We have another lodger.
My friend’s teenage daughter has had enough of living with her parents and has come to stay for a while. I don’t mind this at all. So far she has settled down peacefully to read books about vampires and watch Netflix, which seems to me to be exceptionally civilised teenage behaviour.
Her mother was not at all sorry to have a teenager-free space, but as far as I can see she is not especially difficult.
So far she is not showing any tendencies towards churning up the school playing fields driving around them in somebody else’s borrowed car, she has not been sick in the dustbin nor accidentally set fire to the curtains. She does not have a motorbike that she rides around the village with three or four of her friends all at the same time, she has not drunk too much and been sick in the jam pan and hidden it under her bed, she has not borrowed a boat and then sunk it.
She has not posted fortnight-old dead fish through our neighbours’ letter boxes. She has not been in any kind of fight, nor have the police been round to talk about her, and her school seems to be happy for her to attend without drawing up special behavioural contracts that she has got to sign before she is allowed back on Monday.
That was just Numbers One and Two Daughters and the lodger. Number One Son-In-Law did all of those things and blew up his mother’s bathroom as well, during a surprisingly successful experiment with explosives. Also he behaved reprehensibly at Number One Daughter’s school leaving party and the headmaster called me afterwards to enquire whether or not I had kept them up to date about contraception.
She seems to me to be absolutely no trouble at all. She can stay as long as she likes, I shall hardly notice she is there.
All of this excitement has distracted me from the deafening buzzing of the current bee in my bonnet, which was the shocking discovery this morning that the council are considering selling the library and the Library Gardens.
I discovered this when I tried to slope in discreetly with a pile of overdue books. Fortunately the librarian was so anxious to tell me all about it that she barely noticed the use-by-date on the books and just put them back on the shelves without caring.
Several of us stood beside the counter and clucked unhappily.
There is to be a Public Consultation in a fortnight on the subject.
It turns out that the council, who are in Carlisle and are not quite sure where Windermere is, have had an offer from a businessman to turn the library into a museum.
I can’t imagine this. It would be a very dull museum, because absolutely nothing interesting has ever happened here, ever, ever. We have never been even visited by a monarch, except our own dear Queen, who came and had a ride on the steamer boat once. We have had no uprisings, no battles, no disasters and no thrilling events.
Nothing of note was invented here, no treaties signed here, no pagan Gods were honoured by human sacrifice, and no archaeologist has ever discovered the ancient remnants of a lost city, not that anybody has ever looked. In short, the only happenings worthy of commemoration here are already perfectly adequately celebrated in the Peter Rabbit Museum, in Ambleside, which houses Beatrix Potter’s letters and drawings, to which I have never been.
It isn’t a brilliantly exciting library, but I use it more than I would use a museum.
Actually, not many people are terribly bothered about large print romances and cookery books. The bit that made me gasp with horror, and which will tear the gentle heart out of our village if ever it disappears, is the Library Gardens.
If the businessman even considers it, even begins to think about cutting the burnt sugar trees down and uprooting the beautiful cherry trees, no disasters will be dreadful enough for him.
I shall be personally responsible for weeing through his letter box and letting his tyres down. I shall chain myself to the copper beech and the children to the redwoods. I shall play knock-a-door-run-away on his house when I finish work every night. He cannot be allowed to do it.
You might yet have to visit me in prison.
Fortunately I don’t think even Carlisle council would allow him to do the terrible things that are being discussed, there is a rumour that he might even knock the library down.
I suspect that there is no truth at all in the most awful of the gossip. It might even be that he is even a Good Thing, if he spends some money on looking after the gardens and improving the central heating and allowing the library to stay on in a corner of the Museum Of Dull Things. Certainly Carlisle Council do not seem very interested in doing anything improving, apart from sending a special needs boy and his supervisor to collect the litter occasionally.
Of course I am going to go to the Public Consultation. I am going to go and make sure that this businessman knows the perils of inappropriate development.
My voice shall be heard.
The picture is of the Library Gardens, so we don’t forget.
