Paper view

If you find yourself leafing idly through the pages of this esteemed publication today, congratulations. If, on the other hand, you're hunched over, shoulders slumped dabbing at a small screen with your index finger, it's time to buck your ideas up. The future's coming and it's made of paper, specifically newspaper.

Well, that's my theory, anyway. Although, to be fair, any time I posit such a notion socially, people tend to guffaw directly in my face and point at me with their worn-out index fingers. This is the point where I hit back, citing vinyl records and humungous headphones as lifestyle choices which were almost universally considered to be obsolete at some point but which came bounding back to the extent that aficionados are prepared to pay astronomical sums for Rick Astley's greatest hits at 33rpm. (Point of order, though, all you cool vinyl people. It's genuinely great that you're spinning discs and coveting beautiful album sleeves and everything, but claiming that vinyl recordings sound better than CDs is a step too far. They patently don't. They do, however, sound much better than MP3s, although so does humming the same song on comb and paper, to be honest).

Anyway, where were we? Ah, yes. Newspapers. I love them. One of my favourite childhood memories is of lying on the living room floor in my pyjamas, chomping on dry Weetabix smothered in butter and jam (the Weetabix not me) reading the irate missives from Liverpudlians and Evertonians on the letters page of the garishly pink Football Echo.

In fact, the very first column I wrote for SUR in English in 1897 or whenever was about how the best thing you can do upon arriving at any given destination for the first time is seek out a copy of the local rag to get a feel of the place. I still think that's true, although many provincial publications have long since bitten the dust thanks to all of those slumped shoulders and all of that index finger dabbing.

For many years, you used to be able to buy a good selection of UK newspapers from that magnificent gentleman on Calle Larios in Malaga who sells the printed press from the doorway of a magisterial building which is surrounded on all sides by faceless multinational franchises. It's like Custer's last stand. These days he just sells a couple of tabloids but such is my addiction, I resorted to getting weekly Sunday papers sent over from the UK. The fact that the news is a bit out of date by the time they get here doesn't matter - it's the feel of the paper and the smell of the print that counts. I'll stop there because first, I'm getting a little dewy-eyed and, secondly, sounding like a weirdo.

Really though, hard copy newspapers are to be treasured and I have every faith that they'll make a comeback one of these days just like vinyl records did. In the meantime, I'll seek them out wherever I can by whatever means necessary. Never gonna give them up, never gonna let them down...

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