .

Just as I can’t overtake the hearse, we can’t overtake death. We can’t really plan for it, not beyond certain paperwork and logistics. Death will come one day for each and every one of us, grief hitting our loved ones as brand new, tailor made trucks. I briefly fantasise about putting together a video to be played at my own funeral. But A) I hate making videos and B) my funeral will not be about me. It may feature some interpretation of who I was according to whoever organises it and those present. I can already tell the celebrant will make a mess out of my name despite their good efforts. That is, if I get to have a funeral and anyone who knew me comes. Having missed both my parents’ I perhaps see funerals as more cathartic than they may be. But I do know that letting ritual take over is quite useful.

Huntingdon Road is the way home and also the way to the crematorium. It is not uncommon for us to be slowed down by a hearse on the road. Annoyance dissolves on the face of death. Usually when traffic is slower still, there is also a convoy of mourners on cars behind. I look all around and I can not make out the mourners of the person under the flowers. I am the driver immediately behind the hearse and unearned sympathy comes my way. I am a stranger to the person in the coffin and my car is a disgrace. I wish I could do better for this stranger but all I can give them is the solemnity of a slow drive.

As the hearse progresses up the long straight road a certain quiet envelops it.

A bubble of silence moves with it. Just as I can’t overtake, cars around us slow down, some pedestrians bow their heads or simply stop and glance, the majority gets on with their day: rivers past rocks. It is not customary here to pay so much attention to Death. When its right next to you, and it’s undeniably there, you haven’t got much choice but to acknowledge it, riding its shiny car. It is not until Death touches you close that you can feel just how uncointained it is.

Following the chaotic pointless battle to avoid it, post death social rituals are planned, choreographed practiced , evolved, perfected to give a dignified send off, riding a hearse, inside an unused box. But none of this prepares those loved ones for facing the next private chapter: the sorting of the redundant, the inconceivable glut of choices: keep, give away, sell, for every single item that belonged to someone who no longer is, in order to make space available for refill.

As the hearse now continues up the road I turn right for home. There will be some shampoo left over in what used to be my bathroom one day. Some of my shampoo will outlive me. One day I will buy shampoo that will see me through and not the other way around. I don’t know why this hits me as I park: someone is going to have to deal with my unused shampoo one day. I would be horrified to think someone will just bin it considering how much I pay for it. It is lovely it has a subtle hint of coconut and a refill last me a whole year.

A year used to feel like a long time.

I hope when it is my turn to ride in a box in a clean and shiny black car, I have had the good sense to get rid of most of those things that are useful to no one (are they useful even now?). But I guess some things must remain as clues of who we were, for those who need those clues then. As I go into my house I see my daughter and her boyfriend with recently washed hair and I give my daughter a big kiss. I am so happy it is now. They have made a mess out of the kitchen and something is smelling wonderful. I am refilled.

I may wash the car another day.

topical or tropical?

Here is a little snippet of work I am avoiding…

book bits…

As I recover my reading from the clutches of screen time and techno capitalism I would like to share favourite lines, paragraphs or bits that speak to me from books I am currently reading or re-reading or even re-re-re-reading!

Small Gods by Terry Pratchett, Victor Gollancz Ltd (Orion)1992

p.234

I loved this book which my son started reading to me on a long drive to Scotland. He’s an exceptional reader and I was hooked by the story of the great but small god Om in their most vulnerable turtle-ness.

There was a C. N. Mitcham’s Shop for menswear, offering shirts flannels raincoats which traded from 1909 to 1977 which gave Mitcham’s Corner its name. A shop may be just a moment in time held together by the commitment and passion of shopkeepers and customers but their legacy can endure way past their last day of trading.

Let’s support our local shops. No online monopoly is inevitable. Choose a local taxpaying shops for every purchase!

Window painting

Let’s make an event out of your shop window!

Do you have a window shop in need of some life? I’m offering window illustration for bookshops, coffeeshops, hardware stores etc… I would love to communicate the passion you have for your shop.

Paint our window!

Why is this called Frogs in a Teacup?

If you enjoyed this and can think of some other living human who might do too, please share!

Share frogs in a teacup

Ribbit! xx

Thank you for joining the frogs.

My hope is that I will add something valuable to your day, something that will reconnect you with your own curiosities, or be a bridge to another thought that leads you where you want to go, or makes you smile. Please do let me know what you think

Leave a comment

Enjoy the tea, and please mind the legs.

Salve Tepocates!

