3. Magazines, part I

4 days in and I've already succumbed to magazines.  And not even paid for magazines, but the kind you pick up for free in overpriced design shops.  But, and b2009ks is about honesty if it's about anything, magazines are what people read.  Even Google Books is now stuffed to the gills with shiny and colourful magazines.  So entry number 3 is a selection of design magazines.  Or more bibliographically correct, trade catalogues.  Grey literature.  Very collectible, it seems now, if you've a pile of pre-1960s swimming pool fixture trade catalogues.  More so if it's Victorian.

Design (publisher: BoConcept), Aram (Aram) and The Conran Shop (Conran Shop) have so far provided me with very little information, but a lot of glossy interiors, minute pictures of pieces of expensive furniture, and the occasional thoughtoid, thanks to said designers, such as 'why not go with a bit of colour, such as on your cushions here and there'.  Put together with Grand Designs magazine I flicked through on the train down to Somerset, I don't think I've read a more vacuous series of publications.

All this because I need a sofa.  The cost differential of somewhere to sit, read (which seems important to this blog) and have a nap between the made-in-china, zero credit and snooty sales-assistant shown designer settees is vast.  Even John Lewis doesn't solve your problems.  Ikea almost did, but somehow I couldn't do it.  All they are is a bit of cloth, wood and possibly some metal.  Some springs and a bit of beech if you're lucky.  All to show off like an upholstered womb or leather-clad penis, ostentatiously placed in the middle of the main room. 'Look at me!  Look at my wonderful minimalist modernist upmyself off-the-peg taste!" No other piece of furniture (or thing I own) makes as much a statement, so expensively, about so little.

Anyway, I got one.  Partly out of a desire to stop having to think about it all, and partly because I saw one, calling me, across the floor of the Conrad Shop (in grey).  It met all the requirements: comfy, low back, legs, and not too fussy.  In 12 weeks, I should be able to sit and read on it. I certainly won't be able to afford to go out and do anything now. Oh, and I saw Paul Weller in Waitrose while I was going about my business doing all this. (As well as met Ms Aram in the Aram store, who was very nice).