Love your Library

I love the library.  It used to be a Saturday morning treat.  The Children's library was up a spiral staircase that smelt of polish and made my footsteps sound like they belonged to a giant.  My parents stayed downstairs choosing their own books and I would be able to sit and read books on my own until they had finished.  I loved the cardboard library card, which held the tickets of the books that were borrowed.  Searching through the box of cards to find books on subjects I was interested in gave me many hours of fascination.

When I first had my children and decided to be a stay-at-home mum, my high-flying friends would ask me how I coped.  "Don't you get bored?"  "Don't you ever crave an intelligent, adult conversation?"  And they had a point. I remember sitting at a mother and toddler group and listening to women discussing whether their washing was going to get dry, or how their darling Harry had just done a poo.  The library was different though, you could sit reading books, or the newspaper while small child toddled over with different books.  Conversation with other mums was much better too. Also, it is impossible to get bored with picture books.

My job in the college library, funded a lively social life.  At Christmas, the music professor would write Christmas Carols in the most obscure keys to give us a challenge when drunk and thanks to my library wages I usually was. That was probably the best training I've ever had!  I can still tell you the Dewey number of any subject you want to know about (Roughly 0 - General stuff like Bible, Dictionaries, Biographies; 100 - Philosophy  Occult, Psychology (150); 200 Religion, 300 Sociology, law, politics; 400    Language,  500 Science and maths, 600 Applied Science including medicine and cookery; 700 Arts (780 music); 800 Literature; 900 History and Geography)

My husband keeps wanting to buy me a Kindle, which is very kind of him but I worry that the Kindle will be the end of the library so I won't let him.  Hopefully, our choir's visit to sing at our local library will help footfall and it will be able to stay open.

I've just heard that the winner of the Turner prize has been announced.  I must check my previous blog to see if I predicted correctly.