librarian chic(k)

I quite like the public library. Why is that? It's the down at heel vibe, the cardigan wearing librarian cliche, the kids books sections with bean bags, the computers with clunky keys, the pay dirt of mystery novels you'd be too embarassed to own but might be happy to read on a Sunday afternoon, art books, access to photocopier without any guilt (office workers everywhere I'm assuming have snuck the occassional personal print/photocopy, and I am amongst them, but I feel pangs of furtive guilt as I swiftly whisk the pages about my holiday flights or comic strips from the print tray, I know it's barely ethicaly defensible, it's much more pleasant doing it slowly and with grace at a library), the cook book section with enough cooking pics of fantasy dishes that real people will never get around to making to keep the most voracioues voyeur satisfied. Also I love the people, the rag tag motley bunch of folk who will be there when you are, people with loud children, people laughing at their emails, people groaning at fustrating news on websites, librarians cranky and talking too loudly about large print texts so someone sight impaired with perfect hearing. Being up close and personal with strangers in public places, I think it's really healthy. Even borrowing a book that has been thumbed by countless strange hands seems really healthy, subversive almost, in this hygiene obsessed cult of the individual type inner city life. I'm sure it builds trust on some really primal level to be sitting next to strangers who are well behaved, who are constrained by the rules of the place that you have both chosen to be in, and hence don't leer at you, or stick a knife out at you, or ask you for money, or look past you with glazed eyes and large bags of shopping. You feel somehow contained, part of the same time and place, and paient of other people in a library. A bit like cafes, I think they can be the same thing, but in a library it's more pronounced, because people are often there as individuals, not speaking to others. You feel each other's presence more. Viva la library.

NB I love the bookshop too - this isn't an either or love affair, it's quite an open relationship.