I was wandering around my local library recently when I noticed a young mother come in with her four or five year old daughter. Going straight to the children’s section they sat by a table loaded with books and began to sort out the one the girl wanted mum to read to her.
The look of pleasure and excitement on the infant’s face was a pleasure to see. Plainly this was a regular – perhaps weekly – treat for her.
What a great mum. And what a great way for the child to learn that here was a big storehouse of books, just waiting for her to use. Completely free of charge.
Different reality for me
My own introduction to libraries was completely different.
For much of my early life I did not realise books were any of my business. My mother read avidly from bodice rippers rented at, I think, twopence a week from the local Foyles library. She never had less than two books on the go at any one time. But they were an escape for her from a drab and boring life and it never occurred to her to try and draw me in.
Whilst my father was an equally avid devourer of the greyhound results page. And nothing else at all.
First encounter
So my first encounter with that shop of magic labelled ‘The Public Library’ arose from a chance encounter with a schoolmate. We were seated next to one another in class one ‘quiet time’ period (that’s how young I was) when he produced a shiny, posh-covered book crammed with creamy white pages, ornamented with real pictures and entitled in letters of gold.
I don’t remember what the book was about – probably cars or ships or aeroplanes. It didn’t matter. It was the book itself, as an object, that I wanted to hold and to delve into.
‘Cor!’ I said ‘Wearja git that?’
‘From the library of course,’ he replied, scornful of my ignorance.
‘Cor!’ I said. Or it might have been ‘Wheeee!’ The exclamations were interchangeable in those days.
Joining the library
Reveling in his superior sophistication, my classmate met with me the very next Saturday morning in front of the large building with the awesome flight of steps outside, ushered me in and announced to the librarian that I wanted to join.
I was quite sure at that stage that we were both about to be ejected by bellows and shrieks of outrage (both common enough back then). But, to my intense amazement, the lady handed over a white form and the loan of a pencil.
It became a lifelong addiction
And so began, at a illegally young age, my lifelong addiction to books and the handling and reading thereof. Graduating from the children’s to the adult section I discovered, in entirely random order, Somerset Maugham, Thorne Smith, Priestley, Dickens, George Elliot, Wells, Shaw. And so on and so on.
I learned to recognise, if I ever met them in the street, Silas Marner, Scrooge, Young Oliver, Captain Kettle, Huck Finn, Doctor Doolittle, Hornblower, and best of all fat old, jolly old, Mr Pickwick and Samivel.
And none of this immense education, this invaluable store of knowledge about the world and it’s ways, acquired as a result of being told what to read, and in what order, nor to sitting exams and tests or to laboured – through homework.
All acquired, absorbed and stored away simply because I could select from a great range, read a couple of paragraphs,and if my interest was aroused, carry on.
And if not, select something else.
So what? you might well ask. Isn’t that the way most people find their way into the Library?
Precisely.
But not when the Library is an expensive bus ride or car parking charge away.
