The library has reopened.
There were no fanfares of trumpets although I think that there should have been. Civilised countries ought to be ashamed of themselves for closing bookshops and libraries, they should jolly well have been on the list of essentials. It is absolutely about time, that’s what I think.
All the same, I am very sorry to have decided that I will have nothing to do with it.
The library has been closed practically for the whole of the last year. It is not a terrifically well-stocked library, unless you happen to be an aficionado of detective stories or Westerns, or books about Great Cumbrian Railways. It was always a quiet place to go and read the Westmorland Gazette, or hunt underneath a pile of leaflets to find anything urgent that the Council knew they needed to tell us about but would rather we did not know.
All the same it is a library, and hence probably up there with the church and the betting shop at the top of the list of Very Important places in the village.
Now, at long last the population of Windermere will be allowed to borrow books again, although only on two mornings a week.
I do not quite see why this might be. The library used to be open for practically the whole week, perhaps they are trying to encourage everybody to turn up all at the same time.
This morning I collected the bag full of books so seriously overdue that any other circumstances would have led to a fine that might have bought half of Waterstones. They have been under the seats in the back of my taxi for all that time.
I got as far as the door.
The desk has moved out into the corridor, and you are not allowed to put your books on it. You have got to put them in a large dustbin by the door where they have got to stay in quarantine for a few days. This is presumably because of all of the hundreds of people who have caught bat flu from a library book and subsequently died.
I looked this up. I discovered that the number of such unfortunates is: none whatsoever.
To those who would say: you cannot be too careful, I would say, robustly, yes, I think you can.
I have been getting library books for years, and am quite sure that there will be other borrowers who read them in the lavatory. So far I have not contracted anything unpleasant, even when I have read the same books whilst eating my dinner. There, think about that.
In any case I did not have to worry about it.
It turned out that I was not allowed to go in unless I gave the lady on the door my name and telephone number, which I refused to do.
Obviously she knows who I am and sighed and wrote it down anyway.
There was no space on the list for recording the time that people entered and left the library. In other words, if one muppet whose name is on the list gets a positive test, every single other person who has been in the library during the morning could be put out of work for a fortnight, or a week, or however long it is, whether they walked past them or not.
I said that I did not want to come in and asked if she would take my name off the tiresome list.
She said, apologetically, that I had walked in through the doorway and stood in the hall, and so I had to stay on the list.
I left, and will not be going back to the library until it is all over.
I went back home, crossly, and chucked the dogs in the taxi to go up to the farm.
I needed some bags of sheep poo and some soil. I have planted pumpkins and melons in the conservatory, and they are big enough now to go in pots of their very own. I am not exactly sure where we are going to put these, pumpkins get massive. I have got two enormous plant pots, and Mark has promised to build another bed with some bricks, but already we have got to be careful when we move the chairs.
I can hardly tell you how badly I did not want to go and dig through a pile of sheep poo in the rain.
I went anyway, and felt virtuous. The dogs belted up and down the field, barging into one another and rolling in the bits with badger poo, and trying to keep out of the way of the sheep. One or two have got new lambs and are starting to look even more menacing than usual.
I collected lots of bags of poo and brought it home, after which I could not be bothered to start tipping it into plant pots, and so as a result the yard is now full of it, humming gently.
I had to clean my taxi out before work.
There are more pressing hygiene issues in the world than bat flu.
