Simon Moreton
I make pictures and write about this weirdo life. Some things I publish myself, and some things are published by other people. You can write to me at minor fullstop leagues fullstop zine at gmail fullstop com. I am on Instagram, and I have a newsletter. I have a shop.
Work
Everything still in print is available from my shop.
– Minor Leagues (2016- ), an ongoing but occasional zine of words & pictures about what’s been happening – life, prettiness, the grind, all that. In a review for Razorcake Michael T. Fournier called it ‘one of the best zines out there’.
– Gardening Beneath a Falling Piano (2024) poetry/prose/collage collection from Bored Wolves.
– Now is the Time to Know Everything (2023) homemade book about the bewildering excitement of pregnancy and the heartbreak of miscarriage explored through a fragile blur of family stories, reflections on the past, present and future, and half-remembered dreams. A love letter to a person that never quite came to be.
– WHERE? (2017-2021) an experimental memoir (words and pictures) about life, death, folklore, grief, and the landscape of Shropshire where I spent my childhood. First serialised in self-published, handmade books, later collected in one volume by Little Toller. Max Porter called it “a fiercely intelligent and beautifully made book, built of many elements, held together by time-travelling love and careful witness. Totally unique”.
– SMOO (2008-2015) autobiographical comics. Finding my way. A collection of some early comics was published by Avery Hill in 2012.
– Lots of other stuff including comics, zines, prints etc.
Some Things That Happened
An occasionally updated list.
1. A kid shot me with finger guns through the pub window.
2. An old man told me he had a Prince Albert piercing; ‘I have to sit down to pee now!’
3. I found the Leicester Tigers rugby team squeezed into my regular little coffee spot, so I sat outside, facing the sun, to drink my drink.
4. On the allotment, we harvested the sweet potatoes—what a friendly cluster of pinky ham fingers! What a lovely little orange hand! What a marvel.
5. Went to Tesco at closing time, looking for bin bags and elastic bands.
6. We marched and we yelled.
7. One night the Jamaican place on the corner was barbecuing—the twilight got all thick with jerk smoke and chicken mist and it made the traffic lights fragrant.
8. Overheard a conversation in a pub about seances; a mirror, untouched, fell from the wall and shattered.
9. Switched from shorts to trousers.
10. Saw a good, fulsome moon over Morrisons.
11. Had some good times and tried hard to not to fall apart.
12. Caught a cold, got some Guinea pigs.
13. Two blue lines.
14. ‘Are you satisfied with the design, methodology and conduct of the activity, from an ethical & where relevant animal welfare perspective?’ etc.
15. Found a man asleep by the breads in the corner of the international supermarket, behind the spice display.
16. Accidentally bought small chunk piccalilli instead of normal chunk piccalilli.
17. Heard the baby’s heartbeat (thank god it’s there).
18. Noticed teenagers playing in the gorse at Fleet services.
19. Tried to get our heads around the two blue lines.
20. Watched a seagull and a crow fight over moldy bread the colour of old copper.
21. Thought a big flash of light glimpsed through the curtain at 4am one morning was a giant taking photos in the street because, well, what else could it be? A: Lightning.
22 A lot of medical things.
23. Ate a chip whilst waiting to pay for our meal at the sort-of-meatball buffet in the blue box of IKEA Eastgate, Bristol, June 2nd 2024, a nine year old child losing the plot by the Blecksjön.
24. Overheard: ‘I love my parrot, wouldn’t trade it for the world, but do you know what my partner’s done? He’s bought a bloody cat into the house!’ (a heron crash-lands into a coot inthe lake).
25. Found three polythene wrapped baps under the lychgate outside St Mary’s church in Fishponds, Tuesday 3rd September, 2024.
26. Switched from shorts to trousers, then back to shorts, then back to trousers.
27. Fog.
28. Had a baby (!!!).
29. Sang ‘Little Donkey’ a lot.
30. Sang a weird amalgamation of ‘Jingle Bells’ and the theme tune from The Adventures of Robin Hood (1955-59) a lot. (‘Riding through the glen/on a one horse open glen/oh what fun it is to ride/on a one horse open horse’ etc).
31. Ate a really good slice of pizza.
32. Saw a great, hazy sunset over Morrison’s whilst sitting in the van thinking to myself, ‘I’m a dad. Fuck me. I’m a dad… I’m a dad ’. It was a good feeling.
33. Switched back to shorts.
34. Felt the spring sun on my cheek as we went up the on-ramp of the motorway over the city, top deck of the bus, windows open, the burnt toast smell of the coffee roastery, the smell of deodorant like a 1997 school changing room. A woman completed a Rubik’s Cube as we passed the sign with the graffiti on it that says call in sick.
