More About Newspapers

We've already written about the plethora of great newspapers available (like The Times, The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Daily Mail, and The Independent) and how much we enjoy them.

We're hitting a pattern now. Weekdays we may get a Guardian if we have time. Saturdays we get The Guardian again; Saturday is its Sunday Paper. There's sections for travel, money, family, and so forth, plus two glossy magazines, plus listings for clubs, cinemas, theatres, radio and television, which we keep around all week for when we want to see TV recommendations, all in a plastic baggie.

Then on Sunday we get the Sunday Times, again with extra sections plus two glossy magazines in a plastic baggie, plus a political cartoon from Gerald Scarfe, whose work I will always associate with his artwork for Pink Floyd's The Wall.

With either of these weekend editions, there's just so much great writing. One could skim it all in twenty minutes, but often I'm drawn into article after article. I feel like I could spent literally all day reading either edition. So we usually spend at least a few hours of our weekends lying about (I like to snack on some chips or peanuts and strong ale), just wallowing in great articles.

One big difference between UK papers and American ones is a lack of a comics section. There might be one or two dispersed throughout (for example, The Guardian runs Doonesbury daily), but no section per se. Margo gets her comics fix online.

Another difference is that papers sometimes include a bonus in those plastic baggies. For example, there might be a wall poster of animals or magic tricks for kids. Sometimes there are DVDs in cardboard sleeves. I've amassed a small library this way, including Triplets of Bellevue, Mona Lisa, Lord of the Flies, and Letter to Brezhnev. They're typically obscure films and, of the ones I've looked at, don't feature any extras, or even a menu.