The Herald

Most times sitting (or standing - see yesterday's blog) next to a Herald reader (HR) is an excercise in patience. The fact that the Herald is as big as a 6 seater tablecloth does not daunt the HR. I know people who are budding retail assistants who use HRs on public transport as a training excercise in anger management. HRs tend to have no consideration for the persons in their vicinity by spreading their arms to their greatest width, their legs likewise (I think this is a balance thing actually. Obviously if your arms are spread and the train jolts suddenly you have to have your legs spread to stop you from falling off your perch). The turning of a page results in most of the passengers within a five seat radius getting a fright from the SNAP as the HR turns into something that resembles two children fighting under a sheet. The people in the seats in front are constantly being tortured by being hit in the head with sheets of paper, fists, knees and even on rare occasions stomachs and breasts as Mr or Mrs inconsiderate contorts themselves into knots in order to turn to page 4. And let's not mention the hurricane that follows the athletic page turn, on a cold morning it's a chill that can kill. Obviously there is a price to pay for being seen as an intellectual and not some pleb who reads the Tele. It's just that the person who pays isn't the reader.
I am watching a man reading the Herald. Three things come to mind as I watch. He is obsessive compulsive or he is a control freak or he is very very aware of the annoyance he could cause other passengers. Maybe it's all three.
He has a page turning ritual.
The paper is never opened fully. First we separate the news section from the rest of the paper. The other sections go into his brief case (neatly). The news section is then folded in half. The fold must be even and sharp so we put the paper on our brief case, take out our trusty Gold Parker Pen and iron the crease. Then the paper gets folded in half again, line up the pages neatly and we iron that crease. We can then read page 1 in a clockwise direction turning to the quarterly bits as we need to . To turn the page we open the paper and fold the front page in half lengthwise, iron and fold back into quarters etc until we have read the whole paper. I may have missed a step or two here but I think you can get the gist of what I'm saying.
It's brilliant, the paper isn't the messy lump that most Heralds end up in, he doesn't annoy anyone (except maybe mess freaks) and he is an endless source of amusement for those of us who can appreciate it.
A good look at the man himself discloses a bit about him, he is very nicely ironed. Creases in his pants and shirt are razor sharp. Hair is almost like it is painted on. Somehow he hasn't got black ink all over his hands and he sits with both knees together with his feet slightly elevated at the heel. June Daly Watkins must be proud.
I wonder what he does on Saturday? Does he break out and have bits of Herald all over the house? Does he lie on the floor in a curry stained track suit and spread out all over the lounge room only changing position when he wants to read a new section?
That brings me to another set of questions....How does a dedicated scruncher read the Herald,
is a folder necessarily an obsessive compulsive and can a scruncher and a folder read the same Herald and if so who reads first ? Hmmm