Video tour!

New teenage diary zine exclusive

I have something different to share with you today but still teenage-diary oriented: a video tour of my brand-new zine, which I made just this week —

NO CONTEXT QUOTES FROM MY 90s TEENAGE DIARIES.

It’s been ages since I’ve made a Teenage Diaries zine. I have made others: zines about the local cats, YouTube Ads I’m weary of, the experience of revisiting and remembering the streets where I grew up, and several more.

But this is the first diary-related zine I’ve made in a long while, and that’s mostly because more than any other kind of zine I make, they take a while to put together. The process goes beyond the usual photographing plus writing and reflecting that I do here, and extends into the territory of design and working out how best to present what I’m sharing on the page and in booklet form, and then of course printing the physical copies on my home printer. Writing to you via email is so immediate and very slick in comparison! One of the reasons I love it.

But I had a gentle feeling that I wanted to find a way back to making zines about my diaries, without just reproducing what I do here in the newsletter. I wanted to create something different, but fun; quick, but still rich.

What if I just shared photos, and extracts, I wondered. No writing around them, no backstories, no context. I already have hundreds of photos ready from the prep I’ve done to write the many issues of this newsletter, so I had the content… so I tried it, I loved it, I want to do more!

I sense this could become a series, but for now it’s the first of its kind.

Want a look inside?

Here’s a video I made that gives you a mini tour. Embarrassingly, this took about 30 attempts (lots of false starts and “gagh” noises were made) and I still managed to get my pyjamas in the frame in this final take. Oh well, enjoy!

If you made it through the video you’ll notice I said I didn’t mind if you just pause it and read the extracts — but if you want to receive a copy, I would love to send you one.

They are £2 + postage, available to readers anywhere in the world on Etsy, or you can send me a direct message via Substack and we can organise a direct sale using PayPal or bank transfer.

I love sending zines out into the world, and isn’t it great to get real life post these days?

If you love a bargain I’ve also put together a 90s-themed bundle which includes all three of the zines I’ve made about my teenage diaries along with Places we used to hang, a very personal and nostalgia-infused zine about revisiting the streets where I grew up.

You can get all four of these zines for £9 + postage, which is a sweet deal if you’re into diaries and the 90s, and my guess is you are!

I only added this to Etsy yesterday and already have a few orders going out to America, so I’ll be heading to the post office this week if you want to get in on the teenage diary zine action. Just click the link below to order:

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Beautiful turtle doves

Okay, we might all be feeling a bit salesy now so let’s cleanse ourselves with this overly righteous and pious poem from the No Context Zine, written by me at the age of 13. I wasn’t especially religious so I have no idea why I adopted that persona to write this poem, but here we are.

Prepare yourself.

Yes, it appears I had the gall and the audacity to rhyme LOVE with DOVE

and HIGH with SKY and also NIGH — which I thought was short for “night” — and have only just learned is not!

I know that it means imminent, like “the end is nigh”, but genuinely thought it was also ye olde poety literary language for night.

NIGH.

SIGH.

Okay before I go I just want to give a shout out to Stu Joslin of the excellent It’ll be alright in the 90s podcast, who triggered the making of the No Context zine by accidentally re-ordering a zine of mine on Etsy that he already had. I couldn’t simply replace his order with a different zine because he’s such a good egg that he has bought them all!

As I said earlier, I’d had a kind of stirring that I wanted to make a new teenage diary zine, so this was the catalyst. I made it over a weekend and sent the very first copy out to Stu, and now here it is, available to the rest of the world in less than a week.

I hope you enjoyed this exclusive look inside this very new zine, please do let me know your thoughts in the comments —

or over on Instagram.

If you’re looking to show your support for the newsletter you can buy me a coffee or choose to upgrade your subscription —

Both of those are big asks in this current climate so please know that I appreciate you just being here and choosing to read along and go on this journey back to the 90s with me.

I’ll be back soon, but in the meantime, my love, I wish you the beuty of a turtle dove.

Teresa xx