Ticket Stubs, Hair Grips and the Secret Life of the British Bookmark
Photo: eady, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
There is a moment, usually around page 84, when a reader looks around the room and admits the truth: they have nothing proper to mark their place. Not a leather bookmark. Not a magnetic clip. Not the tasteful brass page-marker bought in a museum shop and never used since. No: they have a train ticket to Leeds, a hair grip, and a supermarket receipt for a meal deal they would rather not itemise in public.
This is not a failure of organisation. It is a national reading habit, and it deserves a proper audit.
The Drawer of Shame — Sorry, the Bookmark Drawer
Every keen reader has one. A small drawer, tin or jam jar where actual bookmarks go to be forgotten while the books themselves are marked with whatever was nearest. In mine: three expired rail tickets, two birthday cards cut into strips, a Post-it note with a phone number I no longer recognise, and a hair grip with a tiny plastic flower. I have never knowingly bought a hair grip. Yet they arrive, like library reservations, and end up holding page 211 of a paperback.
Ask readers what they use and the answers come thick and fast. Bus tickets. Dentist appointment cards. The little paper sleeve from a packet of biscuits. A pressed leaf from a walk in 2019. A boarding pass for a flight that was delayed so long it became a personality trait. One friend uses a piece of ribbon from a Christmas cracker and insists it is lucky. Another uses a photo of her dog, which feels less like a bookmark and more like a hostage situation.
Receipts, Ticket Stubs and Accidental Time Capsules
The train ticket is the great British bookmark. I have found them in charity-shop paperbacks: London to Norwich, off-peak, return. A receipt from Waterstones dated 2018, for a book that was probably bought as a gift and then kept. A cinema stub for a film nobody remembers. These scraps are not just placeholders; they are small, accidental diaries. They tell you where a reader was, what they were doing, and how long it took them to get from chapter three to chapter nine.
A receipt is the most honest bookmark of all. It says: I was in a hurry, I had a bag, I did not plan to stay long. A train ticket says: I meant to read on the journey and instead looked out of the window for forty minutes. A hair grip says: I was reading in bed and my fringe was annoying me. There is no pretension in a hair grip. It is the bookmark of a person who has accepted chaos.
The Borrowed Hardback Problem
The etiquette sharpens when a book is not your own. Dog-earing a paperback you bought for 99p is a private matter between you and your conscience. Dog-earing a borrowed hardback is a diplomatic incident. This is why readers who normally use a bus ticket will suddenly become very particular when handed a friend’s copy of a prize-winning novel. They will find a proper bookmark. They will treat it like a library book, even if the library is just a friend called Rachel who has strong opinions about cracked spines.
This is where the accidental bookmark becomes a moral object. A folded receipt in a borrowed book is forgivable. A hair grip is fine, if clean. A piece of kitchen roll is not. A chocolate wrapper is a declaration of war. And a dog-ear in a borrowed hardback? That is how friendships end, quietly, over coffee, with someone saying it is absolutely fine while making a mental note.
High-Street Evidence: We Buy Bookmarks, We Do Not Use Them
Walk into any UK bookshop and you will find a rack of beautiful bookmarks: magnetic ones, leather ones, ones with tassels, ones with quotations about reading. They sell. They must sell. And yet the books on our shelves are stuffed with receipts. The bookmark is the gym membership of the reading world: bought with good intentions, rarely used, often found at the bottom of a bag.
This is not hypocrisy. It is optimism. Buying a bookmark is buying a version of yourself who reads in a calm chair with a cup of tea and no hair grips in sight. Using a train ticket is the real you, reading on a crowded carriage while someone eats crisps. Both are valid. The beautiful bookmark can stay in the drawer. It is doing important work there, reminding you of who you meant to be.
There Is No Perfect Bookmark
The internet will tell you the perfect bookmark is a brass clip, a magnetic leather strip or a hand-stitched linen affair. Ignore it. The perfect bookmark is whichever object stops you losing your place without damaging the book. A train ticket that reminds you of a good day. A birthday card from someone you love. A hair grip that has no business being in a book but is doing a sterling job. A receipt for a meal deal, which is at least a receipt.
The only bad bookmark is a dog-ear in a borrowed hardback. Everything else is just evidence of a life being lived around a book. So go on: audit your drawer. Count your tickets. Admit the hair grips. There is no shame in it. There is only the quiet, deeply British satisfaction of finding your place again on page 84.
