The glossy printed page
Subscription magazines. Consider for a moment just how many there must be and how varied their contents. If you go into any large newsagent you'll see a bewildering array of magazine titles on display, covering not just news and celebrity cellulite mocking, but crafts, hobbies, pastimes and, on the top shelf, special interest. We live in a world where printing is so cheap, and journalism is so cheap, that the market can support two different magazines about crocheting and probably another two about croquet, bought by people who have an interest in crocheting but were in a hurry and didn't stop to read the title of the magazine properly. And that's just at the news stand, where shelf space is finite.
Imagine then just how many subscription magazines there must be out there. For every magazine about model railways on the news stand (a subject covered with an unhealthy degree of fascination in an earlier blog) there must be a dozen others with a limited circulation. I adore the idea that there may even be regional magazines about model trains, after all, there used to be regional railways.
Of course it would not be true to say that there is a magazine for every hobby indulged in by the English. It's much more accurate to say that there are at least two magazines for every hobby. You just know that where there is a hobby the is a difference of opinion about what should be written about it. From jazz to rocking horses, enthusiasts have got something to say. The honourable exception is people who restore vintage machinery in any form, they are too busy sourcing parts or making tea to write about their appreciation of grease nipples. Luckily this very subject is tackled extensively in other literature, with leather covers.
While a portion of the population look forward to that day of the month when their magazine arrives, there is, of course, more to a subscription than the annual cost appearing on your credit card bill discreetly as 'pigeon fanciers' gazette' and opening that plain brown wrapper with trembling hands every month to see if the picture of your bird you sent in has made it in this issue.
While many magazines now come with stuff attached, it used to be that at the start of every year it was enough that the 'part works' as they were called were just magazines, a format that leant itself well to collecting an encyclopaedia type magazine or a cook book on a weekly basis.
The premise was that you'd buy a modestly priced magazine every week, send off for the binders to house same and before long you'd have twenty volumes about Great Serial Killers Of The World or something equally gruesome.
The reality was that you bought the first ten issues and then stopped. The reason for this was simple, the publisher had to get people to buy the magazine, people who had an interest in the subject, and hence had to put all the interesting stuff up front in the first few issues. I used to get a weekly part work called 'the unexplained' and for the first, say, twenty issues it was everything a schoolboy could want to know about the world of the strange. I became the playground authority on werewolves, yeti, UFOs and other weird stuff. But there's only so much cool supernatural stuff out there, even if most of it is made up, that's why 'The X Files' is so, so much better than any of the imitators that have come along since. By the time the magazine had to resort to guff about ley lines, it was time to quit.
The same is true of the magazines that promise to give you the A to Z of modern weapons. Issue one to five has loads of really cool gear like aeroplanes and tanks, issues six to ten is about guns and ammo and night sights and can still be cool. Beyond that it's mines and other static defence measures and beyond that, presumably, pointy sticks. And the same with cookery magazines, when the issue has the recipe for 'aubergine surprise', it's time to quit.
Imagine then just how many subscription magazines there must be out there. For every magazine about model railways on the news stand (a subject covered with an unhealthy degree of fascination in an earlier blog) there must be a dozen others with a limited circulation. I adore the idea that there may even be regional magazines about model trains, after all, there used to be regional railways.
Of course it would not be true to say that there is a magazine for every hobby indulged in by the English. It's much more accurate to say that there are at least two magazines for every hobby. You just know that where there is a hobby the is a difference of opinion about what should be written about it. From jazz to rocking horses, enthusiasts have got something to say. The honourable exception is people who restore vintage machinery in any form, they are too busy sourcing parts or making tea to write about their appreciation of grease nipples. Luckily this very subject is tackled extensively in other literature, with leather covers.
While a portion of the population look forward to that day of the month when their magazine arrives, there is, of course, more to a subscription than the annual cost appearing on your credit card bill discreetly as 'pigeon fanciers' gazette' and opening that plain brown wrapper with trembling hands every month to see if the picture of your bird you sent in has made it in this issue.
While many magazines now come with stuff attached, it used to be that at the start of every year it was enough that the 'part works' as they were called were just magazines, a format that leant itself well to collecting an encyclopaedia type magazine or a cook book on a weekly basis.
The premise was that you'd buy a modestly priced magazine every week, send off for the binders to house same and before long you'd have twenty volumes about Great Serial Killers Of The World or something equally gruesome.
The reality was that you bought the first ten issues and then stopped. The reason for this was simple, the publisher had to get people to buy the magazine, people who had an interest in the subject, and hence had to put all the interesting stuff up front in the first few issues. I used to get a weekly part work called 'the unexplained' and for the first, say, twenty issues it was everything a schoolboy could want to know about the world of the strange. I became the playground authority on werewolves, yeti, UFOs and other weird stuff. But there's only so much cool supernatural stuff out there, even if most of it is made up, that's why 'The X Files' is so, so much better than any of the imitators that have come along since. By the time the magazine had to resort to guff about ley lines, it was time to quit.
The same is true of the magazines that promise to give you the A to Z of modern weapons. Issue one to five has loads of really cool gear like aeroplanes and tanks, issues six to ten is about guns and ammo and night sights and can still be cool. Beyond that it's mines and other static defence measures and beyond that, presumably, pointy sticks. And the same with cookery magazines, when the issue has the recipe for 'aubergine surprise', it's time to quit.
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