Jackie grows up

My eye was caught by a pristine copy of the Faber edition of A Traveller in Time as I passed the delightful R and R books in Nelson Street this morning. This was exactly the edition I had wished for out loud in the Book of Books which accompanies the current exhibition in Stroud. See here, too. The Faber edition has illustrations by Phyllis Bray, and was published in 1963 at 7s 6d net. I got a clean, tightly bound copy for £3.00.

While I was there, I asked Ruth, the owner and one of the Rs in R and R, if I could blip the shop. I would need a wide angle lens to get it the whole wonderful second hand bookshop in, so I focussed on this magazine stand because, believe it or not, Jackie magazine was once an important part of my life! From the D.C. Thompson stable in Dundee, it contained fiction, illustrated fashion shots, adverts, a problem page called Cathy and Claire's page, and a pin up of a band like, say, the Boomtown Rats, if the year was 1978. I think the 'problems' were made up, for they were always the same, of the "I don't know how to kiss" variety. No one was ever fast or racey in Jackie: they fell romantically in love with the post boy or the stranger from the fairground with the dark flashing eyes. Depilation and deodorant were high on the list of things to worry about.

My boarding school didn't allow magazines, so my friend H in Edinburgh used to save me her copies and we'd read them together on the floor, or the roof of my mother's house. A single issue cost 7 pence, later rising to 8. I wasn't an average teenage girl, being of the puppy-fat-and-glasses and far-too-brainy type, and I lived either at boarding school convent or in the West highlands of Scotland, so I think Jackie offered me contact with an alternative reality, one where girls were pretty in the city and could flirt with postmen. It was certainly no preparation for the world of Real Boys, but neither was the convent! The death of Bambi the Cow in calving at the school's run down farm, and the later death of Sid Vicious were formative experiences. Nothing else much happened. The 70s was all brown.

I put a retro filter on this in photogene, and then, back in the noughties, my WEA course finished, the last of the sessions on Literature and Social history of the 1930s. I shall go back next term, when the theme is "Reading Paintings 1600-1900". To be honest, I'd go back if the topic were "Reading Beer Mats" because the tutor is so good. Afterwards, back in Stroud, one of my course mates told me that she had signed up to a sort of loyalty scheme at the local posh supermarket, and she can get a free tea or coffee every day. I went in with her to check out the scheme, and promptly spent £8 before enjoying my free tea. Obviously it is worth their while. In fact, I bought a discounted bottle of fizz for Christmas day, but when CleanSteve came back from another supermarket, he told me he'd bought the Christmas wine too! We shall have a shplendid Chrishtmash.