Old Lady Leg
Sunday 17th February 2019 10:53am
Complete and utter Kent
449 posts
Quote: Paul Wimsett @ 17th February 2019, 9:04 AM
It's all about class and your social group really. People around you read The Sun, so you read The Sun. People around you read The Guardian, so you read The Guardian.
Yes. When I was a kid, I remember my dad sitting in his chair, sorting out his horses from the Daily Mirror before having a general gander at the news. I'd keep casually swanning in and out of the room, waiting for the exact moment he folded a bunch of pages behind the puzzle section so I could 'help' him with the crossword and any other word-related puzzles. Daily Mirror every single day.
Then...I started work one day and, having never had a proper job before (just school/college) I looked to her for everything, really. Luckily (for me only, I think), we shared the same lunch time, so I followed her to the bakers to get a sausage roll and then to the sweet shop to get a packet of beef crisps and a Sun newspaper (here we go). We sat opposite each other in our manager's office, ate our lunch and read the newspaper. Looking back, it was quite a creepy thing for me to do.
However, I found the crossword really easy...and, after my first day, I returned home with said newspaper and left it by the front door, on the telephone table. You remember, the ones strong enough to house, not only a massive heavy telephone, but three ten inch thick books full of numbers we would never use...also with a seat for the longer chats, because the phone was tied to the wall in those days. Anyway, I digress.
My dad came in from work and I remember sitting watching TV in the front room and his face appearing round the door with raised eyebrows...then my newspaper came into the room on the end of an outstretched arm...and, with his other hand pointing to the paper's name, he simply said, "You reckon?"
That's all he said and I never saw the paper again. I still bought it at work (but didn't bring it home), because a paper was just a paper to me back then, but now I get it. He had already found a paper he trusted, whether other people did or not, HE did...and wouldn't be swayed. He was a working class bloke and he liked his horses...and the news in the Daily Mirror was dished out just as he liked it.
The thing is, that Sun newspaper was easier for me to read and digest at that age...and, because I didn't know much about the world or about politics etc. I felt very pleased with myself that I could get a better understanding of these things now. BUT...now I realize the easier a newspaper is to read, the more young people like me, or indeed people with less reading ability, would latch on to it and feel the same as I did back then.
I later met a man who reads the Independent every day, without fail. He never reads anything else. He's an optician and his outlook on politics and the world in general is so different to how my dad's used to be (he's dead now).
So, yeah...I guess we're drawn to a level of language we can understand at different stages of our lives...and that's quite scary, when you think about it. COFFEE!
