The Too-Crowded House

I wrote 'The Too-Crowded House' about two years ago. 

 

The formal writing came after I had illustrated it, and for a long time I had a lot of strange characters saying silly things to each other in my head. The troll made me laugh most of all, and I still get a bit of a giggle when I think about him clutching stinking socks.

 

Mr Spottles remains the archetype for all of my cat characters, and I have popped heart markings on almost all of my animals since as a little tribute to him. 

 

The stars were particularly special to me too; the first picture I ever put on my shop was 'The Grumpy Star' and she is, of course, what inspired me to name my shop Grumpy Star Studio.  

For one reason or another, I never did manage to get it published (and no, I am not at all interested in self-publishing). All the same, it is a story that was very dear to me when I wrote it and I thought it time I shared it somewhere. 

 

The pictures are just four of my favourites from the story, and you can find them on my Etsy and market shops. 

Enjoy x

“The Too-Crowded House” by Mel Macklin

It started as an ordinary morning. The moon, the stars, Mr Spottles and Camille were all sound asleep. Most mornings did start like this. Of course, this particular morning was Camille’s birthday. But for now, her bed was warm and snuggly and the perfect place to dream about the wonderful things she would do to celebrate.

 

 

Mr Spottles would have preferred to continue his catnap. Still, he thought Camille would want to know about the nasty burning smell coming from the kitchen.

Camille and Mr Spottles blinked their eyes. They did not often find witches in their kitchen.

“What are you doing?” asked Camille.

“We’re practicing our baking and potion-making,” said one witch, peering into a bowl she was holding over her head. “Our exams are tomorrow.”

“But it’s my kitchen,” said Camille.

“Never said it wasn’t,” replied another witch as she stirred something in Camille’s best bowl.

“It’s burnt!” cried the smallest witch, pulling a batch of blackened cupcakes from the oven. “I can’t concentrate! I’ll never pass my exams! It’s too crowded in here!”

For several good reasons, Camille thought it was time to leave the kitchen.

 

 

Camille padded to the bathroom to rinse her eyes. She was seeing odd things this morning and must not be well. Healthy people did not see witches in their kitchen. They especially did not see octopuses brushing their teeth in the bathroom sink.

“Go away!” wailed the mermaid in the bathtub. “I have a horrible squishy spot and you’re crowding it!”

Worse than the mermaid’s spot was the smell coming from the laundry. The troll jumped when he sensed Camille standing in the doorway.

“Um,” said the troll, looking very embarrassed.

“Yes?” said Camille, looking quite annoyed.

“I’m washing my socks . . .” said the troll.

“And?” asked Camille.

“It’s feeling very crowded with you standing there wrinkling your nose.”

“Humph!” said Camille as she stomped off, her nose in the air.

There was a glow in the sunroom, not just from the light streaming through the windows, but from the seven sleeping stars curled up in armchairs and snoring softly. They were very beautiful.

Camille stood in the doorway and stared until one of the stars woke up:

“What are you looking at?” she asked in a voice like silver.

“We fell in a star-shower and need to recharge our solar batteries to get back home.”

“Oh” said Camille, still dazzled.

“Now, if you don’t mind,” continued the star with a pretty little frown, “I’d rather you didn’t crowd us so.”

Camille took a deep breath at the top of her garden stairs. None of her other birthdays had been quite this mad. She gave up hoping things might return to normal when she saw a giant snail looking up at her.

“Hullo?” called a tinkly voice, belonging, Camille noticed, to a girl with very large goggles on her head. “Lots of snail stair-racing practice to do before the world final next week. Makes it a bit crowded with you just standing around gawping.”

Camille hurried down the steps into what used to be her garden. Little gnomes here and there were painting and planting red mushrooms. Camille’s garden had become a miniature mushroom city.

Camille realised there was no room left for her anywhere.

“It’s too crowded here!”

Everything was very quiet. Tears trickled down Camille’s cheeks in the evening sunshine. She wished her birthday had been as wonderful as she had dreamed only that morning. At the very least, she wished she had someone to share a bit of cake with. But everyone had forgotten it was Camille’s birthday.

“It’s lonely here,” she sniffled very softly, so only Mr Spottles could hear.

“SURPRISE!” cried the stars.

“SURPRISE!” cheered the gnomes.

“SURPRISE!” laughed the witches.

“SURPRISE!” smiled the troll.

“SURPRISE!” burbled the octopus.

“SURPRISE!” tootled the snail.

“SURPRISE!” tinkled his rider.

“SURPRISE!” neighed the unicorn.

“SURPRISE!” giggled the mermaid.

“Surprise Camille,” purred Mr Spottles.

“I thought for a while you might have guessed what was going on. The problem was that I’d invited so many people and I’m afraid our little house did get a bit crowded!”

Under the moon and the stars, her belly full of cake and tea, Camille fell asleep.

And her heart, like her house, was crowded- with love.

 

 

their hearts ran away with the circus

Meet Gabrielle and Rosalina, the star act at the Patchwork Circus!

At the precise moment I captured them here, Gabrielle and Rosalina have just performed their famous Glitter Jitterbug dance. Their little cheeks are flushed with happiness as they curtsey and are showered with roses, heart confetti and wild applause. Wherever the circus may go, everyone who sees it cannot help but fall in love with the sweet dancing sisters and their rosebud smiles.