(Salve!: Italian for Hello, typical greeting in Bologna, derived from Latin imperative of be well/be in good health/be safe. Tepocates: Spanish, derived from Náhuatl, for tadpoles, or as I like to think: frogs in progress)

Bologna Book Fair is the biggest international trade fair of children’s books in the world. But this is only the surface of it. Within the same time-space Bologna offers many different things to many different people. You can meet students, professors, authors, illustrators, translators, librarians, publishers, editors, rights people, printers, colour specialists, distributors, ambassadors, cultural attachés, festival organisers, scholars, activists, God help us, poets… And at each encounter we can interact from that most superficial level to our most personal and vulnerable.

Just as our interactions with others can stay in conversations that touch techniques, practice, projects, fees, exhibitions… etc. unlike social media, this place offers real human connection: we bring our whole selves (minus home responsibilities) and we are ready and primed to welcome others into the shared experience, delighting and shocking our senses.

This fair in particular celebrates illustration as you can see from all the spaces dedicated to exhibitions on the diagram above. There is even more in the city. We illustrators are not used to having such a spotlight. Making books the rest of the year can be a very lonely activity for creators (of words or pictures) but for some spring days in Italy we can put the quiet and loneliness on hold and let loose in an environment that is effervescent with opportunity. Even though not the whole world of publishing is represented, there is enough of it to be completely overwhelming, especially if you have never been before.

During the fair the stimulation never relents. Only after can we process what we have learned and who we have met, and how those show us new ways of doing what we do and new ways of seeing.

So I offer to you three images of what the fair can be…

-a stone, thrown into calm settled waters, making ripples

-a river, taking you to an unknown destinations

-a field of grass, parting in the breeze

a stone…

Even if you are lucky to live in a country that buys a lot of books from other parts of the world, not everything gets translated. At Bologna you get to experience books not understanding the text, decoding and enjoying images page by page as a child would before learning to read words.

Being at the fair is a disruptor to our thinking. A stone making a splash in the flat concept we had of what a book is. The experience shatters the flat surface of our practice—what we see, what we read, who we meet, our conversations— creating ripples that will inevitably change the shape of our own ideas. And that shattering will spread through the weeks and months after.

This year I read a book that made me sob with gratitude, the gratitude of the girl within me that needed to know that it wasn’t my fault. The children who need the books we make will not only be the children who are children now, but also the children who are still there, deep within those adults reading these books. We can still reach those children.

Wherever we come from in the world, and whatever we have been working on, this week makes a difference. It contextualises what we do. How do we share this gift? As my friend Sam said last Thursday, “There is your world, and then there is the bigger world...”

The wall of water will close around the stone as it sinks to the bottom. But the ripples will go across the whole surface. We will be agitated and changed. Even when the water settles, it will settle a speck higher, it will reach a smidge wider.

Our work can be present and agitated in both our world and the bigger one.

a river…

The first few times I came to the fair I made all the appointments I could, and returned frustrated about the people I didn’t talk to, the things I didn’t do or couldn’t fit in to see. Now I realise there is no way to take all that in, there are too many lovely people to meet, too many books to read, too many illustrations to see… and even if you had eternity to go through all of them, you only need the ones you need, you only serve the ones you have something for.

As an author in both words and pictures, what my everyday looks like is very contained and controlled. Being at the fair I feel an undercurrent: a force that propels us in directions not necessarily of our conscious choosing.

Go with a friend, aim for something, and then let go!

Commitments aside, float and take in the scenery. Enjoy the little eddies and unexpected conversations. Don’t fight the current, even when it takes you to unfamiliar territories.

Although something pulls you, you still need to walk long distances to get to venues, or talks or meeting points. It helps that I have a great sense of direction* especially when I know where I am going. But it is also fun to follow someone who thinks they are following you. Somehow we each get to where we need to be. I don’t know if that somehow, is chance, or gut instinct, or mi Abuela, but for the purpose of staying in images, let’s call it a river. A river that takes you through your unique version of the experience and delivers you back to sea. Trust the river to deliver.

*(not consistently)

This going with the flow is also very empowering when things don’t go according to plan. I am incredibly proud of everyone overcoming every category of difficulty that a year can throw at them, be it natural or human made disasters. Thank you for still being here, thank you for your joy and commitment to what you do.

a field of grass…

Writing can be really awful. It is so easy to get lost in tight little knots. We tie ourselves with the same references and parameters, our concepts get buried in words, in detail, in fluff. Whatever insight propelled us here, our bird’s-eye view is now grounded and we can’t remember the way. Every direction seems plausible. We are in a field of grass, taller than us. We can feel our book just beyond, but which way?

Conversations with our wider book family and community is like a blustery day in the field, a gust that blows the tall grasses apart to reveal a clear path through. There is where I need to go!

