My task is far harder than I imagined.
In the last few months the library has changed immensely. There is now a large U-shaped reception desk in the middle, with two librarians working at screens behind it. The old photocopier has gone and at the far end of the room is a whole new computer suite, where three boys are clicking dementedly through websites. The boys remind me of my sons stabbing impatiently at their computer games, which Richard and his mother interpret as a mark of their intelligence. The new bookshelves are arranged in very wide aisles. These improvements mean there are far fewer books.
Where do I begin?
I imagine myself asking
one of the librarians to help me find a book which will tell me how to leave my
family. After she has stared and
controlled her expression she will probably direct me to the new self-help section
along the back wall. I wander slowly
along it, but the books are about advancement at work or how to lose a stammer
or create creative children.
I pass by Crime and the
serried large-type Romances and the Quick Selection. All these books depress me: we are living in
a new Dark Age. The real books are
going, disappearing into archives, just as the old knowledge retreated to dusty
shelves in monasteries which kept the small light burning, an oil brazier
beneath a gothic window. I cannot find any real books, except for a
few novels which do not speak to me. And
whole sections of the shelving are adapted for music and film.
Health and Fitness;
Cookery; Religion. I move away, then
step back. I pick up a book by C S Lewis* and open it and read: ‘If I find in myself a desire which no experience
in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for
another world.’
* Christian Reflections
Dogs Delight is now available on Kindle at
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dogs-Delight-ebook/dp/B00CA8XZKC/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1368550507&sr=1-1&keywords=dogs+delight
Dogs Delight is now available on Kindle at
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dogs-Delight-ebook/dp/B00CA8XZKC/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1368550507&sr=1-1&keywords=dogs+delight