Canada, Zero – New Zealand, 25.
Degrees, that is, not a rugby score. Either way, it was no contest. Off we went for two whole months, a dream we’d held for over 20 years.
We didn’t cancel our Guardian Weeklies. They were to be collected by neighbours and left on the kitchen counter.
We didn’t go out of our way to boycott the world’s news while in New Zealand, but found we didn’t need, or indeed want, to know.
“We can Google that,” I’d suggest, when global issues crossed our minds, but more often than not we didn’t. My husband remarked, time and again, “Nah, don’t bother ... I’ll read about it in the Guardian when we get home”. So I didn’t bother either. There never seemed to be enough time anyway. We were out and about, doing the things people do on holidays: in our case, trading snowshoes for snorkels, and hot toddies for hot springs.
Later, at home, and between “getting-over-the-holiday” chores, we’d pick up the papers and work our way through. We marked, in red, what the other might be interested in. We took our time. Reading our Weekly is a solitary activity but it also brings us together. A crossword unfinished, a picture to look at more closely, an item worthy of sharing out loud.
Neither of us can imagine life without the Weekly, even the ones with two-month-old news. That’s how much we love it.
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