I have to admit to yet another weird quirk – I know, I know…how many can one person have (ask my husband – he may be able to answer that).

I LOVE The Saturday Age. When I say “love”, I mean it in the slightly unnerving ‘hug it and squeeze it and lick the plastic home delivery wrap and stroke it and gaze at it like a long-lost treasure and maybe speak to it in hushed, conspiratorial tones’ kind of way. I love it like a bought one.

Believe it or not, that is not the problem (depending on who you ask). The problem is that I have to read it in a particular way. I can’t just throw open a broadsheet and start at the beginning; that would be too….normal?!

First, I prune the paper. Out comes the My Career, Drive and the Sports sections (sorry, boys). Depending on my mood and how the world has behaved during the week, the Business section might also get tossed.

Then comes the fun part. I start with the Good Weekend magazine and go straight to the etiquette section with Danny Katz. Pure gold. Who else would tell you how to handle the people who invite you over for dinner, accept the expensive wine you brought and then serve their own $5 clean skin? Or what to do with the vicious old lady with a motorized scooter, who is terrorising the children of the neighbourhood?

Once I am etiquetted-up the wazoo, I wander off to read Maggie Alderson. Last week’s column on “shopping her own wardrobe” like a tried and true fashionista-turned-recessionista was utterly fabulous. She dug some vintage beauties out of her wardrobe she hadn’t worn for years and found herself bang on-trend at a fashion show in sweet Paris. Ah, to be blessed with great taste and a magic wardrobe…..

After that, I might potter through the rest of the Good Weekend (love it), but more often than not, I gird my loins, prepare to be outraged and stampede to the back page of the A2. There, I take in the latest rantings of Catherine Deveny. I’m not really sure why I do it – it’s a lot like flogging myself with my own toys…. a little pain, a little pleasure. Granted, there are times when I agree with her (don’t let that get around), but I also find there are times when she should REALLY stop, think, breathe and walk a mile in someone else’s shoes before mouthing off. That way, as the saying goes, she would be a mile away and wearing someone else’s shoes and I wouldn’t have to bother with her…

Once I have completed my simple Saturday paper rituals, I can settle in, get a hot cup of tea and some cereal and start harassing my family by sniggering, snorting, sighing, shouting muesli into the paper and insisting on reading bits aloud to them and expecting them to be as excited / outraged / touched as I am about my wee snippets of info.

THEN, as if that wasn’t enough, I rip out bits of interesting info and articles and leave them all over the house. I am the Hansel and Gretel of our abode…leaving a trail of little scraps of paper about a quirky new shop in Degraves Street, a hidden treasure trove of antiques in Trentham or an article on how children raised by lefty/pinko/commie/facist writers in the Inner City turn out to be sociopaths, behind me.

This is played out almost every Saturday in our house and it’s a lot more fun than you might think. Really. So, this Saturday why not give it a try? Grab The Saturday Age, read it in a non-linear fashion; soak in it, love it and treasure it…lick the plastic, put the pages on the floor and roll around on it until the print comes off on your skin…open it and shout at the writers you disagree with and then be glad you don’t live in our house…because you just KNOW that I am doing the same thing, while my family cower in fear in the corner and try to dodge the airborne muesli.

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