Peach Melba #39 & #40

By Pearl
PO Box 74
Brighton, UK
BN1 4ZQ

After reviewing lots of issues of this zine I think I've kind of run out of things to say (also, I just spent over an hour making buttons at my friend's button shop and my brain kind of feels like mush).

This is a list zine, and there are plenty of lists in them! Lists about "things that people are afraid of" ("spiders", "bears", "being shipwrecked"), "types of soup" ("horrible french cheese soup"), and "the versatilities of a DVD" ("spaghetti measurer", "bird scarer"). Plus lots of others!

It's cute and charming, and I always end up smiling whenever I read an issue.

Peach Melba #s 35, 36, 37, & 38

By Pearl
PO Box 74
Brighton, UK
BN1 4ZQ

Yes! Take that January! I've already written more reviews than I did in all of you and March combined! Though that is saying waaaaay more about the lack of writing I've done for this site this year rather than anything else...

I met Pearl three years ago at a zine fest in England, and since then she has made a lot of zines. I'm horribly behind at reviewing these, so she's probably up to the mid 40s by now because she makes one every month. My gosh, I wish I had that amount of commitment to making zines.

Each of Pearl's zines is a single intricately folded piece of paper that is filled with a multitude of lists. I always smile when I read Peach Melba because some of the lists are so completely ridiculous,. But I love reading about what Pearl thinks are "unreasonable commands to expect a dog to follow" ("solve food crises"), jobs she would hate to have ("olympic fencer", "bee eater", "police officer"), or "Useful life advice" ("eat soup"). Issue 35 even has a list of rejected lists!

The content isn't particularly deep or anything, but if you read enough of them you start to get a picture of what Pearl is like as a person, and the things she comes up with for her lists always succeed in cheering me up if I'm feeling a bit down.

Peach Melba #21

By Pearl
PO Box 74
Brighton
BN1 4ZQ
UK

Peach Melba is a zine made by a 14 year old girl, and she's been doing it monthly for almost two years! I can't even seem to update this site that much sometimes.

Each ingeniously folded issue is filled with lists of whatever has caught Pearl's fancy recently. Thus this issue has lists about pirates, spies, clothes (though I think that skirts and dresses aren't always impractical, and sometimes they are made for men!), food, and Doctor Who (everyone loves Doctor Who right?).

This final item made me think about my own memories of Doctor Who. When I lived in the "old country" (a long time ago), I used to watch Doctor Who on TV, and I was terrified of the Daleks. I remember a girl running around with a baseball bat, and hiding behind the couch. Ah, memories. Now all I want to do is watch the old episodes of Doctor Who with the Liquorice Allsorts robot.

Um, anyway: Peach Melba is super rad, and this issue features a reprint of instructions on what to do if arrested at a protest in the UK. Super useful! (Especially of late.)