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library
taking the books back! or, approximately fifteen good reasons NOT to take acid before lunchtime. WHY is my mother giving me that strange look? All I did was walk into the living room and say "Hey, I'm going to take some books back to the library... bye," and you get the sort of look that you would expect if you'd just shot fifty people in a McDonald's. The hell with it, I'm not here to rationalise (I worked that out a long time ago, but I tend to forget it every now and then), I take the easy way out... the front door. I'm sort of glad that the street is still there. (Yuck, this sounds too Marlowe for words... I'm only taking the library books back, I'm not a private detective.) Last time I looked, the library was... THAT way, so I turn right and just keep walking. No problem so far. I don't know why people make such a big fuss over it. Really easy, in fact ... maybe I should do this more often! Uh-oh. I knew it was too good to last. There's some kid riding her bicycle down the street ... down THIS SIDE of the street. On the footpath. Isn't there a law against that (not that I can pretend to be a law-abiding citizen)? Funny, I never noticed how narrow this footpath was before! Now I know how Nagasaki felt when that tiny American plane flew up to her... she's going to hit me... she's going to hit me, she's going to hit me, she's going to hit me, she's going to - She missed me. Having to choose between collapsing in a heap from relief and keeping going, I find that, since I'm already going that way, I may as well keep going. and, yes, you guessed it, I think that it's going to start raining. Well, hell, if I waited for a favourable weather report before leaving the house, I'd never get these books back. And my atrophied sense of pride won't let me rouse Eva to drive to the library - it's only a fifteen minute walk! Well, praise be to Brian Bury (or whoever controls the weather these days), nothing more than a few drops. Next time, I must remember to get some smaller books, something I can jam into my pockets if it looks like rain may fall on them. The books, that is. What have we got here ... some huge tome about Viking exploration (why the hell did you borrow that, you nit? Oh yeah ... you wanted to find out if there was a particular word for that bit at the front of a Viking longship, research for that story...) uh-huh. Well, whatever, there's no way in hell that it is going to fit in your pocket... maybe if you took those sunglasses out and, maybe put them on? Radical move there. Oh god, take them off! Hang on... put them back on again... off... on... off... no doubt about it, there is something WRONG with these sunglasses. Maybe the batteries are flat. Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, the rain looks like it may start again, and these other two books are just a bit on the 'three inches thick' side of 'too big to put in your pocket to keep them out of the rain'. Both of them about Catherine II ... more research for stories that I could be at home writing instead of experiencing grave doubts about the efficacy of the Melbourne weather bureau's forecasts. Hey, that didn't take long, we're at the end of the street already! Maybe I can get these books back before the rain decides to rain all over them... (and I know, it sounds terribly cliched, but, I don't know, it just came to me - after that mother-huge truck roared past, scaring the shit out of me - that all life responds to rhythmic events, and the fun part is identifying the cadence, and possibly anticipating the next mother-huge truck that is going to scare the shit out of you), checks his watch (god knows WHY - what was I hoping to achieve? Maybe see how long I had before the rain finally did come down? Such a creature of habit ...) and - if I am right, it's Friday - the library will still be open when I get there! Now, THIS is a MAJOR worry. This entire expedition had been planned along the lines of 'get there, shove the books into the return chute and get out'... but if the library is still open - if the human LIBRARIANS are still there - a) they will think I'm strange if I just dump the books and run, sort of like 'so what's wrong with our library that you can't come in and borrow a book awready? sheesh!', and b) they will more than likely have the book return chute jammed shut, to force people with overdue books to come in and face the music. This is silly, these books aren't even overdue! Faced with the biological equivalent of a halted CPU, I am almost stranded in the path of an oncoming whatever-it-is - it's coming out of someone's driveway, it HAS to be a car ... but suddenly, (we're near the corner here, out the side by the RSL) there's a mob of people - and their presence takes precedence (wau, tricky), at any rate, I am less concerned, for the moment with the scorn and ridicule that the Librarians will heap upon me or even this car that is about to kill me than I am with the tricky problem of dealing with ... all these people. I'm SURE that they think I'm following them ... I want to say something like, "Hey, look, I'm not really following you, it just LOOKS that way"... but that would definitely tip the balance, and they'd tear me to pieces in a minute. I even go a couple of yards in the wrong direction (well, not so much the WRONG direction, I simply take a path that definitely looks like I am NOT following them, not really out of my way at all) ... yeah, I think that worked. Cool! maybe I CAN pretend to be normal for another twenty minutes. Now, let's see ... oh yeah, the library is over there somewhere (over 'there' being on the other side of the Nepean highway and the railway lines), and compared to the terrors of that nasty crowd around the RSL, getting across the road is no problem. It mainly involves pressing buttons at the pedestrian crossing, waiting for the traffic signals to align... a kind of, very 'cosmic rhythm' sort of thing that I hinted at earlier... that sort of thing. Well, at any rate, something that I find easier to deal with than trying to explain to a bunch of possibly drunken Returned Servicemen why I wasn't really following them... and before you know it, here we are on the 'beach' side of the Nepean highway! Relief in one respect - underneath the shelter of all of these banks and shops, the books won't get wet ... but, of course, coming OUT of (and going IN to) all of those shops and banks are people. I decide to put the sunglasses back on after all, more of a way of protecting them from me than anything else. Not that I'm any threat. There it is, the tiny alleyway between the shops that leads to the library... the sign, that says 'TOILETS:'... if I worked in the library, I'd be mildly concerned about that, it might encourage coprophiles... funny, I'd never seen THIS as an insurmountable task before, but confronted with the awesome majesty of this alleyway... well, 'alleyway' sounds a bit derogatory and at the same time, something of an exaggeration, it's simply a gap left between
