For most of my life, I’ve used bookmarks, without paying much attention to them. I always liked the look of leather bookmarks with gold or silver illustrations, the kind that museums sell, to commemorate an exhibition about Vikings or steam engines. But those bookmarks are too thick, I feel, to be perfect as bookmarks. It’s like marking your place in a book with a baguette or a twig. I preferred to use an old bus ticket, or a shopping receipt: something that doesn’t make pages bulge. Occasionally, I use a bookmark printed on card – some bookshops give them away free, to advertise books for sale. Or my local Oxfam shop has a wonderfully designed bookmark: a cartoon of characters from famous fiction, browsing in a book shop.
At some forgotten point in my life, where acute boredom and mild creativity bumped into each other, I started to make bookmarks. For ages, this involved drawing doodles on bits of card, using coloured pencils or felt pens. I tried to paint a few scenes, but those are best forgotten. My wobbly countryside images looked as if they’d been painted by a three-year old, and not the sort of three-year old who is a child prodigy. Or, not at art. Maybe, some future comedian.
A few years ago, after I built up a large, personal library, full of many old and lovely books, I decided such books deserved fine bookmarks. Hurried doodles on scraps of card weren’t good enough. So, I took longer making a better class of doodle. I’d had some practise, during endless staff meetings, when I worked for the city council. On my better bookmarks, I made more elaborate doodles, in pen or pencil, or sometimes with paint, although not country scenes. I finished off each bookmark with clear, plastic film. I had rolls of this stuff, for covering books. On the base of each bookmark-masterpiece, I put a strip of sticky back plastic. I’d known about this legendary material since the 1970s, and episodes of Blue Peter on TV, but I never used it, because I was never attracted to the junk they made. At last, I had a reason to use sticky back plastic! And those bookmarks were not bad. The only problem was each bookmark took a long time to make -half an hour each, or even longer sometimes.
The industrial revolution in my bookmark making technique came about when Isobel’s mum bought me a laminator. Suddenly, I could cover five or six bookmarks at a time, in seconds! And they looked much neater too, like something you might buy in a shop, if you were the sort of person who liked buying doodles encased in plastic. So, I went a bit berserk for a while, churning out dozens and dozens of shiny bookmarks. Much more than I needed. My daughter took some for her readers group, and I gave others away, but I still had lots left. The old biscuit tin I stored them in was full. So, reluctantly, I slowed down production. Yet, I still found the making of bookmarks relaxing, so I decided to make a few special ones.
One idea was to make a bookmark for a book I’ve sent away for: a history of bookmarks. Yes, there’s no end to my geekery. I thought I’ll put words in this design, but I wasn’t sure what to say. So, I decided to jot down a few words every now and then and find a way to link them to the subject of bookmarks, later. I’d include an elaborate doodle as well. The first words I jotted down were: Spitfire, monsters, and ghosts.
My time spent making bookmarks is also my time for not thinking or not worrying. I’d sometimes listen to music, whilst doodling or laminating. Or I’d half-watch some cultural treasure on TV: Blakes’ Seven or The Clangers. Yet, planning on not thinking doesn’t always work. I would find myself thinking about times in my life when I’d made other things: photographs or paintings. Or I’d remember times when I had seen a lot of things being made, like when I worked in a textiles factory, as a quality controller. Dozens of roaring looms, weaving gigantic rolls of polypropylene.
Making things for your own enjoyment is very different from ‘work’. When other people decide what you must make, and how fast, and how often, it’s unlikely you’ll get much of a buzz from it. You may be paid a wage by an employer, but generally the profits you make go to a tiny group of people you never see. For a few years, I watched thousands of miles of textiles produced in a factory, being shipped off to America or India, and not once did I see the factory owners. And it’s generally like that, unless you’re self-employed and then you can have split-personality arguments: “You’re a terrible employer!”, “No, I’m not!”. Otherwise, working for others and making money for others, is the furthest thing I can think of to pottering about making whatever you want to.
My plan to make a special bookmark moved forward very slowly, but that was okay, because I had no supervisor or deadline. I noted down a few more words: machine, snow, and whirring. They still didn’t make much sense.
As I suggested, sometimes when you are busy making things, it can give you time to roam around in your head, even when you did not plan to do any thinking. Once I started thinking about working in a factory it was hard not to let my mind roam around other thoughts about factories. In Dundee, there are few factories left. (I can’t think of one.) In my lifetime, not only were there textile factories across the city, but several different factories also churned out watches, computers, greeting cards, and various now-forgotten electronic things. All have gone. A week or so ago, with Isobel, I walked one night past one of the last textile factories to close. It’s just a huge shell of a building now, haunted by pigeons and by the ghost-sounds of clattering machinery.
When I was a child, there were other places too where lots of things were made. The largest place was the Caledon shipyard. For over a hundred years, ships were built there: more than 500, altogether. It closed in 1981.
Anyway, that’s’ the kind of thing I sometimes found myself thinking about whilst making bookmarks. That is, when I wasn’t trying to think of words to put on the special bookmark. The next batch of random words was thousand, time, and treasure. I began to think: this words idea might not work. Maybe, I should stick to doodling. But I decided to persevere.
Throughout my life, I have often referred to any artwork I make as doodling, even when it’s slightly better than doodling. That’s because I come from a family whose artistic skills are considerably better than my own. But a good thing about making bookmarks is my doodling doesn’t have to be great. There are no bookmark critics. Or none I know of.
I once taught rudimentary art skills, a long time ago, when I was a youth worker, working with young people who had a low opinion of themselves. I tried to encourage them by emphasising how much they could do. For far too long, many had felt talentless. Making a painting or a piece of graffiti art helped some young folk to see how they could take simple materials and make out of them a brand-new bit of the world. Something to be proud of. I’d have taught bookmark making too, but I hadn’t thought of it then, so I stuck to drawing and painting.
The first cave paintings were made 40,000 years ago. Some of them were simple shapes. Doodles, perhaps. Or graffiti.
Eventually, I finished the special bookmark, adding more words and putting them together in a way that seemed to make sense. And, I added a doodle, of course. A particularly spiffing blend of bright felt pen and pencil colours. The words on it read:
‘This is where I left the Spitfire diving, The Time Machine whirring. This is where snow on snow fell; where treasure, ghosts, and monsters first appeared and vanished. X marks a spot on a map, but a bookmark marks a thousand adventures in a thousand tales.’
One day, I will make another special bookmark, for my first published book. I might make a few copies of that bookmark, to give away in bookshops. I will probably not paint any scenes on the bookmark. Doodles, for me, are better. Maybe, I’ll add a few words.
HARVEY DUKE 