Skip to main content

This post courtesy of your local library

I am deeply ashamed of myself.

Not for any nefarious acts recently committed. My conduct of late has been little short of exemplary, I could give any parfait gentil knighte a run for groats in the chivalry stakes. The reason for my shame is in the header.

I was obsessed with libraries as a child, and they played no small part in my almost complete sequestration from my peers, preferring as I did to bury my fizzog in a book. I even went so far as to fundraise for my local one when at school in cornwall (the form of fundraising, a 24 RPG extravaganza, so upset the local methodists that apparently, on the day in question, prayers for my soul were said from Bude to Newquay; a comforting thought to know you've got that much goodwill with the Almighty banked, thugh I suspect I may have spent a great deal of it since). Then I moved away, and found that the university library fulfilled my needs amply. Then I left university and discovered the joy of disposable income, so my bibliomania switched to the building of my own library. I never got round to joining the ormskirk one.

Until yesterday, that is. Regular readers will doubtless be aware that the quorate figure at Coastal Towers has reduced somewhat in recent weeks, and concomitant internet kerfufflage has led to yours truly being without access for a bit whilst the previous ISP insist the line is clear and the ISP in waiting insist there's nothing they can do cos it isn't. What with email becoming annoyingly essential to one's day to day business this is clearly an unsatisfactiory state of affairs. So i joined the library, and within a matter of seconds was wondering why I hadn't done so before. This may be stating the obvious, but it's clear that I'd forgotten this important fact in the intervening years: libraries are one of those wonderful resources which are easily taken for granted (a little like the NHS in that regard). This shit is free.

And here I sit, ashamed that it's been eleven years since last I took advantage of the wonder whch is beng able to go into a building and walk away with a bunch of books for, and I cannot emphasise this enough, free. And they have the internet now, too. Libraries. Aren't they great?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Inedible

"He says it's inedible" said my front of house manager, as she laid the half-eaten fish and chips in front of me, and instantly I relaxed.  Clearly, I observed, it was edible to some degree. I comped it, because I can't be arsed arguing the toss, and I want to make my front of house's lives as simple as possible. The haddock had been delivered that morning. The fryers had been cleaned that morning. The batter had been made that morning (and it's very good batter, ask me nicely and I'll give you the recipe some time). The fish and chips was identical to the other 27 portions I'd sent out on that lunch service, all of which had come back more or less hoovered up, we have have a (justified, if I do say so myself) very good reputation for our chips. But it was, apparently, "inedible". When it comes to complaints, less is more. If you use a hyperbolic word like that, I'll switch off, you've marked yourself as a rube, a chump, I'm not g...

Chop chop

I was completely ignorant of the fuss over the edited Trump speech in an edition of Panorama until, one moment later, I wasn't. And the reasons for my ignorance are instructive. I had no idea that the story was even brewing until the surprise Sunday night news of the resignations of Tom Davie and Deborah Turness. As I'm sure you are by now aware, this was occasioned by a clumsy edit in an old edition of Panorama, which has already been on the iplayer for a year. It's a non-story. Except people decided to make it a story. The reason I'd heard nothing of it until the resignations was that I'm not on X, where, apparently, it was all the media classes had been talking about for a week. It was an obsession of the unholy right-wing trifecta of the Mail, Telegraph and Times (who, given that they sent a bloke just last week to interview the wrong Bill di Blasio, you'd think would wind their necks in over factual inacccuracy). It was big news on GB news, all self-contain...

Creepy old men

I note, somewhat wearily, that creepy old men are back in the news, being creepy. Creepy old men, and their apologists and enablers, who argue that their creepiness is somehow the natural order of things. Old men would have you believe that it is difficult to not be a creepy old man. That it is a task of epic proportions. It is not that difficult. It is a matter of intention. As yet more of the grimness of Epstein unfolds, creepy old men are, sadly, a flaccid topic once again. Whether it be pursuing students thirty years their junior, or simply not asking too many questions about the background of the probably legal young woman who you've just been introduced to by your good pal Jeff. To be clear, I am not referring to criminal creepy old men, the ones who actually committed statutory rape, the ones who fucked trafficked hirls. That is not something which is allowed to get away merely with the contempt of the observer.  That deserves prison.  No , I'm referring to the hinterla...