Pewsnapers

No, not a Roald Dahl creation. Newspapers misspelled - and now dispelled. For I have cancelled my Saturday delivery. It feels momentous.

As a kid, papers were curious things brought home by Dad that included tiny comic strips and sometimes colouring competitions.

In my teens, I began paying a little attention to the news part as well, primarily the sporting results.

As I got older and eventually moved into the media, these fingertip-blacking chronicles became more about scoops and pagecraft and columnists you loved/hated. Not to mention office discussions on how stories shoulda been done.

During the period in my 30s where I house-sat for a few different friends in a few different suburbs, I would buy EVERY weekend newspaper and happily devour them over the 48 hours. Cheap entertainment for an aspiring know-it-all!

But online news kept improving. And podcasts secured a starring role in my life. And, thus, papers were no longer anywhere near as appealing.

For some years now, I'd been hanging on to a single Saturday broadsheet as the only newspaper I read. Then, the other day, I realised that I could let it go and not care too much.

I liked the travel section (which once featured a piece of mine), the review section and selected puzzles. The rest was either outdated, of no interest or angried up my blood with blatant political agendas.

So, in spite of the telephone salesperson reminding me I was grandfathered into a low price that'd never be repeated, I severed my last remaining connection to the pewsnapers.

Is that too final? Yeah, I'll probably still purchase the odd local rag while on holidays, in the hope of better understanding the place in question. There'll be a sadness to that now, though, as I'd previously always keep foreign rags to pass along to Dad.

The same way he'd brought home those curious things that included tiny comic strips and sometimes colouring competitions...

--

Suitably wistful? Juno Temple in ???