Magazine Mayhem.

Flipping pages of a magazine was a pastime of my childhood. I remember reading Girl Talk. I liked the personality quizzes, the ones where you answer questions by following the lines, leading you to the ultimate truth. There was also the TV guide, the magazine that was in cahoots with the TV in my living room, knowing what show was airing on every channel, at every time of day. Biro pen at the ready, I would circle what I wanted to watch - a binding agreement that I would attend my appointment with the pixels. Then, as I was approaching adolescence, my auntie kindly gave me her old issues of Cosmopolitan. This is where I was first exposed to stories of womanhood, written with journalistic flair.

I then altogether stopped reading magazines, probably because of the hype of the ever growing internet and the surge of online video. Anything digital was the hot new thing, and people where increasingly getting excited about all things screen. I revelled in the early internet era, where my brain was active, choosing what I discovered, often late at night, with snacks beside me, star eyes glued to my chunky laptop display.

What led me back to magazines? I can only think of a series of events over a long period of time. I remember at college I had a friend who took me to the magazine section in WHSmith. They were trying to find an obscure title amongst a couple hundred covers. I was scanning my eyes across rows and rows of colourful pictures trying to find it. As hope was running thin, I found it. My friend expressed pure euphoria.

Another notable event. My mum ordered the first issue of Firewords before I went to university. My enthusiasm was for the publication itself, unaware that the print medium is what got me to read the magazine in the first place. I have since rediscovered Firewords in a forgotten box which lead to me ordering some back issues.

Where can I stumble upon more mags? WHSmith of course! This time I gazed the covers with a steady wander rather than a frantic search. I had a quiet fascination with astronomy, so my star eyes were back when I saw the alluring cover of a particular issue of Farsight.

I could explore astronomy in the digital space, but content is constantly competing with each other. It’s crowded and noisy. Good SEO and algorithms choose what I see. When I open a magazine, there is no noise. I am completely zoned in. I have a better relationship with the content, because I’m thoughtfully consuming something that's carefully crafted. And of course, there’s the audible pleasure of a crisp flip of a page.