This is how it all starts......

So there I was enjoying a relaxing holiday with my husband. We had decided to drive up to Scotland to get some air, exercise and just loll about ... it's all been a bit of a whirlwind with one thing and another. (More of that later).

Whilst lounging about, I hear "I don't know why you read this, its all bloody adverts." Muffled speech. Coming from another room. The bathroom - obviously.

There he was sitting on the toilet, reading the glossy mag that my mam had bought me as part of my birthday present (it had a very nice free bag on the front - the type that folds up small enough to fit in your handbag so you don't have to use those HORRIFIC plastic bags that are constantly forced on us.....), and he just couldn't contain his outburst!

"It's just all adverts. Adverts. And more adverts. There's nothing interesting in it all." And so it was discarded and his full concentration was once again returned to the toilet.

And so it got me thinking.

I never, ever, buy the big name glossy magazines. Ever. Firstly, they are FULL of adverts. All cleverly placed at the front so that by the time you are 10 pages in you have lost the will to live and throw it down in disgust.

Secondly, who has enough money to pay £1000 for a new handbag and then discard it 4 months later because that is what we are told to ??

Thirdly, they just make me rant! Rant about airbrushing, values, our society, skinny, fat, getting old, trying to stay young and whats really important in the world.

But the free bag was lovely and useful and fits in my handbag ever so well.

In the spirit of the moment, and because I was very comfy lolling about on the mattress on the floor, I started to pull the adverts out of the magazine. Just rip them right out. It was great!
They drive me crackers you see, and there they were lying on the floor (ALL over the floor) and what was left, was actually a more attractive read.

So how many were there?

Well, I will just digress a little and explain the criterion for my wild experiment.

I only pulled out the adverts that didn't have an article on the other side. Which left a few inside the magazine that needed to be counted. And I didn't pull out the couple of pages that the magazines were advertising themselves on ( I thought that was fair enough). And for some reason I didn't pull out the directories at the back as they don't seem so ... erm ...offensive to me.

So, out of about 320 pages (ish) 130 were adverts. About 40%. That's right .... 40% or so of the magazine was adverts. ADVERTS. Bloody adverts. The magazine was ALL adverts. But neraly half of some of them were. Which seems to me to be a terrible waste of trees.

And so started my mission and this blog.