Just 5 days to go to the world premiere of "Shhhh!:Love, Life and the Truth About Libraries" at the Ilkley Literature Festival and the tension is mounting. The script is (more or less) finished, rehearsals are "progressing" (ahem), props have been assembled, lines learnt, bridges burnt, there's a whiff of greasepaint, a rustle of curtains and the glare of the footlights is calling, calling, calling as the days, hours, minutes tick away, the moment of truth approaches and we are lead towards an overwhelming question - is the world truly ready for THE TRUTH about libraries? What Pandora's Box might we open by revealing it? What forces will be unleashed, what foundations will tremble? Who knows but that on Friday morning we will awaken in a new place, our paradigms shifted, our zeitgeist zonked, our times a'changed our world turned upside down, all changed, changed utterly, a terrible beauty born.
Just hope we get a bloody audience.
Speech on ending the Right to Buy, 17.1.2023
3 months ago
You asked for stories - About 25 years ago I remember a rather nervous gentleman, wearing bicycle clips on his trousers, hovering near the counter of our library. A colleague asked him if she could be of any help. He whispered something to her and she asked him to repeat his request as she hadn't heard him clearly. This he did. In a rather louder voice she replied "Lady Chatterley's lover - do you think if we had Lady Chatterley's lover in this library I would be stamping books all day?"
ReplyDeleteAbout 18 years ago a customer came in saying she had read Gone with the Wind and thought it was very good. She stood at the counter and said she had heard that a sequel had been written. She took a request card filled it in and put it on the counter then left. When the assistant picked it up it read Back with a Breeze (Gone with the Wind 2)
ReplyDelete