He's not talking about Country Life, of course. We're great.
Walking home through the marshes as darkness fell and hearing, for the first time in years, the haunting, three-part, reeling call of a lapwing, I thought I would write about how the migratory waterbird population is falling and what the Germans call Sehnsucht. This, I happen to know (thanks to an expensive, but largely wasted education), means yearning or desire for the lost and unobtainable.
I considered telling you about the poems of Enheduana (‘my honey-mouth is full of froth/my soothing words are turned to dust’), who was born in about 2300BC, daughter of Sargon of Akkad, high priestess of Ur and widely acknowledged as the first author whose name we actually know, focusing on her descriptions of Nature in the ancient world. I was tempted, too, to produce my own version of one of my favourite books: Xavier De Maistre’s 1794 bestseller Voyage autour de ma chambre, a 42-chapter description of his bedroom written in the style of a travel book.
However, attractive as all these subjects are, what’s really on my mind at the moment is the sorry state of the newsagency sector and the fact that one has more chance of discovering Atlantis, the Holy Grail or Lord Lucan in the local high street than getting one’s hands on a decent magazine.
It was the same when I nipped into the newsagent in Paddington Station the other day for something to read on the train. I had to go right to the back of the store, past the mountain of giant Toblerone bars, past the fence of frames bearing motivational quotes, past the tree of joke keyrings, to discover what can only be described as the saddest collection of magazines on the planet. Country Life, sold out; Farmers Weekly, sold out; BBC Wildlife, sold out. There wasn’t so much as a copy of The Economist or a Reader’s Digest (now defunct in the UK) — I am catholic in my tastes.
I am of Benjamin Franklin’s opinion that: ‘Happiness consists more in small conveniences or pleasures that occur every day, than in great pieces of good fortune that happen but seldom to a man in the course of his life.’
In the end, and without much enthusiasm, I chose Positive News. It’s an interesting publication, full, you won’t be surprised to hear, of positive news. This included the closure of the last British coal-fired power station, a pharmacy that dispenses poems instead of medicine (which I imagine could be annoying if what you wanted was some aspirin), how dogs are being used to spread wildflower seeds in wilderness areas — all terrifically worthy, I am sure, all very politically correct, but not the sort of thing to uplift and entertain on a long railway journey.
Increasingly, I am of Benjamin Franklin’s opinion that: ‘Happiness consists more in small conveniences or pleasures that occur every day, than in great pieces of good fortune that happen but seldom to a man in the course of his life.’ In theory, there is no comparison between reading a favourite magazine and, say, a trip to Venice. In reality, even on a trip to the Italian city it will probably be the small things — sitting on the terrace of Caffè Florian and watching the world go by, the heady perfume of incense and wax polish in St Mark’s Basilica, a plate of pasticcio di radicchio in a neighbourhood restaurant — that will bring the greatest joy.
The hundreds, perhaps thousands of things that gladden our hearts every day — listening to the rain, being greeted by the dog, sitting in the garden with a cup of tea, eating a piece of buttered toast, gossiping — are underrated by modern ideology, which places value on the rare, the exotic, the unique and the expensive. More needs to be made of the little things in life that please and delight, assuming, in the case of magazines, that one can find them.
Jonathan Self is an author and journalist
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