When I was living in Sydney, I’d get up every Saturday morning, take a walk around the neighbourhood, and stop in the the local shops to buy the papers (The Sydney Morning Herald and, on rare occasions, The Daily Telegraph. The Tele - only because, on a Saturday morning when two people - i.e. myself and Mr Moi - are reading the papers, I don’t really want to share).
I used to pour over those papers at the same time I poured over breakfast, usually on the deck in the sun (lovely and warm in winter). It took me hours to read the Saturday papers, and by the end of the experience they where filled with crumbs and splashed with milk and juice. Anywhere I went on the weekend, I’d take the papers with me, to read in the car (when Mr Moi was driving), or to friends’ houses to share the reading love with them.
There are no Saturday papers in Kyiv. Well, there are, but they’re in Russian or Ukrainian. And even if I could read them, they aren’t those special breed of Saturday papers, with the book review sections, the real estate section, the travel section, the glossy weekend magazine, etc etc.
I know people here who occasionally purchase the English newspapers (which arrive over a day after publication anyway). But at the extortionate cost of about $15 per paper, I’m not about to partake. I’ll whinge about the lack of Saturday papers, but they don’t mean that much to me.
So, all of you bloggers out there, while you’re reading your Saturday papers and dripping eggs and coffee on them, think of the expats who can’t buy a paper in a language they understand, and are reduced to trying to avoid their cornflakes dripping on the keyboard as they pour through the news online.
It just doesn’t have the same feel to it.
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