Questions and Answers #1

[thermalsatsuma]

leatherdykeuk asked :


It was one of the hot, endless summers of long ago, sometime between Slade and the Sex Pistols. Every Saturday I would cycle down the avenue, along Top Street Way, past a series of flats named after poets, left into Station road, and right just before the police station. I would chain my bike to the railings and go into the deliciously cool and shady Harpenden Public Library. That's 'cool and shady' in terms of temperature and lack of sunlight, rather than being fashionable and slightly disreputable. Directly in front of the doors was the librarian's desk, with it's mysterious camera for registering the books on loan and the inky date stamps, and beside that was the trolley.

The trolley was where I always looked first. It would fill up with a veritable gallimaufry of books and every so often the librarian would make her rounds to put them back in their appointed places. I confess that I initially did judge books by their covers, and so my initial choices were the fantasy and science fiction paperbacks with their spaceships and mighty thewed barbarian warriors. This was how I discovered Robert E Howard, Larry Niven, Ursula Le Guin, HP Lovecraft, Frank Herbert, and of course, JRR Tolkien. There were others too – books on history and magic, mathematical diversions and mythology. I was, quite literally, in a world of my own.

I would happily spend half the day in the reading area, set up a short flight of steps from the main desk, browsing through the books before making my final selection of three to borrow for the next week. Later in life, I would follow the same habits in choosing books – preferring the chance and happenstance of a charity shop or jumble sale, to a regimented high street display.

Even now, I dream of happening upon libraries or book shops that contain every book that I've ever wanted to read, and more often than not it is that first library that I am wandering through.

Comments

[leatherdykeuk.livejournal.com]

Brilliant. You conjure up memories of my own from the hidden depths!