ORIGIN STORY

SUM UP THE LAST three decades in a single column. Sure, I can do that. After all, it has passed in the blink of an eye.

And so, it came to pass, that in the late 1980s, a small publishing house in a big city noticed the only conspicuous gap on the newsstands was for a magazine celebrating the delights of rural living in Australia. Sure, there was , which depicted the majestic creatures of America’s northern plains and the weaponry to hasten their extinction. And there was which opened up a world entirely populated by British women in head scarves and green wellies, and with many hyphenated family names to make up for their lack of a discernible chin.