MY FINANCIAL TIMES ADDICTION

My Financial Times Addiction.
I freely admit to it: I am addicted to FT. It waltzed into my life after retirement. Until then it was New York Times and Wall Street Journal, as befitted a respectable international marketing manager. Then retirement came along. The huge gap which had opened in my life after I lost my husband, the empty chair across from me on the verandah, the lack of lively exchange of ideas and his incredibly encyclopedic knowledge to which I was accustomed, became even more painfully apparent, as a sort of intellectual desert seemed to lie ahead. Searching for stuff to fill my brain, I enrolled in a doctoral programme in humanities at a nearby university. I chose my direction in medieval studies after an intensive course on Dante’s Divine Comedy, I fell in love with it. My dissertation on the economy of the French Abbey of Cluny – twelfth century – was not exactly a bestselling thriller for most people, but it got me a distinguished mention for creative thought. And after all that thrill, just as I was resigned to face the gaping hole of my lonely morning coffees, I came across the Financial Times. An amazing discovery. Over time, I became acquainted with the journalists, the analysts, and the commentators; with economists and historians. With their specialty topics, their individual styles, particular brand of humour and sophistication, all of it served in grammatically correct writing, with nary a typo in the text. They became my friends, some even my favourites. I subscribe to the paper edition, but on those rare occasions when the paper does not show up on my doorstep, I can fall back, less willingly, on the e-version. However, I have also been known to go down before breakfast to the neighbourhood grocery that carries it; and triumphantly clutching the FT, return to my verandah and my morning coffee, which simply does not taste the same without the salmon-coloured paper in hand.

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