Airing your book ideas at the fair is airing your thoughts in a field of gold with glistening long blades separating to reveal not just the paths we are on but also the other creators on it. They are comrades of our times, making their way through the particular areas that concern them.

Bologna offers four days for such path openings, and although initially different people will pull our books in different directions, enough people will flatten enough grass that we can see our way. After all, it is a massive industry and our role in it is tiny and easy to misplace.

This, trust me, was so much clearer when we were drunk on the last night, trying to hold on to the mysticism of the experience. The grass around me is already standing.

I never want the normal quiet everyday to claim all that space back. I want some of that Bologna mystery to linger.

Inevitably the everyday will close around us, life will happen, Tuesday will turn into Summer. But some little specks of light could come. I will keep in touch with the new people in my life and devour the books that came in my suitcase at leisure.

May the stone, the river and the field of grass move you towards the books you need to read and the books you need to create.

x, cra-cra!

(Italian for Ribbit!)

Thank you for joining the frogs.

My hope is that I will add something valuable to your day, something that will reconnect you with your own curiosities, or be a bridge to another thought that leads you where you want to go, or makes you smile. Please do let me know what you think

Leave a comment

Enjoy the tea, and please mind the legs.

Hola tepocates!

Hello tadpoles! Thank you for subscribing! I am a kind of tropical creature from Guatemala, at home in Northern Europe. I am at my happiest walking around 55º North, wearing a jumper, looking for treasure in charity shops, drawing as I think and discovering books and zines and illustration in all sorts of places.

But I live on fruit, flavour and colour and I miss volcanoes and tortillas and zapotes.

I lived half my life en Español, in Central America, and the current half in English in Europe. I grew up not really knowing where or what I came from, or what was happening around me, but I am learning, and as I learn my sense of self shifts, and expands.

Where do I belong? I guess wherever I am welcome. I am certainly home in more than one place. I hope the frogs and I are welcome in your inbox!

But why frogs in a teacup?

I looked for a name for this project that could instantly suggest the tension between ideas, which are organic, messy and unpredictable, and forms, very fine and finite containers, not quite ever fully containing those ideas.

However hard we try to grab our thoughts and pin them down into words or pictures, they will be free to just jump out and swim into other people’s heads. They will be too slippery to hold. But that moment, when frogs are in the teacup, mingling with other frogs, that is the moment creativity spawns into something. Let’s see what happens...

Why here and now?

Belonging, identity, complexity and space are all important to me.

Like many others, I am reassessing my relationship to social media, trying to find better ways to be outside of devices and data, and recovering my attention span and reading habits. But at the same time I do love being alive at a time when we can connect with each other through technology, even if we are in completely different parts of the world and may not even share a language. We share living in our beautiful planet and I am sure there is a lot more that we have in common. Let’s allow ourselves the time to find out.

I seek to connect with you, to let you know what I have been thinking and sharing the processes that turn those thoughts into books, ceramics, images and whatnot. If those ideas have jumped in and out of your head and you recognise them in my work, I hope this makes you see that you are not alone.

Can frogs be happy in a teacup? It all depends where the teacup is, what the water is like, what other frogs and creatures are inside. Let’s find out.

I’m hoping to pop into your inbox around every two weeks. I will write mostly in English, I will draw in marks and gestures, I will share photos taken with my phone.

I will post on the app and on notes more often.

There will be no paywalls.

Thank you for joining the frogs.

My hope is that I will add something valuable to your day, something that will reconnect you with your own curiosities, or be a bridge to another thought that leads you where you want to go, or make you smile.

Please let me know what you think.

Leave a comment

Enjoy the tea, and please mind the legs.

When you get a glimpse of your self though the eyes of someone who loves you, it is the greatest gift. You are that resilient, you are that versatile, you are that desirable, you are that thoughtful, you are that brave, you are that kind.

All you can take from someone who loves you is that self, and hopefully you give that love back a plenty by allowing them to be known by you, deeply and unreservedly and for you to embrace that self completely before handing it back to them, wrapped in your tender gaze.

For them to know that you are one of those who hold them, that you are a vessel for them to inhabit. That in their life they are known by you and they are not going to live through the horrors and wonders of life unwitnessed.

I wrote the above thoughts on love in 2021 after returning from a very difficult trip to Guatemala. Difficult, yet so very wonderful. The first photo is from that trip, the second one is the breaking of the Winter Solstice dawn in 2025.

Thank you for joining the frogs.

My hope is that I will add something valuable to your day, something that will reconnect you with your own curiosities, or be a bridge to another thought that leads you where you want to go, or makes you smile.

Enjoy the tea, and please mind the legs.