map s-BS 'scanf %1s del right '\$scanf' left left'! which is my way of saying 'Thank god I can simply press 'shift backspace' and correct it. That has to be the only good feature I ever saw in vi) two buildings. Okay, calm down! It's not an alleyway, it's not a gaping chasm between Life and Death, but if I can get around that mob (mob, okay, there's only three of them. a mob-let) without serious mishap, then I KNOW that Arioch, Xiombarg and Mabelode, the Knight, Queen and King of Chaos, are with me today. Well, that wasn't so bad, was it? No permanent enimity there ... with any luck, they may not have recognised me. And there it is, at last: the Mordialloc/Chelsea Regional Library. And yeah, it IS still open, and yes, the 'returns' chute is welded shut (they must have seen me coming). Sigh, looks like I'll have to go in there and (shudder) interact. Christ on a rubber crutch, what am I going to say? Maybe if I just smile reassuringly (forget it, kolya, they would think that you were snarling viciously)... what SHOULD I say? Who the hell was that I saw in the city square on Thursday at lunchtime? Who DID kidnap the Lindburgh baby? I'm pretty sure that it wasn't me. Whew, relief! There's only ONE of them, and she's talking to a friend on the phone, far too involved to see how badly freaked out I am, so I merely slide the books over to her... she opens one of them, checks the 'date due' stamp... and, YES! I've gotten away with it again! Of course, since the books weren't overdue to start with, this isn't a major victory, but I feel confident enough to start browsing the shelves with the other humans. I can only take a few minutes of this... the blood tends to rush over to one side of my head if I stand around like this... why the hell don't they stack the books with the spines THAT way, instead of THIS way? Calm down, I'm sure that there is a damned good reason for it, probably some time-honoured tradition that stretches back to the days of the Library in Alexandria. So, I grab the first likely thing that comes to hand ('The Complete Engravings, Etchings and Woodcuts of Durer', this should be good, I can scan it, fill out my already-useless collection of clip-art with woodcuts of callipygian medieval nuns. Just what I always wanted!) But - She's still talking on the phone. I don't want to sound like I am listening in to her conversation, I mean... how rude!, so, I (VERY CASUALLY) drift over towards the check-out desk... maybe looking like I may have a book that I would like to check out... and JUST as I do so, she says something to the person on the phone, in that precise tone of voice that you last heard at a party as you entered the kitchen, from one girl with tear-streaked eyes to another with lines of sympathy (for her friend) and contempt (for the typical insensitive male bastards that drove her friend to that state) struggling for supremacy over her face... WELL. That is definitely the LAST thing I need. only my sense of shock stops me dropping the book and running... typically, when confronted with a faux-pas on a planetary scale, I opt out, and when I regain some sense of the outside world again, she's hung up the phone and, yes, strange as it may seem, she actually wants to assist me in checking this book out. Desperately trying to cover up the deep sense of shock I am experiencing over my apparent eavesdropping on what was obviously a very personal moment for her, I find myself saying something about not being sure if the book I am clutching (that's right, kolya, let go of the book... e-e-easy does it...) is actually available for borrowing yet. She easily glosses over my apparent inability to function as a rational human being, composes and delivers a fantastic one-liner, to the effect that 'If it has a date-due-slip-pocket and a bar-code inside the back sleeve, then it's available'. Incredible. How can she think that quickly? I barely manage to cover my shock, switching from a cowering cringe from my indiscretion at being caught eavesdropping on her personal life as it was expounded over the telephone (hang on - if she's going to have an emotional crisis, why the hell doesn't she have it at home, instead of putting ME through the wringer?)... to, pure devotional admiration... that's it, simple adoration, I almost fall to my knees before her - JUST AS WELL, before I do so, I notice this etching on the front of the 'Durer' book - this... guy... appears... to have three dead rats hung around his neck! Oblivious to the stares that it provokes, I snatch the book back from the librarian and frantically turn to the fly-leaf... 'Portrait of the Emperor Maximilian, 1519'. THAT explains it. Dead rats were probably all the vogue back then. Anyway, on closer examination, these rats appear to have little curly horns, so they are probably sheep of some description. Damned TINY sheep, I'll grant you. probably some sort of symbolic medallion arrangement. Here I am, all ready to apologise for snatching the book out of the librarian's hands, when it appears that she had finished with it anyway, and has returned to the telephone. I gratefully slink out (after painfully establishing that the doors are NOT the sort that open automatically - ow!). No wonder people don't return their books more promptly. |
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