Letter no.7
Or, a love letter to libraries
Hello friends,
Do you ever visit the library? Do you even have a local library anymore?
Until I had my baby just over a year ago I think I had entered our local library about 5 times in the 5 years that we’ve lived here. A combination of reasons as to why: lockdown then baby have ensured reliance on my kindle (hate that I continue to support Bezos via this), an inability to pass a National Trust secondhand bookshop without running in to scour the shelves for a Barbara Trapido or Mary Wesley I don’t yet own, plus my brother’s girlfriend working in a bookshop two Christmases ago (we all gave books as gifts that year using her discount [heaven]).
This has all changed due to a chubby bundle of joy, whose idea of a good time is singing ‘row row row your boat’ and ‘the wheels on the bus’, complete with actions (of a sort), meaning one weekday morning is spent attending our local library’s free1 rhyme time session.
We have been going semi-regularly since coming back from Australia and every time we arrive, slightly sweating and in a mild panic (I’m always late, duh), probably semi-sleep deprived, I feel an instant sense of calm. Like a favourite cosy blanket is being placed over me, edges tucked under, as we stroll through its sliding doors.
Ah, I think. Here we are.
I’ve always loved reading. As a child, my absolute favourite thing to do on a Saturday was go to our local library, a converted Rectory, and make my way up the old Victorian staircase to the children’s section, curling up in the window seat reading book after book as my mum took my siblings to the park below. I used to proudly ‘max out’ my library card (14 books!), then return home to escape upstairs and read on my bunk bed (top, obviously). Sometimes there were classics, although these were more often than not bought for me by my mum for birthday or Christmas: Anne of Green Gables, Little Women, The Railway Children (one memorable Christmas when I was 9: All seven ‘Anne’ books). Instead, I borrowed quick reads: Enid Blyton, The Sleepover Club, California Diaries. Adventure stories and innocent babysitting clubs which progressed into boyfriends and teen angst; stories of step-parents and eating disorders. I inhaled them alongside sweet, brightly coloured sticks of liquorice, somehow smuggled past my sugar-phobic mum. Bought from the Girls Brigade tuck shop with secret money from my dad, perhaps, or on the sly with birthday money from the ‘little shop’ around the corner. I would lie in bed, snacking and reading whole entire books back to back; pride in how many I was getting through; whole afternoons lost to other lives.
It wasn’t just our local library, with its Grade II listed charm and its rack of videos to borrow (The Famous Five! I’m unable to think of any other titles that lived up to the thrill of The Famous Five TV series), or the pretty gardens it was set in. It was any library. Most summer holidays were spent in our caravan in Cornwall; once there my first port of call would be the local library: Padstow, Wadebridge, Penzance - wherever we were, a holiday membership would be acquired and ‘maxed out’. The excitement and thrill of new, different books; the task of having to finish them all by the time we went home.
There was the time I worked as a library assistant before going to University, a ‘peak relief’ member of staff who floated around the various branches (very regrettably, I started work just as they did away with the physical stamping of books: childhood dream never unlocked). I enjoyed the Central Library: working with my best friend and others our age, the long breaks a council worker was offered (morning, lunch and afternoon break with an extra half hour if you were there until 7!), lunchtime trips to Boots with earnings spent on a meal deal; the monotonous yet soothing nature of shelving books according to the Dewey Decimal system. Lots and lots of books, borrowed and read.
My favourite shifts though, were in the branch libraries. The librarian who, after I mentioned that I thought I might like Latin jazz, wrote down a list of singers, musicians and songs that I should listen to, who was the first and most important influence on the music I like and the songs I love to sing today.
The hours spent back in my local branch, which could get so quiet in the late part of the afternoon that you could man the desk and read.
When I walk into my now local library, a building on the edge of a 1970’s shopping precinct, pushing my son in his pram and hearing the strains of the 'hello’ song letting me know I’m kind of just in time, the greatest feeling I have is one of relief. Of familiarity. The children’s section is small, but welcoming. There is a toy train that holds picture books which the children play on. There is a sofa, which I first sat on to feed my son when he was 5 months old and I couldn’t face going home when it was pouring with rain outside; the owner of my favourite coffee shop was there with his daughter and we chatted, said how much we loved it there. How great it is when you have a child.
The smell is the same as the library I went to growing up, as the libraries I visited on holiday, as the library my partner showed me at the Music Conservatoire he studied at in Australia - which was light and airy and old and inspiring - the sort of high-ceilinged, Bodleian-esque room that makes you feel you can and will write that successful novel. The people are often the same, too. They love books, they enjoy order. They are happy to help, they are willing to sing ‘Timmy the Turtle’ to a circle of children, in a register that is either much too high or much too low. The books are familiar. New releases, yes, but also ones you’d never see on the Booker Longlist: titles like ‘A Mansion by the Mersey’, or ‘A Fall from Grace’.
So let this be a love letter to libraries: all libraries everywhere. May we use them, and not take them for granted. The thought of a world without them is too terrible a thing.
Eating
Double coat TimTams, which I’m pleased to report are now being sold in Sainos. Still think I need to taste-test against the humble penguin. Willing to put my taste buds to the test in the name of research for my readers, should you require me to (please require me to!).
Enjoying
The joy with which New Yorker’s have successfully voted in Zohran Mamdani. To know that this 34 year old (same school year, what?!) has triumphed against a racist and billionaire funded smear campaign is honestly, nothing short of miraculous. It makes me emotional thinking about the people power that led to his election and the hope this might give Americans who are suffering under the current administration. Sometimes I feel like we are well and truly screwed, but my god does this give me hope! May I suggest joining the Green Party and putting your support behind Zack Polanski if you feel similarly encouraged?
Thanks for reading my ramblings, and please do let me know if you’d like me to compare penguins to Tim Tams. If one person lets me know in the comments below I’ll do my duty for next week, okay???
Love,
Serena
I cannot stress enough how brilliant this makes it. There are a couple of music classes I love going to which I am more than happy to support, but having something free to attend when you have a baby is like winning the lottery.
I live in libraries - that's not much of an exaggeration. Favourites include Bodleian, Innerpeffray and any local library in a town I'm visiting for the first time. The joy of discovery! And silence