I first came across the Guardian Weekly on the terrace overlooking the Nile river at the Old Cataract Hotel in Aswan, Egypt, in 1990. I was there on holiday with a friend; we were working as seismologists in Muscat, Oman, in the oil sector and we often had to work out in the sticks on seismic camps with no TV or newspapers.
The Weekly soon became my only source of reliable news after I began subscribing. I have moved around a lot in my life and the Weekly has since proved informative and entertaining due to the combination of three major news media publishers: the Guardian, Le Monde and the Washington Post.
I have now settled in south Manchester in the UK for the last 18 years, working as a groundwater geologist for a consultancy. Recently I have been able to convince my son to use the Weekly as source material for his weekly homework reading in his political science classes.
Every year when my subscription renewal comes in the post, I hesitate and consider ending it so that I can perhaps buy a daily paper instead. But then I realise that the weekly edition always offers such a unique selection of news that I end up renewing it and have never regretted it.
Hopefully one day I will have a broad enough vocabulary to solve Maslanka puzzles, but till then I will remain frustrated with Wordplay.
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