In praise of reading paper copy

Each Saturday the Times in London has a faith news column and there's a small item on our meeting on conversion amongst the items they list there.
One of the things I still really miss about living away from "home" in the UK is access to physical copies of my favourite British newspapers. This sounds like a horribly ex pat type thing to say - I'm obviously in the process of becoming something I don't like to think I am. The Guardian we get here is ridiculously expensive and very thin compared with the real version, the Observer also often comes with most of the sections missing, which makes me cross when it's three times the price. So over the past two or three years we've taken to buying the Saturday Telegraph - often a day late - because it is at least all there and the back sections, praticularly the gardening and books sections are really good. It is however irredeemably right wing, not called the Torygraph for nothing. But maybe even that is quite a good reality check meaning I can't gaze at the old homeland only through my tribal Labour tinted glasses!

Anyway I sort of like the bohemian mess of newspapers strewn around the place - "but I was saving those for a reason" is a cry that often goes up when I try to clear things up a bit. I know that I shouldn't be admitting to this in the age of access to the internet but there really is something about the serendipity of reading the printed versions, your eye sees things that you might not choose to read in the online version. Of course doing the crossword by printing it onto a piece of A4 also wouldn't quite feel the same. I like the feel of reading a newspaper, having my favourite paper in my hands is somehow like being with a good friend. I do feel that a bit with some websites I like but it really isn't the same.

Looking at the UK websites this morning I began to reflect about how very culturally specific our news is, how very insular as well - in Britian this insularity is of course literally true -in France it's called "hexagonality" as the borders of France are seen as forming a hexagon. Today's British press leads with the death of a 94 year old journalist, not really sure that someone from another country would really get it, not really sure I do. The establishment celebrating one of their own, though it was great that he was still writing until the end and his commitment to telling the story of Darfur is really to be praised - he travelled there aged 91 as a campaigning journalist and it was the theme of his last piece. Not so insular after all perhaps. Lucky him, it is a special grace to be blessed with good health even in old age.