Words from the Battlefront

There quite simply is too much to read. Over here in the capitol there is a plethora of high quality news papers to expand the mind and capture the eye. The Guardian, The Independent, The Daily Telegraph, The Times, The Daily Mail. These are the top shelf examples, more glossy raggish examples abound for a little lighter fair. Such is the competition that the news, both local and international, lifestyle articles, extensive travel sections and worker insider sections are not enough to entice readers. Instead extras are given to push the buyer into a specific direction. Now when I say extras, I don’t just mean television guides and a monthly magazine, nigh nigh my friends we’re talking about movies, books, maps, calendars, biographies of poets (and a poster of the periodic tables that adorns one of our walls)!.

How to cope when faced with the choice of a paper that includes a free copy of La Dolce Vita or another that includes a book about “how to photograph everything!”? Surely cost must be prohibitive, it did cost a few millions to film La Dolce Vita after all, surely a few dollars are being passed along the line in the form of newspaper cost for the buyer. But no my sceptics, the average price of good quality paper is about $1.40 (in pounds of course) which amounts to the price of a week espresso. Choice, a single glorious shot of caffeine or days and days of cultured words and captivating stories. Price being so utterly reasonable that my dear and I have been known to acquire some 3 to 4 papers a day on any given Saturday. Throw in a Sunday and we’ve got some serious reading to do, and this is the crux of the problem.

Stack upon stack of newsprint, we enter the garden room and the smell of printed paper saturates the nose, open eyes or not, there is no way to escape the call of duty. Minute by minute the stories get older, yet so specific are the sections within these grand pages, that save for the front page and sports, the articles are relevant for a good 4 weeks (6 to 8 during our slow reading weeks). Within our grand garden room lay stacks and stacks of papers all calling out, begging to have their pages caressed. A lot of pressure to come home to, even with the lights off in pitch darkness the distinct aroma whines.

Where in London have I been? My trail of discarded sections from various papers lays the trail. 3 sections a day seems to be the quota I’ve set for myself, a humble manageable quota, as long as I don’t take my eyes off of the page. All over the trains of the London tube lay words I’ve read and cast aside. You would think with all this reading that I would be significantly more cultured that I began, but readers I can’t seem to remember a dam thing! Not true, but it’s such a blur that I’ve got a pastiche going on in my brain that probably bears little resemblance to the origins of the information.

At any rate we trudge on, trying to keep the piles at bay. So much to do so little time, innocent little words they seem, until they gang up on you, and beat you into submission! Send in some reinforcements, because there’s a war going on.