1. It’s lovely to see everyone’s zines coming together – neon pamphlets with serious messages, little fold-ups on mental health and feminism, and muted colours & pages from old books gathered together into what looks more like a gorgeous artbook. Mine feels silly and frivolous as I knew it would but I’m still happy with it when it finally comes together. I have a lot of compiling and stitching work to do this week but I decide I want one finished before I leave the stall. When I get home, John says it feels like a proper book.
1b. It’s been a great little course – learning about letterpress, bookbinding and all sorts of collage/layout techniques – but the most important lesson I’ve learnt was probably in the first week. Someone said that we – as people, as women – need to learn to take up space. A few times while I’ve been making my zine, I’ve thought ‘who would want to read this?’ but the point isn’t to sell to a million people: it’s to reach a dozen or so people who nod along because they experienced something similar or are interested because they didn’t. Nearly all my favourite comics/graphic novels are by indie biographical artists – I just like reading about their everyday lives. And, most notably, they nearly all started out self-publishing zines – daring to put their work and themselves out there, to say ‘I’m here, I have a voice to be heard’.
2. I need something to eat but not too much because we’ll be eating dinner early. I grab a hot sausage roll from a bakery and you know what, it’s pretty good. It’s salty and greasy, and deeply nostalgic of when I used to eat hot sausage rolls, while waiting for my mum in the old post office in Crosby.
3. To Leeds. A smooth hot chocolate and a wander around the shops. MyThai looks like it’ll be full again but the friendliest waitress in the world invites us inside, saying there is an empty table right at the back. A table also opens up for us at North Bar, where I spin my little straw around my coke glass, and I get John to lean in to me, then burp loudly in his ear. Finally, we go back up the road to the Grand. We haven’t really heard much by either the support artist (Fuzzy Jones) or even the main band (The Shee) but are won over by both. Specifically, I enjoy the complementary sound of the two guitars and the warmth of the bass over Fuzzy’s vocals, and am impressed with the fullness of the sound particularly in the last song. And we just don’t know where to look during The Shee – each instrument and voice just beautiful in their clarity and passion.
3b. John looks around to see if we know anyone there. I doubt him but then he notices that we’re sat next to his mum and dad’s neighbours.
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