Shhhh - it's the library
What is your image of a library? A quiet sanctum where people speak only in hushed tones as they gently flick through a mound of books? Think again. Earlier this week I entered the library trailing three small people, one of whom is a rampant toddler. I love the library and realise we are very fortunate in these cut-prone days to have one at all in our village. Our library has cut its hours, though, or rearranged them so it is open more days but fewer hours per day. This has totally thrown me. My brain simply refuses to remember the opening times so I am constantly worried that we are going to be fined for lateness because I will not be able to access it. However, that aside, it is the practicalities of attending the libary with three or four children which is a greater cause of stress.
Our library has installed two machines where you can enter your card details and return or take out books yourself. Lovely, you say. However, it doesn't always work. You can put a pile of books in and it only records half of them so you think you have returned them all, but the system only registers some. This means you have to go to the desk anyway on most visits. The problem is the children love the machines and want to do the whole thing themselves and get out loads of books. They can never, however, remember their card details and have no sense of checking the books have registered on the machine so need supervision.
Meanwhile, the toddler is tearing off to the DVD section and then putting it under the machine or, worse, slotting it in the box which will transfer it to another libary miles away. When he is not doing this, he is pulling all the other DVDs off the shelf and filing them down the back of the books section or doing the same to the books.
The libary also has automatic doors which lead onto a busy road so when he is not filing, the toddler is running past the main doors which zoom open allowing him access to a world of danger. Meanwhile, I am trying to stop the other children getting out 20 or so books about fairies or teenager books in the case of daughter three who is always trying to get one step ahead of herself. I also have to check all the cards to ensure I have returned all the books I thought we had taken out beforehand as, even though I put them in a specific place when we get them home, there is a strong likelihood that some may have moved in the interim. I recall many weeks trying to find a book called "How to be a detective" which I could have done with reading beforehand.
I emerge from the libary as one would emerge from a thicket that one had crawled under. Somewhat disshevelled and in need of a quiet place to lie down [but not a library...].
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