British News in A Tree

Not having been back to Scotland for over a year I had sort of forgotten what a tree back home looked like and what size and form they came in. I was used to the sturdy monsters from Singapore or the sparse bamboo sticks from Taiwan – not the jungle of weeping willows and soft pine that I found.

For clarification I will say that the Pines are those newspapers with names like the Sun or the Star as they are soft and have no content. The Willows are the sturdier papers with larger content and input like the Telegraph and the Times. And the “weeping" bit is because they d not often hold news of a light hearted or happy nature.

Anyway, I arrived back home in Edinburgh on a Sunday and one of the first things that I did was to rush out and buy a selection of local and national rags to read through. The Times made me weep immediately as there on the front page was an article about the Royal Family, something to do with the Butler of Lady Di’ and the stolen goods. I felt like crying because there must be more to the world than something that happened a year ago: I sort of expected to pick up that paper and to be able to read some news: to catch up with Britain after a year of absence. Thinking back it actually looked like the headline that I read as I flew out of London all that time ago.

The Sunday Telegraph. The Royal Family, Spencers to meet with Royal Family for first time since funeral>>>>>>>>Blair and the Euro >>>>>>>>>Oooh Look, a slimming club for ponies>>>>>>>>>British Rail delays cause havoc>>>>>>>>Tory MP caught with his pants down. Wow, and this edition could have been printed anytime in the last fifty years! I counted the pages and came to the end result of 97 of them plus a Glossy Magazine. And to read this paper from end to end took me exactly half an hour, simply due to the fact that none of the blaring headlines gave me cause to investigate further.

Okay, what does 97 pages consists of? The first one as per usual is the News Section. Next one is called the “Review" and this is then followed straight on by Travel, House and Garden, Money and Appointments, Business and then the Sports branch with the Glossy Magazine at the end of the line. I decided to weed out the dead wood first and so the Sports Section was immediately uprooted with little resistance. I threw this next to the International News Section which had disappointed me greatly and then not long after came the House and Garden twig due to the fact that the houses and gardens portrayed in all articles tended to be triple the price of anything that I could afford to rent never mind buy. I don’t want to live in a dream world.

The next bit of bark to come my way was the Money and Business pulp. I sort of like those sections as they typically put the worlds’ problems into easy perspective and by simply looking at the tourist exchange rates one can get an idea as to the state of the world without actually having to know what has caused or provoked that state. But here and today in Edinburgh I found nothing to appease my sense of Deja Vu, nothing sprang out that said “this newspaper is one year older than the one you read last year". All I obtained from the financial sections was a stronger belief in the fact that my shares and stocks where valueless and that the rich do get richer and the poor do get nothing at all.

Appointments mad me feel worthless with jobs advertised from Directors of Health Clubs on triple digit salaries to Consultants on large bonus’s for doing nothing. I don’t think a seafarer had any reason to be looking into those pages so “onto the compost heap with you".

Well only Travel, Review and the Glossy Magazine left. I was sort of leaving that Magazine to the very last, hoping that it would be the clearing in the forest where the sun shines through. First of all the Review! And can anybody tell me why it is called the review? Hold on let me look up that word in my English Dictionary. Review is to “view or to inspect again", to “go back over". I think that is enough! I somehow presumed that this section may give to me a summary or REVIEW of past news happenings and events, sort of give a full story of a recent news item so that I could catch up with the news around Britain in a straight forward an easy manner. Sadly I came away from that section having learnt the secret life of some eccentric TV host in America who works from his home and how Princess Margaret loves to fiddle around with paint. I say no more except that the Dead Wood now far exceeds the “thicket" that now remains.

The Travel Section and the Glossy Magazine. The Travel bit, dreams of getting away, sun, sea and sand, relaxation and cheap deals to exotic places? Ach, dream on. Due to terrorism threat around the world and SARS in Asia this Travel Section looked more like a British Railways Timetable than a newsworthy travel guide and nothing was priced attractively.

And so I sat there with a Glossy Magazine on my lap, afraid to open it and to be utterly disappointed with its content. But it called and I opened to be faced with some amazing out of this world articles on even more out of this world people and places. Articles on houses and lifestyles that are for the super rich: adverts for cars that would take me fifty years to save for and lengthy diatribes for those with problems of having too much money. There was no clearing in the thicket after all!

I should never have bought that newspaper. After reading it all I felt very inadequate, of a lowly class and totally out of my depth in society: unable to afford anything, to live properly or to take care of myself in the days to come. I was drained emotionally!

I picked up a few more papers during my week back home: the Scotland on Sunday which did not make me feel so bad and the Independent, The Times, the Observer and I even went for those others of a solar nature: The Sun and The Star just to check the other side of life. And the end result was that I flattened that forest as quickly as I could and sent the lot for recycling.

I got back on that plane in London and refused to pick up one of the free newspapers that one can have when boarding the aircraft. And as soon as I got off in Singapore I went straight to the paper shop and bought for myself a copy of the Straits Times, the Local Singapore paper. You may think me daft but I was determined to find out if British Newspapers where as bad as they seemed.

Of course the first few pages of my recently purchased Bush surrounded the problem of the SARS outbreak in SE Asia, something that I could fully understand as it was newsworthy of recent import and something that everybody was interested in. Not sure about the 96 hotels that had been awarded a “Cool Award" for cleanliness and the right to hang a SARS free sign on their doors, but I was happy to note that my hotel was on the list.

What made me sit back in realization was a column that I came across within the depths of this Asian wood. I had never seen this column before and whether it was a new thing or an old one is still unknown but read it I did. Simply headed ‘The Bouquet Column", it consisted of three or four letters from some satisfied people of Singapore. The first one was from a lady who when climbing out of her taxi tripped and hit her head on the curb. The letter went on to thank all for those persons that came to her help. Another thanked a taxi driver who returned a lost wallet two days later (with some money still inside) and another ‘thank you’ went to a bus driver who always waited for the passengers to seat themselves before burning rubber – this from a little old lady with frail pins. All very simple and pointless one could say but by sure it beats the Brief News columns that are ever present in the British Papers. Man beaten to death with an iron Bar, Lady goes mad when robbed for the twentieth time in one month or Mad prisoner escapes from the Jail just next door to you. I would rather read the bouquet column thank you very much!

Oh and for onward thought and information the Straits Times is half the price of its British counterpart and has more pages. More adverts maybe but at least I can afford half of the items that are being advertised.

Ieuan Dolby

Author and Webmaster of http://www.seadolby.com