It was a lot of fun as I drew them and got to know them to imagine how they live, and their hopes and dreams. They've been a part of the circus for as long as they can remember. Though they're orphans, they have hardly wanted for anything at all in their young lives: they love the circus and are utterly adored by their patchwork family. Gabrielle is about 15, and Rosalina 13. They looked much more alike when they were younger, and perhaps they don't share the same two parents, wherever they might be, but in each other's eyes and hearts they will always be sisters and the very best of friends.

They have always shared everything in life, including Gabrielle's Roberts Revival radio she got for her 8th birthday. When Rosalina reached double figures at the age of ten, her circus family presented her with a tiny little bundle of blue-grey fur with a heart-shaped splotch over one eye. Louie got his name later on that evening, when the famous Toots and the Maytals song, 'Louie Louie' came over the radio and the sisters discovered their new little kitten loved to dance! Every night he sleeps exactly between Gabrielle and Rosalina, at the foot of their huge feather bed, where they dream of singing and dancing and running away with the circus.



I'd love to hear your thoughts! And, if you love it, you can snap a print of 'A Patchwork Circus' for yourself for $50 on my Etsy Shop; just click on the link marked 'shop' at the top right of this post.

Have a wonderful day my little dancing liebchens,

Mel x



the woodchopper's daughter

My Auntie Cheryl and Uncle Steve have a wonderful sprawling house in Tyers, in the Gippsland region of Victoria. I spent almost half my childhood in this house, and it is one of my very favourite places to be in the world. 

From the lounge-room window at night-time, you can see all the lights in the LaTrobe Valley, like so many fallen stars waiting for the morning to return home. In the summer, the cicadas chirp and the air crackles with hot winds and the whispering of the pine plantations my father’s family have forested for so many generations. The backyard backs onto a gully, verdant with grass and blackberries my four-year old self would happily stain her fingers and mouth with, once I'd tired of petting Mitsy, my Aunt's pet goat. When I was five, my grandpa and Uncle Steve built me a cubby house with a view of the gully, and it was here I'd eat my Coco-Pops before Auntie took me to school in the morning.

There was always a friend for me to play with: Sam, the first of many faithful labradors my Aunt and Uncle have loved over the years, who would patiently sit anywhere he was told to whilst I stroked his velvety ears. There was dear old Skippy, so named for the leg he lost in a rabbit-trap as a kitten. Never was there a fluffier, happier little rag-bag cat, a marvel to watch as he hopped along at a quicker clip than most of us care to walk. After Sam went to doggy heaven there was Jake, who had eyes only for Uncle. Auntie and Uncle would always talk to him like a real person, and Jake seemed to understand them: he knew the word 'rabbit' meant sit up straight and proud like a setter and scan the lounge-room for any possible hoppity interlopers. He also knew the word 'bike' meant real and proper adventure in his elderly years: Jake had been trained as a puppy to sit in a (rather largish) crate my uncle had attached to the back of the motorbike he used to check on his cattle. Roaming around on the property was Jake's favourite thing, besides his 'Dad', my uncle.

The house itself is huge. Uncle took it upon himself about ten years ago to renovate parts of it, starting with a beautiful black slate floor to run its' length. At the time there were three mini-lounge rooms, which Uncle turned into one. The supporting beam is a sleeper from the old Melbourne docks, now festooned with gas lanterns to hang from the arm-sized nails that still stick from it. Backing onto the lounge room is a wooden deck, where I loved to sit as a child and listen to storms as the rain pounded and bounced in a deafening roar off the fibreglass canopy.

But my favourite of all is the wall by the front door. This has become a kind of family tree photo album over the years: hand coloured black and white, my beautiful late Grandma and my Grandpa on their wedding-day. Their features alike and ghostly with the age of the paper, my Uncle's family, the Richards, when they used to run the mill on Mount Erica. My beautiful cousin Kylie in her twenties, with freckles on her nose and the sweetest little pixie-cut. My Uncle's sister, who to me was always 'Auntie Pat', her lovely heart-shaped features framed by a silky-grey mane of hair, spilling down to her waist while she made something sparkly and delicate with her hands. Me, blonde and five years old on my first day of school.

But my favourite picture on this red-brick wall is of my Uncle Steve. Here, he is twenty-two, laughing hugely and balanced confidently atop a man-sized log; his hands gripping an axe that is forever caught in mid-air, mid-chop, hair bouncing thickly to his shoulders. I can't imagine he's changed all that much in the forty years since this photo was taken, though his hair, even in black and white, seemed closer to a crimson than the strawberry, pepper-flecked tones he keeps in his sixties, and much longer. But there is that same twinkle in his eye, of mischief, of a face that smiles often; a face that looks at home with a deep rumbling belly laugh or a few bars of an Elvis song, pitch perfect. In photos I've seen of Uncle a little later, he lopped his curls off into an Elvis-style pompadour. And when I came along, we'd spend afternoons in the sun room, he on the keyboard and backing up my broken little vocals to 'How much is that doggy in the window'.

'The Woodchopper's Daughter' is a little tribute to all of this: a landscape of gum and pine, of crackly summer days, of a house- you can't see it yet, but just over that hill yonder, of childhood adventures. And the hum of an Elvis song.

Mel x