Saturday

Published Categorised as Life in General, Zines 2 Comments on Saturday

Zine Stall

On Saturday I did zine stalls at Brix­ton Record Fair and Bloody Icecream. I brought a film camera with me, and the film is at the lab still, but I took some (not fant­ast­ic) phone pics too.

Like I said earli­er, I am currently in Kent look­ing after my mum’s cats while she tos and fros seeing to my grandad and his affairs (my nan died at Christ­mas, and my grandad is a frail old man of 88 who can’t really look after himself any more. He finally decided to move to a home a few days ago after ending up in hospit­al three times in one week). I’m still job-hunt­ing and going to fruit­less inter­views. Tukru came round on Friday night, with the idea we would eat pizza and have some drinks and make things. She had some zine to work on, but it didn’t really happen. We drank too much cheap fake malibu. That drink makes me think of being 15.

Cheap fake malibu

I did however manage to make this for the next day:

Zine sign

The Ercol coffee table cost £2 from the Autist­ic Shop in Read­ing, still possibly the best char­ity shop I’ve ever encountered. I got a made in East Germany amp there for £2 that I’m surprised never exploded, and an impress­ive-look­ing reel-to-reel tape machine that did go pop. They had an old man who volun­teered there who would check elec­tric­al things over, but I don’t think he did a very care­ful job.I’m kind of glad that the coffee table has dodgy varnish and coffee marks that came on it, because I looked it up on ebay once, and the price of ones in good condi­tion would make me scared to use it if it were still like new. My dad has the dining table and side­board that he bought in the 60s, and they are still look­ing good, prob­ably because they weren’t out on the pave­ment by a char­ity shop for a week. It’s the only bit of my furniture currently in use, all my stuff is still in boxes, wait­ing for me to find a place to live.

Tukru discontent

Tukru didn’t get much zine done. Appar­ently I’m a “bad influ­ence”. I titled this one on Instagram, “Tukru is an unpro­duct­ive member of soci­ety”.

Next day I went to Brix­ton to do the stall with Fliss. It was a pleas­antly smooth jour­ney. I arrived in plenty of time, had no trouble find­ing the venue, and the table was all ready for us.

Zine Stall

You can see my zines, the ones from Tukru’s distro, Fliss’s zines, and some unwanted cds and music dvds of hers. A lot of the cds were duplic­ates, and there was a Banarama one that her boyfriend had bought look­ing for a song he loved when he was a kid, but it turned out not to be by Bananarama. The table­cloth is mine. I once shared a house with some very boring people, who banned me from using the table cloth down­stairs on the grounds it was “hideous”. Pah.The jar was to collect money for Luke Haines‘ ill cat.

We met some really nice people, and F’s friends Yoko and Ellen came too. A man picked up a Stock­hausen CD from the box and looked unde­cided about it and asked us to describe the music. He seemed to like our spur of the moment descrip­tions so much that he imme­di­ately bought it. He seemed oddly suggest­ible, and I think it was a pity that we didn’t think of persuad­ing him to buy the Banan­rama cd too.

I went with Feli­city and Yoko to get some food and have a few drinks around Brix­ton before going to Bloody Ice Cream. We found a cheap Thai place on Cold­har­bour Lane and saw this on the menu:

Drunkled Noodes

I’ll write about Bloody Ice Cream and the bands when I get the film back tomor­row.

I had a really good time, but my jour­ney home spoilt it. I left the gig early because I hate getting the last train back to Chath­am, it’s always full of lowlifes. There’s no trains to Kent between 12.30 and 6am. The train was full of loud drunk small-minded idiots. I had my ipod, but the batter­ies ran out so I had to hear them and avoid making eye contact at all times. There was a really nasty group of young men sitting by the only toilet on the train. Every time a woman went into the toilet they star­ted yelling disgust­ing things at her. I really didn’t want to use it, but the train was delayed, and after an hour I really needed to go, so I decided to brave it rather than have to walk from the station burst­ing for the loo.

As I walked past them, star­ing ahead in the haught­i­est way I could, the train went over a bump, and I tripped, and a tissue fell out of my pock­et. The nearest man imme­di­ately star­ted scream­ing at me to pick the tissue up and that I was disgust­ing and would give him diseases. I didn’t say a word (didn’t pick it up either) and went into the toilet. The men star­ted hammer­ing on the door and scream­ing that I was “fuck­ing dirty bitch”. When I came out I had to walk the gaunt­let of drunk stupid men scream­ing names at me. I just put on my best “I hope you die of some­thing slow and excru­ci­at­ingly pain­ful” face on, and walked stead­ily through them, and went and stood with the train guard. When I saw that the men looked like they were getting off at my station, and were slow and drunk and I was at the nearest end of the plat­form, I leapt off the train and legged it up the stairs with my heavy bag and got as far away from the station as possible to avoid running into them. I fear for any girl­friend of those men.

The sad thing is that the whole epis­ode didn’t leave me shak­ing with rage or adren­al­in, or crying or anything. I just felt mildly pissed off, like I’d trod in some gum or some­thing, because this type of shit happens far, far too regu­larly, and you can get accli­mat­ised to anything.

The people of my homet­own have a bad repu­ta­tion, and often they live up to it. (Obvi­ously there are a lot of nice people from Medway too). The atti­tudes to women in this town are fuck­ing prehis­tor­ic. No-where else have I regu­larly encountered the atti­tude that if I have the gall to exist after sunset as a woman, then I must be a pros­ti­tute. I once liter­ally had a man come up to my face in the street and ask me “how much do you cost” when I was walk­ing briskly along to a pub, wrapped up in a scarf. There’s a reas­on I left when I was 18, and have tried to spend as little time in the place as possible.

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2 comments

  1. I shouldn't even be online right now much less check­ing blogs…I'm work­ing a trade show…but, I am.

    That picture made me laugh out loud. That expres­sion is killing me.

    Then I read the rest of it and was disturbed. I guess you can find a group of drunk idiots anywhere but was there not one grown man there to say some­thing? Of course, it shouldn't be an issue in the first place.

  2. Oh, there were “adult” men there all right too, of the same type, who thought it was funny. My homet­own is stereo­typed as being full of scum­bags, and it's pretty true a lot of the time.

    I think the train company was prepared for that sort of crowd on a Saturday. The train was 4 coaches instead of the usual 6-8+, and it was an old design that I haven't seen in quite a while, and the guard didn't both­er to come and check tick­ets, which is very unusu­al. There was a woman smoking in my carriage, when smoking is banned, and the guard didn't both­er to come down at all.

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