I remember standing in a Wimborne newsagents for about ten minutes mesmerised by the sheer diversity of mankind's interest - well, interests of us folks in the countries fortunate to have time and money to have interests other than fighting for survival.
I don't suppose people who have to walk twenty kilometers through raging heat to collect fetid water would comprehend a magazine about celebrity lifestyle, or cross-stitch.
Talking of so-called celebs, I was about to take photos of various publications called,'blurred uninteresting images of actually rather unimportant people', when a woman dressed in a blue nylon overall asked what I was doing. I couldn't think of a witty, cutting reply, so bought a sherbet fountain and left.
There must have been about thirty magazines following what the Beckhams are doing, how his hair is, how her waistline is, who is shagging or not shagging who, on what beach, in which favoured part of the globe. Incredible . . . I must admit I do look in them occasionally at the dentists; there is a certain 'road accident-ness' to them. However hard I try not to look - just a glance to see what has in fact happened to David's hair since the last dental visit.
I think sewing and knitting publications were about equal to train spotting, and fishing, possibly more on fishing. Always the same covers though . . . a man in green outfit holding a vast slimy fish, grinning inanely, (the man). Why not a picture of what the fish was like when he (or the wife) had cooked it? Oh, that's another section - seventeen forests worth of paper on cooking, celeb chef, moving onto into kitchen design, lifestyle, house deco magazines - possibly the biggest section. House and Garden, Homes and Gardens, Interiors, your new conservatory, your new kitchen, your new fridge, your new garlic-crusher.
The top shelf, glistening in its plastic wrappers featured a whole other world: 'Hot and Wet' obviously a publication about building your own tropical greenhouse, 'jugs', advice on collecting certain types of porcelain. . . anyway, the shelf was too high up for me to investigate further. What the world needs is 'post-materialism weekly . . . might have to start my own publishing house.
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