Libraries gave me power, part 1
A short memoir in 16½ libraries.
I did something yesterday which has been part of my regular ‘things to do after I move house’ routine since the early 1980s, and was clearly part of my parents’ same routine before that.
I joined my local library. Afterwards, I tried to work out how many libraries I’ve ever been able to borrow things from, and arrived at sixteen. And a half. Which may require explanation. Bear with me.
1967 - Engayne School Library
I’m pinning this to 1967 because that’s the year I turned five, so would most likely have been the year I first went to school. I do know that my first school was Engayne Infants in Cranham, in a building which still looks exactly how I remember it, but which is now a community centre:
I don’t, at this remove, remember whether the infants side had a library, but I know for a fact that the Junior school on the other side of Avon Road, definitely did. I know this because I have a clear memory of reading my way through The Rev. W. Awdry’s Railway Series stories while singing along to The Archies’ Sugar, Sugar.
The exact timeline of moving up to the main school and being a regular in the library is unclear, but it all happened as the sixties came to a tumultuous end. I, of course, was oblivious to most of what was going on around me (bar proudly wearing my “I’m backing Britain” badge1), being more preoccupied with whether there was a new Richard Scarry book available for me to borrow and pore over.
1967 - Upminster Library
These two, of course, overlap - we moved from Aberdeen to Upminster in the spring of 1967, and my first library was definitely one of these two. Upminster Library was a fair trek from our house on Avon Road (which wasn’t in Upminster at all, but Cranham - that’s another whole story) - Google Maps reckons 30 minutes, but I imagine it took longer with a toddler in a pushchair and me stopping to investigate every third leaf I found on the pavement.
Corbet’s Tey Road holds two clear memories for me - our dentist was there, above the parade of shops, and the library was across the road. One scarred me for a long time; I think I was a teenager before I would visit a dentist unbribed, while the other provided my first proper understanding of what a library was for.
Upminster Library looked a lot like the schools did - a product of that eruption of civic building in the decades after the war, and no doubt roundly objected to at the time for being too ‘modern’ and out of character. I paid no attention to the architecture, of course - I was entirely fixated on whether I could track down any more of those Chitty Chitty Bang Bang books, unaware that the three I had read were the only three.
I wish I could remember Upminster Library more clearly - it was clearly an important part of my young life. I was already an avid reader and whatever I was finding in the Junior section was spurring me on to demand more.
Quite how I received the news that we were going back to Aberdeen in the summer of 1970 is lost; there’s no-one around to ask these days. I do hope, however, that I was promised a new library to visit as soon as we were settled. As it turned out, it wouldn’t be entirely new.
1970 - Airyhall Branch Library
Strictly speaking, Airyhall should be first on this list - I do remember being taken to the health clinic which formed half of this building, and I’m almost certain we would have dropped in to the library at the same time. It was, after all, at the end of the road we lived on at the time, and I’m certain that both my parents were borrowing library books regularly.
Even if I could remember it, however, this would still be the correct place for it in this list, because Airyhall Library is the definitive formative library in my life. This was the place where I graduated from the children’s section to the adult; the place where I first discovered the joys of borrowing LPs; the first library I could get to under my own steam, and the one which sustained me and shaped my reading habits during those years of adolescence.
In 2022, after clearing out our old family home, I needed to print labels to attach to the boxes I was sending back to Canada, and I naturally thought of the place I still mentally call just ‘The Library’. It was, inevitably, both extremely familiar and significantly altered; I likely hadn’t been inside for 35 or so years, but the picture I took of the outside didn’t reveal too much in the way of change, save that the front door had been moved to the the location you see above, which surely was where it had always been intended to be.
Airyhall fixed many things for me - because of this place, for example, I assume that any book I borrow from any library is mine for 4 weeks, even in the teeth of all the accumulated evidence since then. I started out here by borrowing what we now call chapter books and investigating children’s classics, my last visits involved me ordering new releases which I had advance knowledge of thanks to my job at a book wholesaler. It’s not an exaggeration to suggest that I grew up in Airyhall Library as much as I did anywhere else.
1970 - Fernielea School Library
Now, this one is something of a mystery. While I can clearly remember the libraries at the schools either side of this one, I have no clear memory for the library at my primary school. And yet, there must have been one, and I must have used it regularly, because I am who I am.
I just looked it up, and the school definitely has one now:
I know for sure it didn’t look like that in 1973, but I wish I could remember it. I do vividly remember the colour-coded reading scheme books we were required to read our way through. I feel I ought to be mildly embarrassed by the memory of being on the gold-coloured ones ahead of all my classmates, and about a year ahead of where I should have been, but I’d read every single one of the others and even in the 1970s it was considered bad form to stop students from reading.
