Top Shelf Memories

Could we be about to see a renaissance of traditional porno mags?  I only ask because it seems to me that it is getting ever more difficult to just casually browse porn online, what with all these dodgy age checks and requests for ever-increasing amounts of personal information for verification.  Which is a pity, as online porn was one of the great technological innovations brought to us by the advent of the worldwide web.  No longer did young people have to be furtive about porn, perving over the women's' lingerie section of your mum's Marshal Ward mail order catalogue, or watching The Sweeney or Play for Today in hope of a flash of side-boob, or even straining your neck to glimpse the covers of the magazines on the top shelf of the newsagent. No, you could get it all served up, for free, in the privacy of your own bedroom.  Not just the run-of-the-mill page-three-of-the-tabloid stuff either, but just about every imaginable bizarre variation you could think of.  Young people had never had it so good.  I only wish that I'd had such a home education in smut when I was a teenager.  I'd have been able to avoid all the guilt the trauma of trying to see naked women through off-line means.

But now, of course, they are trying to cut off this lifeline to our depraved pubescent population.  For their own protection, allegedly.  Which is why I can foresee a comeback for traditional top shelf jazz mags.  Because the only ID or age verification you'd need to get your hands on this stuff would be a false moustache and maybe a dodgy fake bus pass claiming that you were really thirty six.  For those without the financial wherewithall to actually buy the magazines, maybe we could see a revival of the traditional 'porn exchange' of my youth:  the hedge at the edge of the playing fields.  That's right, back in the day hedges in parks and recreation grounds seemed to be just chock full of discarded porno mags.  Free for anyone to look at or even take home.  Not just hedges, actually.  I remember once ducking into a deer hide whilst walking through some woods in the country and stumbling over a stash of adult magazines.  Not just regular ones, but spanking themed stuff like 'Janus'.  (Which left me wondering just what the punishment for trespass or illegal hunting was there).   So yeah, let's bring that top shelf back for the kids!