Dogs Delight 12 No books

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 13 Why did we move here?

                                                        

The village is famous for its very tall filigree church spire, pointing fastidiously to heaven.  You can see it from far and near from many directions in the countryside around.

   Now that I am thinking spiritually, along the complex and evanescent lines suggested by C S Lewis, I feel drawn to Evensong whenever I see the spire or hear the church bells ringing.  They ring very often.  In fact, the bellringers practise the whole of Monday and Wednesday and Friday evening which makes Richard swear and ask why in heaven’s name we moved here.  (Naturally they perform for a very long time on Sundays.)  On the other days he forgets about it: Richard doesn’t bear a grudge.  Whenever there is a funeral, which is more often than is respectable, the great bell Vengeance tolls for most of the day.  Returning from shopping in Laxley or wandering back to the village along a public footpath, I am transfixed by St Agnes’ spire hovering over the fields.  On each sighting, from every angle, the summons is more insistent. 

The spire definitely has a hold over the villagers.  The cardboard signs by roadside plant stalls and on garden gates leading to jumble sales invariably read ‘Tower Preservation Fund’ in uneven capitals.  I have heard that a newcomer was ostracised for holding a raffle for Save The Children.  And the tower is famous for its beckoning.  It beckons people from various high points across the county, and daily beckons villagers to a closer acquaintance, despite the quality of the vicar. 

Mrs Dilkes often stands staring at the improbable finger.  She told me that Peter Hopkirk’s father Jacob once climbed it for a dare and refused to climb back down.  Mrs Dilkes says she was quite a girl, which I can hardly imagine, to look at her; but she remembers old Jacob Hopkirk frozen in fear, looking down on the upturned faces of the cheering villagers.  It did not end happily. 

A builder who was afraid of heights kindly climbed the tower to join Jacob on the ledge and found himself equally pinioned by fear against the crenellations.  After a while the builder engaged the crowd with a brief  attempt at a descent, during which he dislocated one or two elbows. The two men remained transfixed for hours underneath the famous sneering gargoyle and a relay of beer from the Lone Gelding kept the crowd’s spirits high until the fire brigade was called and arrived with an entertaining extra-extending appliance.  The builder told the Laxley Gazette that the gargoyle sneered at him the whole time.  Some people call the spire unlucky.

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