What I remember was those books lined up in boxes on the window ledge2 of the classroom, but maybe they were actually lined up on the window ledge in that picture up there. My memory is decent, but not infallible.
1974 - Hazlehead Academy library
Now we’re talking. Proper school - “big” school - and a proper library. Not only a library, but also a Reading Room in the adjacent space. I imagine the experience of the library at your first big school will have been like mine - a place you occasionally visited as an entire class in the early years, gradually becoming a place where you could hang out with your friends on the wetter days, using the time to explore some of the less academic books available.
I’ve written before3 about the fact that this library had a copy of The NME Encyclopedia of Rock, and how we would spend hours poring over every tiny detail, but there were many other books in there, from texts on advertising (briefly a fascination of mine) to catalogues of warships.
The warships thing will lead neatly into the next library because the school library didn’t have the level of detail I was looking for, but I can’t move on without mentioning the Reading Room.
The Reading Room was adjacent to the library (and for all I know, still is) - it was definitely intended for older students who had that most mysterious thing, the Free Period. The idea being that, rather than slope off home early, or wander down to the park for ice cream, we would spend our time in there doing Actual Studying.
For me the Reading Room came into its own during my final year as I tried to identify which university I wanted to go to. (Yes, I had a choice. Yes, I know how privileged I was.) The Reading Room had the shiny colour prospectuses of every university, and I spent many happy and disorienting days figuring out if Keele University was actually a real place, if I could afford to live in London (my ultimate dream at the time4) or, grudgingly, read up on more local universities and try to decide which ones to put on my UCCA form.
Once the decision was made5, however, I continued to inhabit the Reading Room, because it had all sorts of other delights - I particularly remember reading my way through collection of science fiction short short stories - probably this one - and generally looking studious while satisfying my need to just read everything.
1976 - Aberdeen Central Library
Sometimes you just need a bigger library. As a patron of Airyhall Library, I had a membership card which could get me in to any of the City of Aberdeen libraries. My own one served most of my needs, but occasionally, I would find myself climbing the steps to the Central Library, the first part in the famous “Education, Salvation and Damnation” trilogy of buildings on Rosemount Viaduct6.
I liked the main library, of course, but I could generally get all the books I needed from the branch library; what I loved were my occasional trips to the Reference Library next door7.
In particular, I clearly remember the first world war warships project; I needed more information than the school library could provide, and my dad volunteered to take me to the Reference Library one evening to see if I could find what I needed there.
I know it wasn’t on that same trip that I was introduced to the collection on microfilm; to the index cards in their little wooden drawers; to the collection of magazines and newspapers available to just, you know, pick up and read, but it all gets conflated in my mind, because something happened that evening.
There I was, sitting quietly in the library, tracking down details of Dreadnoughts and Frigates, while other serious scholars around me did much the same thing. My image of myself looks up suddenly and reflects that this is the kind of place I belong. had I subsequently decided to become a librarian, that’s the moment I would pinpoint, with my copy of Jane’s Fighting Ships open in front of me, my mostly illegible notes scattered over the desk (which in my imagination has one of those green-shaded lamps on it, but that’s probably embellishment), and the sense of peace and calm flowing through me.
I didn’t decide to become a librarian; fifty years later, I still wonder why not.
I’ve also just checked the list of libraries I wanted to talk about. This is very definitely to be continued…
In Other News
I think I’ve started work on a book about 1979. Even if I haven’t, I’ll thoroughly enjoy doing the research.
I started watching Arcane on the advice of my children. My children are very smart; I’ll have a lot to say about it once I’ve powered through the rest of it.
I’m in the middle of Samuel Delaney’s Dhalgren. It’s quite extraordinary, and the fact that I have no idea what’s going on half the time is probably an underestimate.
I watched the highlights of a remarkable game of football between France and Spain when I got in last night. I’m currently watching Scotland and Iceland serve up something which isn’t really even the same sport.
Where did that come from? Did they hand them out at school? Did my dad bring one home from work for some reason? It feels like the kind of political statement which five-year-olds are not encouraged to espouse. I had it for years afterwards, and have only now thought to even ask the question.
I was about to ask - who does that? The truth is that for a long time, I did. The collection of books in my bedroom easily overflowed all available shelf space, so many of the ones I liked to refer back to ended up on the windowsill. Even in Aberdeen, this was enough to earn them some significant fading. Don’t leave your books out in the sun, kids.
Note to self - fix the damn website; there’s a lot of good stuff on it and no-one can see it at the moment…
OK, look - I wasn’t just drawn to the bright lights and the big city. I fancied being a student in a place where - according to the listings in Sounds - I could go to see live bands pretty much every night of the week.
In the end, I put Edinburgh as my first choice, and got in. Aberdeen was last on the list; I was desperate to move away and start doing my own thing.
The picture also shows the Cowdray Hall,
It seems to be called the Information Centre these days