If you are anything like me, your curiosity knows no bounds. You will read anything. The back of the washing up liquid bottle or the National Enquirer. Virginia Wolff or Jackie Collins. Every magazine you can lay your hands on: from the luxuriously matt pages of the new Harpers Bizzare to the latest edition of the scrumptiously lovely Charlie and Lola comic.
I read and I read and I read some more.
And in all of it there is something to magpie. An idea or turn of phrase to squirrel away. A picture that turns my toe’s up in delight or a slither of gossip I can barely wait to share (I am the most outrageous gossip).
Mine is a voracious appetite, never truly sated, so when I saw magazines of the never spotted before variety I could not help myself but fritter away money I barely have on words that just might have an undiscovered part of myself unfurling. And so it is with both Oh Comely and (oh bliss) The Gentlewoman: both the delicious cross between independant zine and magazine and both resplendant with fresh new voices, very few adverts, art direction to die for and subject matter that bridges the gap between traditional magazine fodder and the very individual intelligent writing most oft to be found in the kind of blogs we all aspire to write.
Where Oh Comely is cutesy and fun (an article about what you can and cannot have delivered by Royal Mail really made me giggle) , The GentleWoman is unspeakably stylish and rather eccentrically combines traditional subject matter with avant garde women (Like Modern Housekeeping with Pearl Lowe), to glorious effect. While many will dismiss them as too “artsy” to become part of their regular magazine reportoir, others will be thrilled by the quirky, thought provoking content and enjoy the experience of reading something entirely new, because isn’t it essential to keep on stretching our personal boundaries? To keep dipping our toes in previously uncharted waters?
Oh Comely and The Gentlewoman are very different and perhaps neither will thank me for drawing comparisons between the two, but where both shine is in the offering of that which to those tired of the repetive noise intrinsic to most modern magazines, is music to our ears and giddy inspiration to our ever thirsty souls. Here in the UK both are available (to those of us mourning the demise of our Darling Borders) in W.H.Smith and elsewhere available for international delivery online…
I can barely wait to climb into bed with both and a cup of  Tranquility this evening….
Create your own Brocante Life Book, plan Christmas, set up routines and rituals or live life the BrocanteHome way with my guided workbooks and planners.
I have spent the weekend just gone, lost in a book. The kind of book with such a strong sense of time and place that it was almost a surprise to find myself sitting here at my desk in modern day Ormskirk…
Hello Housekeepers! Wanna climb on the back of a pretty pony and come for a spin around the carousel with me? Of course you do! Though it’s been so long I do believe I may have forgotten quite how to get saddled…
Isn’t it just lovely? Now all we need is a beach side hut in an up and coming English seaside town, so we can escape the daily grind in the lazy hazy days of August without adding to the carbon nightmare that…
Though it may seem as though I am permanently busy having nervous breakdowns and screaming fits at unsuspecting medical professionals, behind the scenes I am quietly beavering away creating little bits of loveliness (or in this case 550 little bits of loveliness!)…
Oh you lucky American people! You get to have a Shabby Christmas courtesy of this gorgeous new video from Rachel Ashwell. If they only created a version of this DVD suitable for UK format DVD players I would book myself an afternoon…
So there I was lying still in the silence of the middle of the night. When it struck me that silence in my house is really, really loud. Fuzzy loud if you know what I mean. I have only known pure silence,…
2 Comments
They both sound delightful – there are many things that frustrate me about living at the bottom of the world (almost) and one of them is the lack of magazine variety… Thank goodness for the internet! Although, there is nothing like curling up in bed with a cuppa and something wonderful to read 🙂
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They both sound delightful – there are many things that frustrate me about living at the bottom of the world (almost) and one of them is the lack of magazine variety…
Thank goodness for the internet! Although, there is nothing like curling up in bed with a cuppa and something wonderful to read 🙂
Oh Flossy I can well imagine. How about I send you a copy of The GentleWoman? Email me if you would like a little gift Honey Pie.x