35. Called in sick.
36. Went kitchen shopping; saw a congregation of seagulls, one set apart from the rest—poplars arching like returning soldiers—mostly bridges—faces of two teenage girls disappointed with their dad’s driving look glumly out from the family Ford—light green leaves and blossoms—fresh wind on the van, and all the cars wandering a little across the carriageway. Talked about the Jolly Highwayman Café; did you know in Cherhill there was the Cherhill Gang who held up stagecoaches on Labour-in-Vain Hill, naked and painted white? Abandoned sandbags used to hold down roadworks signs look like pre-oven turkeys on the verges. L.B. sleeps with one hand in the air.
37. Visited Devizes museum, prehistoric artefacts galore, L.B. bemused in the soft-play Stonehenge.
38. Saw a mole trundling along the carriageway of a country road, wiggling on business. I hope it got to its destination ok.
39. Cut my finger on a knife while washing-up. Went to a&e, and a man who fell running for the bus had the same birthday as me.
40. At the hospital for a chest x-ray, the car park ticket machine gave me forty minutes free parking instead of twenty, and two women inside talked about a tomcat that visited their houses but which neither of them owned. The cat’s name was Sweetheart.
41. Found a pair of sunglasses at the bottom of Bassenthwaite Lake which neither suit me nor fit me, and which I now wear over my spectacles while driving in the sunshine.
42. Queued on the Bear Pit roundabout as they demolished the old hotel, a soft rain of dust and water falling on the windscreen.
43. Took another trip to Shropshire to give a talk. Drove down a country lane at night, slept in the van, saw a sunrise, went up Clee Hill to see Dad, made coffee on roadsides. Missed Ali and L.B.; came home and hugged L.B. so very hard.
Publications
2025 Minor Leagues #13 (zine, Lydstep Lettuce) / 2024 Minor Leagues #12 (zine, Lydstep Lettuce); Gardening Beneath a Falling Piano (zine/pamphlet, Bored Wolves) / 2023 Now Is The Time to Know Everything (book, Lydstep Lettuce) / 2022 Little Leagues #3/Policymaker Annual #1 (zine w/ Michael T Fournier, Lydstep Lettuce/The Cabildo) / 2021 Minor Leagues #11 (zine, Lydstep Lettuce); WHERE? (book, Little Toller); What is Britain? (comic, Lydstep Lettuce) / 2020 The Lie of the Land (comic, part of the Ley Lines series); Minor Leagues #10: (zine, Lydstep Lettuce) / 2019 Minor Leagues #9: Contains part four of ‘Where?’ (zine, Lydstep Lettuce); Minor Leagues #8: Contains part three of ‘Where?’ (zine, Lydstep Lettuce); Little Leagues #2: (zine, Lydstep Lettuce); Lettuce Bee: (anthology zine, Lydstep Lettuce); Minor Leagues #7: Contains part two of ‘Where?’ (zine, Lydstep Lettuce) / 2018 Little Leagues #1: (zine, Lydstep Lettuce); Minor Leagues #6: Contains part one of ‘Where?’ (zine, Lydstep Lettuce); Athens (Αθήνα) (zine, Lydstep Lettuce); Minor Leagues #5 (zine, Lydstep Lettuce) / 2017 Minor Leagues #4 (zine, Lydstep Lettuce); Minor Leagues #3 (zine, Lydstep Lettuce) / 2016 Minor Leagues #2 (zine, Lydstep Lettuce); What Happened (pamphlet comic, Kilgore Books); Garden (zine, Lydstep Lettuce); Rain ( collection of short comics, Lydstep Lettuce); Minor Leagues #1 (zine, Lydstep Lettuce) / 2015 SMOO #10 (self-published zine – out of print); Plans We Made (graphic novel, Uncivilized Books); Bright Nights (split zine with Jason Martin); Decorating (self-published zine – out of print); Monument Road (redrawn second edition w/ new epilogue – out of print); A Day Out (self-published zine, illustrated prose – out of print); SMOO #9 (self-published zine – out of print); SMOO #8 (self-published zine – out of print) / 2014 Choose Your Own November (self-published – out of print); Days (Book, Avery Hill Publishing. Collects SMOO #4 – #6, and selected anthology appearances) Monument Road (self-published – out of print); スムーコミックス (Sotokaramita Press, Japan: Japanese translations of selected stories – out of print) / 2013 Blinking/Twitching (split zine with Warren Craghead); SMOO #7 (self-published – out of print); Holiday (self-published – out of print); Grand Gestures (Comic, Retrofit Publishing – out of print) / 2012 SMOO #6 (self-published – out of print); SMOO #5 (self-published – out of print); SMOO #4 (self-published – out of print) / 2011 Sorry Entertainer (newspaper anthology. Co-editor, self-published: out of print); Escapologist #2 (self-published – out of print); Escapologist #1 (self-published – out of print) / 2010 SMOO #3 (self-published – out of print); SMOO #2 1/2 (self-published – out of print); SMOO #2 (self-published – out of print); Days (diary comic collection: self-published – out of print); Lisbon (self-published – out of print) / 2008 SMOO #1 (self-published – out of print)