The weekend FT is the most incredible regular read. You can catch up on News, Politics, Business, Life, Travel & Arts, written & illustrated beautifully. Every Saturday morning as I take my son for his swimming class, the weekend FT hasn’t reached yet and I wait to get back and devour it for my battery recharge.
This weekends edition – Politics and Business.
Is of course full of Brexit with various ramifications on the UK, Europe & the world. What is happening in British politics is described to be akin (and even surpassing) House of Cards. A perfect recharge. The front page had a picture of a youngster commerating the Battle of the Somme, when on Juy 1, 1916 the British army had over 19000 soldiers killed, its largest loss on a single day. Over the next 4 months, over a million British, French & German soldiers died. I heard on TV the descendants of many who fought & died there, reading heart renting accounts of their plight. Juxtaposed with Brexit, all these memorials seemed quite surreal.
Life & Arts
This is my favorite part & I itch to get to it. This weeks lead article is as one would expect on Brexit by Kazuo Ishiguro, followed by Lunch with the FT that nets some very interesting reads (I have the collected Lunch with the FT on my bedside table but alas have yet to read it, but will get to it soon). There were articles on fashion, hovercrafts plying to the Isle of Wight (reminded me of my trips on the Princess Anne and Margaret some decades ago), on the Cyclades in Greece (that includes Santorini where I went for my honeymoon), a great section on book recommendations across genres, a bike ride acres Northen Ireland with an incredible picture of the author cycling under a canopy of beech trees and an interesting account of art auctions during the 1st post-Brexit week. The back page has my favorite part – Tyler Brule’s Fast Lane where this week he gave an analogy for London of how Montreal lost a prominent place after a similar referendum. I had written to him when once I had a similar “several cities in a week” lifestyle and he was kind enough to respond. Harry Eyre’s Slow Lane has now been finally replaced by a regular one – from Nilanjana Roy who was with me in college (or should I say I was with her in college given that she has the column in theFT?). This is the best recharge I get.
House & Home
The lead article was on Edward Hurst, a renowned antique dealer. Reading it was a lovely journey. On page 2 is David Tang’s Agony Uncle. This weekend, on request, he wrote evocatively about his grandmother. Below this copy is the regular article on someone’s house, this week it being on Autumn de Forest, aged 14 from Las Vegas who has sold paintings worth U$14M since she was 5. Then follows an article on property prices in a famous location, usually London, this time on Chelsea. In the summary box they normally start with what one can buy for half a million GBP, but for Chelsea it starts with 5million! There are also 2 page ads on properties across the world, always an interesting glance, especially castles in Europe I have come across earlier for EUR1million. The back page is normally by Robin Lane Fox, many of whose books I have read, who writes wonderfully on gardening.
How to Spend it
This magazine comes about 2-3 weekends a month. I always wondered whether the title meant “How to Spend the weekend”, or “How to Spend the money one earned during the week?” I will check. It follows a regular pattern with “The Aesthete” about the personal habits of a prominent person, ëclectibles” a great section on Things for Him and Her, an always interesting 2 pager on hotels/ resorts called “Travelista”, the latest gadgets in “Technopolis”, a hilarious spoof called “Wry Society”, the latest on interested restaurants called The Gannet. It ends with “The PerfectWeekend”, a description of how a fashion head honcho spends it in always interesting place.
My kids always tease me about the time I spend on the “pink newspaper” and it’s well worth it – relaxing and detoxing the mind!
