Three zines from Scotland

And the best bookshops to buy them

Four Punctuation Marks, by TSJ Hodges

I used to be a sucker for those wee books they sell at the till in bookshops. You know the kind of thing. An essay on Englishness by George Orwell I definitely own already. A ghost story by Muriel Spark, ditto. Some thoughts from Susan Sontag on the meaning of camp.

Each costs no more than a Tesco meal deal. It’s so easy just to add one to the pile of books you came in to buy. An unexpected item in the bagging area.

I don’t buy those wee books any more. These days I buy zines.

If you are a high court judge befuddled by modernity an explanation is perhaps in order. Zine is an abbreviation of magazine. But zines are unlike the glossy commercial publications you find on a newsagent shelf. Zines are a form all off their own, with a rich and complex history going back almost a century to mimeographed publications produced by sci-fi enthusiasts in 1930s America.

In my younger days zines went by the name of fanzines. I mostly read football fanzines including The Absolute Game, which focused on Scottish football, and The Final Hurdle, the Dundee United fanzine named after the club’s tendency to lose in cup finals.

These days zines come in an uncategorisable variety of forms. Photography zines are a useful way to witness lives, especially working class lives, through somebody else’s eyes. Poetry zines can be hit and miss but occasionally you shuck the oyster and discover a dusky pearl. Best of all are zines that defy pigeonholing, especially those with weird, transgressive themes. These are usually the ones with the most innovative design ethos.

A zine generally costs between a fiver and tenner. A wee treat, not only for yourself but also for the creative person who made it. Your independent bookshop will also pocket some change. A win-win-win. It’s the acceptable face of capitalism.

What is the alternative for the acquisitive culture vulture? Artist monographs cost a packet and weigh a ton. Same goes for conventional photography books, which I love but simply cannot afford. Coffee table books are the publishing arm of Big Sofa.

I buy zines the way I used to buy vinyl singles as a kid on a Saturday afternoon at Bruce’s Records or a dogeared copy of International Times in Groucho’s. Not only am I sampling the counterculture, I am doing so without breaking the bank.

Here’s three Scottish zines I bought recently and enjoyed very much. They are a pretty random selection that just happened to catch my eye. Very much the tip of the iceberg. Later in this post I will share where I bought them.

Birthday Bedlam

We’ve all seen these at various times throughout our entire lives. White sheets hung on fences at roundabouts and junctions. Rough lettering inexpertly daubed in house paint. Happy 60th, Doreen! Happy birthday, Big Seany!

Now Odin Gillies, a Bafta-winning producer/director and camera operator, has started collecting them. And he’s published a selection as a zine.

Gillies writes in the introduction:

Consider the bed linen birthday banner.

People rushing to finish painting before their loved ones catch them in the act. Then going to the effort of hanging it in public for all to see.

I've grown to love spotting these banners.

This evolution of the homemade pritt-stick and poster paint birthday card - illegible and occasionally threatening: You'll have a happy birthday or else!!!

The leap of excitement when I discovered one at an otherwise inert set of traffic lights became a game, using the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon to my advantage.

The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, he explains, is also known as frequency illusion, a cognitive boas where we notice something more often after recently becoming aware of it.

What I love about these banners is what they say about ageing and mortality. I bet the subjects are mostly people who don’t want a fuss about their birthdays, especially one with a zero on the end, because they are not entirely enamoured with reaching that age.

Say you’re a guy in Paisley approaching 40, telling your family you’d rather the day passed by without too much palaver.

Next thing you know there’s a banner declaring “oh no, the big four-oh” gaffer-taped to a mobile phone mast at the nearest junction to your house, complete with pictures of you as a kid.

You can imagine the reaction, starting with horror, moving to mortification and, eventually - hopefully - seeing the funny side.

It’s a brutal form of humour, but I think we can all enjoy it, especially vicariously.

Gillies is inviting people to send him their own sightings. You can find him on Instagram here.

Next up is a great wee zine from Edinburgh..