Monday 14th January

For as long as I can remember my weekends have largely been dominated by the Sunday Papers but not anymore.  Even as a child my parents would get the Sunday Papers, ‘The News of the World’ and ‘The People’ if I remember.  For working people Sunday was basically the only time they could really catch up on the news, or more likely what passed for Celebrity Gossip in those days.  And in many ways they were an equalizing aspect of society, Dukes and dustmen alike would read the Sunday papers, and you might be surprised to find how many were reading the same ones.  As a small child I would pick up the papers and read them when Mum and Dad had finished with them, gleaning my first scraps of the big wide world.  When I was about seven we got a television and ‘The News’ and programmes like ‘Tonight’ with Cliff Michelmore and roving reporter Fife Robertson supplemented our knowledge, but papers and especially the Sunday Papers went from strength to strength.

As a young adult I started reading ‘The Observer’ until ‘The Independent’ came along.  These papers presented a distinctly different viewpoint of the news, allowing less mainstream views to come to the fore, even if a degree of quiet English commonsense prevailed.  My Sunday was always about reading the Sunday papers, and read them I would, almost from cover to cover.  And it would take almost all day.  Sundays then were far more a day of rest than they are today, and I seemed to have hours spare and so I absorbed everything.  In many ways I was far more knowledgeable then than I am now where I snatch snippets from BBC24 hour news or the BBC website, or if I am lucky I read The Independent on line, at least the editorial and certain writers I like such as Andrew Grice and John Rentoul, but often it is just the twitterfeed and a quick glance at News at Ten.

And now I never buy the Sunday papers; l have gotten out of the habit somehow.  I do like watching Andrew Marr on a Sunday which is a sort of substitute for a Sunday paper but I no longer buy one.  And how will they ever survive without their readers as I am sure I am not the only person who has stopped buying them.  Well I hope they do, and then when I retire they will be there for me, but whether I will be there for them is another question.