Saturday 27th June

I have been back in UK for a few days, mostly at Walton.  On the train back from Stansted on Tuesday I picked up a discarded magazine, “The Week”.  I had heard of this already but had never bought it.  It is a collection of the most interesting, amusing, well-written and apposite articles published in the Press and other magazines in the preceding week.  It costs £3.10 and has 55 pages so at first glance would appear to be somewhat expensive.  Mind you my music magazine UNCUT cost a fiver, although you do get a free CD each month.  Anyway I settled down to read it.  And what an excellent read it was.  Almost every article was interesting and I read them all.  The selections seem very well chosen, the politics are spread over a wide spectrum and there is no obvious slant and no editorial, although the items chosen are obviously subject of some editors viewpoint.  What I think the magazine aims to do though is to give the reader a balanced overview of the week’s events.   For me, who just lately has watched very little news and absolutely no Newspapers it was great.  It was as if someone had taken a whole week’s papers and stuck post-it notes with “Read This” or “You might find this interesting” on the best articles.

I am not sure if I will ever actually buy the magazine, although when returning from France it is a great way to quickly catch up on what in my stunken drouper I had missed in France.