Walkies!

Some people refer to it a "taking the dog for a walk"

Some people have not done this with Molly!

I am in two minds about what I am actually doing.

Sometimes it feels like I am escorting a small alien on an Earth fact-finding tour. Something gets her attention, she stops, looks questionly at me, I tell her what it is and we move on. The amusement factor for others is quite clear to me, thank you for pointing it out! Nothing so funny as woman having converstaions in public with a small dog, who is wearing a funky coat, but acting like she is atired in lab coat and serious glasses.

Other times, I feel I am but a humble servant accompanying royalty on a tour of her realm. My job is to keep her from harm while she meets and greets her public.It is her opniion - and life experience - that everyone in her presence adores her. As she struts by in her purple coat and matching harness, which delightfully coordinate with her baby pink collar and lead, I endlessly advise her vital statistics to her people. As I am trying to familiarise her with the local shops in walking distance and said shops have high human traffic, my public humiliation is just about complete!

There is, however, a third version of walking, perhaps the most humiliating of all. It is the reluctant walk. This is where the short one isn't so keen after all and requires the taller one to take one of two actions: coax her step by step with foul-smelling liver treats or pick up the whole package and complete the bracing walk in the winter air for all to see.

Another one bites the dust

Before I even took the new edition of Notebook: magazine out of its wrapper, I knew it had changed and not for the better. Sigh. It was too good to be true after all. A magazine which featured beautiful flowers on the cover instead of impossibly gorgeous skinny women. One which featured the real life stories of real life women instead of the reflections of those so far removed from the everyday to be totally irrelevant.

To say I am disappointed is an understatement. Inclined to unsubscribe is a better description.

So, is it me? I hope not. I have always been a magazine tragic. It started with Dolly and evolved through Cleo and Cosmo, then the Womens' - Weekly and Day and New Idea (back when they were informative, not vomit-inducing). As life progressed, I migrated to the parenting magazines: all of them! As my children grew, Better Homes and Gardens and Family Circle were the order of the day. Then as my life has increasingly become my own again, I turned to scrapbooking magazines, Good Reading, photography magazines and - surprisingly - O Magazine (as in Oprah!) which I demanded the library subscribe to as I could never justify the price!

And nestled in since its inception was Notebook:magazine.

So is it me that has changed? Gee, I only turned 45 three weeks ago and while I accept I am now in the next demographic (women aged 45-50) I didn't expect the change to be so abrupt! I thought I had found my niche and now the niche has decided it doesn't like its image and wants to change it. But in the words of the email I recieved from them today (in response to mine): We really needed to change the picture to represent better what was in the magazine. So many women didn't even pick it up because they thought it was just a gardening or craft magazine and therefore not relevant to them.

I can only deduce that I and my lifestyle are not relevant to them!