there was once a woodsman with wavy, auburn hair who met a typist wearing a crimson, mohair dress. they travelled the country, then made a home and two children to fill it.
the first child was scared of woodlice and the silence of night, but she was clever and tremendously caring and so became a nurse. the second child was not scared of woodlice, she collected them and secretly let them toss and turn on the tartan settee while no one was watching. she spent her time writing tales set in worlds far away from their countryside town.
there was one train out of this town. the second child saved and saved for the fare, slowly filling her terracotta pot until it could hold no more. in return for these savings the station master sold her a single brown ticket. this was it. she had made it. resting in a musty carriage she watched the herds of cattle and thatched farmhouses fade away and waited for the hopeful smog of the city to swallow her up.
she settled into a small warehouse in shoreditch, which she filled with typewriters, salvaged tea sets and a settee of her own, to share with her tiger cat. the countryside did not escape her though. sitting in a tumbledown garden, in a greenhouse full of books, she writes about the woodsman and the typist and the world she left behind, and is filling up that terracotta pot to make her return.