My Life In Magazines

I’ve always been a great reader of magazines, right from when I was bought regular comics as a child.

I have vague memories of a comic called Playhour, which had a yellow cover and was filled with stories about teddies and such like. But the first comic that I really got excited about was Twinkle.

Between the ages of about four and seven, I looked forward to my copy of Twinkle landing on the mat every week. Each Christmas over that time I received the annual too, such was my love of stories such as Nurse Nancy, Sally Sweet Of Sunshine Street and Patsy Panda.

In time I outgrew Twinkle and tried a large number of different magazines. The early 70s seemed to see the arrival of a new comic every few weeks, with every new one launched bearing free gifts. I frequently changed my choice of comic to benefit from these gifts and try out as many comics as I could.

I worked my way through such gems as Whizzer and Chips, Shiver and Shake and Cor, before returning to the more girlie publications such as Jinty and Spellbound. At primary school I loved wet playtimes, when the teacher would produce boxes full of comics for us to read, allowing me to try yet more titles.

During this era, my sister who was six years older than me, was enjoying magazines full of song words, such as Disco 45. We used to sing the songs loudly together, which far from impressed my mother when we were heard to belt out the words to ‘My Ding-A-Ling.’

My sister also regularly read Jackie, which I used to eagerly wait for her to finish, so that I could cut out the fashion pages to make a kind of ‘dress the doll’ game.

By the time I was a teenager Mates and magazines full of photo stories were all the rage, although I also collected a craft partwork at this time.

From my twenties onwards I bought different magazines depending on my mood and what they featured at the time. Titles I tried included Annabel, Woman’s World, She and Family Circle.

Women’s magazines have changed with the times and there are actually fewer ‘general’ ones in the shops than in years gone by I would say. Many magazines today are geared towards specific hobbies and interests, In fact, apart from Women’s Weekly that I buy for the stories, I only tend to buy the odd knitting or cross stitch magazine myself.

But no matter what magazines I buy today, I don’t think I’ll ever get as excited as I did about my beloved Twinkle!

(I’m dedicating this post in memory of my much-loved sister who died of cancer back in 2010. Writing this has brought back some treasured memories.)

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