Part 1

Thought I’d pay a visit to a place that kept me sane during trying years of living as a child.  My latest craze, Ray Bradbury, was draining me of funds and I could not afford to buy him any more. It was then that I recalled a special place.  The library, that library, my Xanadu from childhood; where I grew up, my special little haven from the world.

 

How precious it was.  The hush, and the dust, all tumbling down from ceiling to ground in the light of the rays through gargantuan panes.

 

I thought of the sound of my feet on the ground…the intricate jigsaw of puzzlingfloor, all parquet and squeak and geometry.

 

Felt warmed in recall of right at the back – hidey-hole spaces created by bookshelves reached right to the edges of windows and walls. Within these rectangular sanctuary spaces, sofas of faux-leather stuffed with inflammatory foam lay back in the light.

 

There was no finer weather than autumn or winter to plump on those couches, with one book or other, or ten different dictionaries, warming your skin in the sun; warming your mind with the lines.

 

I thought of the journey throughout that small library, starting at 4 and ending at 12. The kid’s bit, again, enclosed on its own, so small ones could educate, ponder and ramble selections of Brumbies, and Blytons and Alice, over and over and over again.

 

When I’d exhausted the whole of that part, I asked and was granted permission to browse the grown-ups selection. To adult shelves, journey part two.

 

Arranged first in genre, History, Horror (oh Poe, how you petrified formative minds!), I worked my way through past the Romance. Sci Fi blew my mind, flew my head to higher planes, to space, to visions of what is to come. Hooked, line and sinker, on Asimov, Bradbury (two shelves of Bradbury, stories and poetry), Arthur C Clarke, HG Wells, and Philip K Dick – wow.

 

Then Westerns, and finally Large Print (which was just a selection from all of the genres, but the text was intriguingly huge).

 

So turning the corner from genre to A to Z, I inched my way through every shelf. Wonderful nourishing textual succour, in place of the friendships that other kids had. My playmates were fiction, each writer a friend, each title a new summer’s day. And dictionaries such as I never had seen, etymological, single-field, specialised lexicons, thesauri and medical glossaries.  Phonetic descriptions, codes on their own; Chambers, and Collins, Longmans, Concise, Oxford and Merriam-Webster. Cross referenced, spread on the comfy old couches, soaking up words like a sponge.

 

 Part 2

 

So all the above was a dance in my mind, remembered with pleasure that plumbed to the depths of my being. I decided to return to that place. Not to any old library, but that Xanadu, and stepped 1, 2, 3 to the door. 

 

The garden was smaller than I had remembered; I smiled at the relative size (thought of Wagon Wheels, Mars Bars and all of that stuff that seemed bigger at 5 than right now).

 

Turning the corner I slowed down my pace, in order to savour the moment.  I stepped on the marble, took two paces in, then one deep breath inward and sighed. 

 

Something wrong. With the sound. My soles should have squeaked. Looked down to my feet, twisted my face in dismay, disbelief – there’s a carpet there now! A beige one, all bobbly, common, repulsive. What the…? A carpet? Not parquet? Felt robbed and disgusted and walked a few paces, stared at the carpet, mumbled revulsion. The parquet was complex, it absorbed the mind and the hush and the dust that had tumbled to ground. Replaced by the horror, the horror.

 

Then the shelves, and the books, and the kid’s section – open plan. Open plan? Where’s all the hidey-holes?!  No secret spaces to ramble with Brumbies, the grown-ups can see what you do now.  Indignity starts to enrage me.

 

The adult shelves no longer fashioned by genre. No large print to see, no Sci Fi or Horror, no more History.  What fresh hell is this?! The shelves – they are shorter! Shorter, no longer to reach to the windows and walls – just plonked in the middle, abrupt.  Like the ending of Jenga; no thought to the placement at all. 

 

Where are the books?! There’s no more than quarter the amount I remember, this place was just solid with novels! And hidey-hole spaces, the faux-leather couches – all gone, all gone, it’s ALL open-plan.

 

Deep breaths, 1 to 10.  Once again. Okay. Where’s Bradbury?  If I can find Bradbury it’s worth all this agony. Two shelves of Ray B, I remember.  Go to ‘B’. But where is he? I look and I search, and I finger the spines, then I go back again, and again.  Five times I check every book on that shelf, five times there is no Ray B.  This cannot be real, this cannot be true, I remember they had so much stock! I march to the desk, question the helper. She says, “We have two! But one’s a CD” and smiles at me, quite worriedly. My visage is sounding alarms.  She backs off and offers to look for some more…on the ‘system’, no less, of the county. The ‘system’ is slow, takes a good half an hour to find all of the stock in St Helens.  There’s five books of Ray, in all of the county. Five books of  genius, and one’s a CD.

 

I weep openly. My knees buckle gently. Slowly I slide to the floor - that bastard beige carpet breaking my fall. They offer to help, but what can they do? I could tell them to re-stock the shelves, arrange it all properly. Put hidey-holes back, uncover the parquet, stretch out the bookshelves to reach to the walls, to the windows, but most of all just give me Ray! I give up, I get up, I sag out the door, withdrawn, in dismay, and trip on the carpet, so kick the damn door shut, and mourn the demise of the library.