The School Library

I said to the school librarian, “Do you have a book about coincidences?”
She said, “Yes, one arrived just today.”

I said, “I took this book out on Energy sources, is it renewable?”

I said, “Do you have anything by Dickens?”
She said, “We have lots of things, by Jove!”

I said, “I’m looking for The Borrowers?”
She said, “Well, they’re all around you, dear.”

I said, “Do you have a book about people who are depressed because they feel that they just don’t fit in?”
She said, “Yes, it’s in the cookery section.”

I said, “I was wondering if you had a book about laziness.”
She said, “Yes, it’s on the furthest bookshelf on the right.”
I said, “I might leave it then.”

Try some of those gags on your school librarian and it’s unlikely you’ll get a laugh. Being a librarian is like going through the menopause for the whole of your life. It’s a joyless existence. Students come into the library when it’s cold outside, take the first book off the nearest shelf and just sit there with their friends. And eat. And take no notice of the librarian. When they do take out a book, they don’t bring it back and for the next ten years (including after they’ve left school), the librarian sends home letters asking for the return of the book or else they’ll be charged. And if they don’t pay, then the consequences are worse. They get another letter. And if they still don’t pay, they won’t be allowed to borrow another book from the library. Meaning, their best bet is to steal one. That way, they won’t get the threatening letters.

For a laugh, try to find in your school library the book that has sat on the shelf the longest since anyone last took it out. In my own kids’ school it is “The Stanley Holloway monologues.”

Does the Chess club meet in your school library? If so, I feel you are neglecting your duty of care. The library is for everyone, meaning that anyone can just walk in and see which kids are in the Chess club and thus identify exactly who to beat up after school. If you want to protect children, tell the Chess club to meet in the cleaner’s cupboard. And lock the door. But take the Domestos out first, of course. It’s not easy to accept being beaten at Chess.

In the first school I worked in, the librarian made students feel about as welcome as a diarrhoea-sufferer at a hot-tub party. She used to snatch food off kids without warning, spend hours typing lengthy individual memos to staff and walk around in soiled gardening clothes, hunched over a tea-pot in one hand, mumbling to herself incoherently. Her husband came to a staff social event once. We thought he was wearing one of those old man masks. He wasn’t. She was no oil painting either. Well, she was no painting, but she was very oily. And had a hunch. And was spotted on regional TV in the West country once, beavering around in the background during a feature from the home of J R Tolkein during a nerds’ convention at his home. I’m pretty sure she believed that black kids didn’t actually read books. She was altogether as odious a person on the inside as she was monstrously ugly on the outside, with her humpback, lank hair and saggy-arsed green tracksuit bottoms.

Regardless of their eccentricities and constant state of frustrated misery, you should support your school librarian. It’s not easy getting students to read books for fun in the multi-media dystopia in which we live, nor use a library for research when they have internet on their phones. After all, I don’t think there will ever be a website or Sky Arts documentary devoted to the monologues of Mr Stanley Augustus Holloway OBE.