I don’t know about you but at the end of a busy working day, as a treat on a day off or even if I have a delicious 10 minutes to spare come lunch time, I enjoy a good flick through a magazine.

Oh the joy of vacuous celebrity gossip and the frippery of new season fashion! For me, the lighter the better – a buffer zone of dip in, dip out distraction to put all the more serious malarkey – economic gloom, the stuff in Syria, the NHS falling to bits plus on the home front, the washing machine conking out – on temporary hold.

But I hate those real life magazines. You know their type – full of generally miserable stories recounting in detail someone’s decline into some terrible disease or how their boyfriend ran off with their best friend on their wedding day or how they are languishing in love now that their partner has been jailed for some horrid crime (extra space given if he/she is on Death Row).

To me, magazines should essentially be fun and that includes trade magazines. I buy my magazines to entertain in the first instance and then to inform or inspire on a secondary level (i.e. suggest some place to visit or something easy and cheap to make for tea). I read trade magazines to learn and to be updated on latest industry innovations but I still think it’s essential they entertain because that’s what’s going to keep me turning pages as opposed to just ticking my name off as having read it when I haven’t.

So what makes a good read for you – trade or otherwise? It’s all very relevant here at The fabl – we’ve just got the go ahead to work on another new magazine. It’s a food service sector magazine aimed at chefs, publicans and restaurateurs. At the moment, we’re working on an editorial plan, deciding what type of stories and features it should contain. We want colleague to fight colleague, metaphorically speaking, to be first to read it and hover over the post when subsequent issues are due out to sneak a peek. That’s our lofty aim for our new mag – you’ll just have to watch this space to see how we go about it!