My library card was nicked along with my wallet a few years ago and it wasn't until yesterday that I got a replacement. Silly, waiting so long, when libraries have been such a big part of my life. The house is stacked to the rafters with a million paperbacks still waiting to be read... and I'm forever making heaps of the next-twenty-to-read and then the-next-twenty-after-that, and then changing my mind and digging up new books from the heaps and boxes of things-I-haven't-read-yet. So with all of that, rejoining the Central Library seemed a bit beside-the-point, in a way. Also, I've done a few readings in libraries over the years and sometimes I find them depressing - the way they've become entertainment-centres with computers and games and just STUFF everywhere. Everything but books, it feels like sometimes. Although the Central Library in Manchester is still pleasingly bookish and musty.

I was in there yesterday - having popped in last week and forgotten to take with me umpteen forms of ID and letters with my full name and address on, etc. Yesterday I had all the paperwork I needed and I was told about four times by the woman at the desk I had to, 'Look after it this time! Don't lose it again!' And I'd already told her it was nicked.

Coming over curmudgeonly - I went for a lovely long traipse around the stacks. Our Central Library is circular and seemingly endless. It's like trotting slowly around a subdued hamster wheel, exploring the central reference bit. Just a few people hissing earnestly at each other, the occasional burst of giggling and that agitated squeaking of a librarian hauling some kind of trolley around - crossly.

I had quite a nice time, browsing books about witchcraft and WH Auden, and then trying in vain to find something about Toulouse Lautrec in the Art section, every scrap of which had been colonised by a whole schoolful of teenagers and teachers, all busily doing projects. By then I'd forgotten what I'd come in for. Roman Britain, was it? Hans Christian Anderson? I was lost by then, and all I'd found was a book about Grayson Perry, which I'd seized upon. I always like the way he talks about stuff. So - I had a mooch about in talking books (which I love... and I was still reeling with happiness about signing a contract for an unabridged Brenda yesterday morning...!)
then I went off to Cafe Nero with a bag full of nothing I came out for... And I spent happy hour doodling and making notes on stuff before I went off down the Oxford Road again, for the last of the week's university events.