Browsing the magazine racks at Woolies en route to pay for a week's worth of food picked with the best intentions (the spinach that'll probably never be salad-ified, the green teabags that'll end up gathering dust behind the never-to-be-cooked wheat-free pasta)... I realise that I have a problem: I am a glossy mag junkie. It's almost impossible for me to leave a grocery store without a last minute impulse buy. My drug of choice? Magazines!
It's very rare for me to bring home groceries without some new 'reading material' in hand. You see, I don't have just one mag I buy monthly... oh no... mid-week it's Elle and/or Marie Claire; post-gym it's Shape or Runner's World, pre- or mid-roadtrip it's Fair Lady (LOVE the crossword) and at the end of the month, when the card's close to melting it's (guilty pleasure) Heat or if the pickings are really slim, You magazine for the 'what were they thinking?!?' pics at the back.
It's a habit that reared it's fashion-conscious head during my first year in London. Hours spent every day on public transport made me a magazine publisher's dream...
Dashing for the early morning train I would grab a budget-conscious black filter coffee and a free Metro paper. By the time I got to Waterloo I would have to pop into WH Smith because I had devoured all my available reading material, including six pages (at least the bits that weren't obscured by a scarf) of the girl next to me's 'Sushi for beginners' or whatever the latest 'chick lit' bestseller was at the time.
At WH Smith my drug of choice was usually one of the cheapies (under 2 quid) but every now and then a glossy Elle or Marie Claire would beg to be bought and I would opt for fashion editorials and an exclusive interview with Britney over actually eating that day (the phrase 'starving artist' is not just a phrase after all).
In my first year in London I must have accumulated just short of 300 magazines... No, I am not exaggerating. At least one mag per day (sometimes two), at least 5 a week... Do the maths. And, before you jump to conclusions, this isn't because I couldn't be bothered to read the 'proper' stuff (in between devouring magazine content I managed to rack up an impressive list of books read & returned in record time at my local library), it's just because I LOVE fashion editorials, 'spree vs. splurge' comparisons, witty columnists' observations and well-researched features on woman from all sorts of places and circumstances.
At WH Smith my drug of choice was usually one of the cheapies (under 2 quid) but every now and then a glossy Elle or Marie Claire would beg to be bought and I would opt for fashion editorials and an exclusive interview with Britney over actually eating that day (the phrase 'starving artist' is not just a phrase after all).
In my first year in London I must have accumulated just short of 300 magazines... No, I am not exaggerating. At least one mag per day (sometimes two), at least 5 a week... Do the maths. And, before you jump to conclusions, this isn't because I couldn't be bothered to read the 'proper' stuff (in between devouring magazine content I managed to rack up an impressive list of books read & returned in record time at my local library), it's just because I LOVE fashion editorials, 'spree vs. splurge' comparisons, witty columnists' observations and well-researched features on woman from all sorts of places and circumstances.
Who needs a candy store or a shopping mall, when I can window shop and salivate over pretty things from the comfort of my living room while wearing slippers and kinda listening to E!News in the background? Not me, that's for sure. Give me Elle's 4-page summary of the upcoming season's fashion weeks over a Saturday spent scrumming at Sandton City any day. (P.S: Sandton, you know I love you, you will always be my mothership of sorts, but you know that I prefer to spend cash within your walls mid-week when everyone else is at work) So, taking into account all of the information you've just garnered from the paragraphs above, you will grasp why an event last week in Twitterville had me grinning from ear to ear throughout the long weekend...
Last Thursday my Blackberry went 'ding' and I was alerted to a new Twitter notification... being the social media junkie I am, I opened up the notification, read the 'you have new mentions' message and proceeded to see who had been tweeting about me. Well, when I saw that one of my tweets re Marie Claire's latest cover (featuring the exquisite Natalie Portman) had been RT (retweeted for you non-Twitter peeps) by @marieclaire_sa I was gobsmacked and was only snapped out of my goofy grin by another 'beep!' – this time it was an email notification from Twitter that read: "@MrsWinderley: @marieclaire_sa is now following you on Twitter."
My response? To tweet about it, of course:
Finding out that @marieclaire_sa is following little old me has put a decidedly happy spring in my well-heeled step today *blush*
17 March 2011 12:25:14 PM via web
Comments