Hello Pocket Friends,
Spring still hasn’t sprung here in England, but I wish it would. I know that in three months when it’s unhealthily hot I will be counting down the days until autumn. Except I wont have that huge mass of insulating hair of the barnet that I grew in lockdown. It’s a bob now, but even that has its own problems. I get two weeks when it’s a bit too short, three weeks of perfection and then three weeks of not quite right. Go more often then! Well, to be frank, I can’t be bothered and I hate spending 45 minutes in front of a mirror.
I thought this newsletter was about bookbinding…
These days a person has to be a maker, an artist, a blogger, an accountant, a writer, a publicist and still hold down a day job to pay the bills. The internet was supposed to give us more time.
Accidentally Wes Anderson videos and photos on instagram are keeping me cheerful. There is just something so satisfying about the composition of the photos. The colours. The light. The absence. I know nothing about filmmaking and have only dabbled in reels and shorts to promote my shop. This is my latest one.
I have recently had the opportunity to spend time with some people much younger than myself and yes, there was some encouragement from me to them to just go for it and try new things, plus some reminiscing on how it was back in the day, or to put it another way, how some people imagine it was for us, (but we just had different problems). Anyway, this blog post (which I found on Stuart Lee’s must-read, very comprehensive and interesting monthly newsletter) from Alice Hadland pretty much sums it up. The worst part of being in your 20s is when you’re in your 20s. My 20s were in the 90s, which appears to be having a revival right now. Oh the (fashion) mistakes we all made, are happening all over again!
What was that Mark Twain quote again about history repeating itself?
In other news, if you are in any way creative, or want to be, but you don’t have the freedom that comes with having a room of your own and £500 a year, then check out one of the best kept middle class secrets from the last few years. A personal Arts Council grant of up to £12,000 so you can spend a year working on and developing your creative practice - aka DYCP, and you don’t even have to create anything or finish the project. I did spend some time working on a proposal a year or so ago for research and classes to help develop my debut novel, but realised that I probably couldn’t have worked full time and devoted sufficient attention to the novel AT THE SAME TIME. So, then I decided to try bookbinding, and the rest is history. If I was in my late teens or early 20s right now with my child trust fund and a DYCP grant under my belt, then who knows what opportunities that small brief window of financial freedom would have given me?
So, if you’ve got this far and haven’t yet subscribed, then what are you waiting for? At the end of May 2023, I will give away one of the Enid Blyton repurposed books from my shop to someone who is on my mailing list. UK only please. Sorry.
Want to see a video for one of the best pop songs of all time? One that’s had one point six billion views? A song that’s over 30 years old?
Until next time, stay weird popkids. Nx
Funny, I trained as a bookbinder back in the 90s, in my 20s and couldn't find a job to cover bills, so ended up doing something very different and now am different again. Do you have all the equipment you need? Message me if you have any gaps 😉
Thank you Dawn. I might just do that. 😀