Dear The Curmudgeon's Agony Aunt
I used to like going to the library - both my local and the big one in town but recently my athenaeumic perusals have been interrupted and compromised by activities that I don't believe have a proper place in a library which should be a place of sanctuary, meditation, reflection and learning.
In the city, my browsing is ruined by the loud chatter, snoring, smells and disgusting activity of a band of down and outers who use the library as a doss house.
At my local suburban library, serious literary investigation is being replaced by women's chattering, children's drama productions and now, horror of horrors, I saw an advertisement for some sort of cacophonic demonstration by an old fiddler. Now, I don't know if you know me but I'm one who delights in all manifestations of the Terpsichorean muse and have almost the whole portfolios of Barry Manilow, Liberace and Jimmy Shand but this is a library we are talking about here. SHUSH!
Yours,
Peter Gogue.
Dear Mr Gogue. What century do you live in mmm? Don't you know that books are passé? Normal people get their information from social media nowadays and, if there's a new Andrew Child book out they download it for free and read it on their phone or iPad. You are a luddite I think and maybe you should stay at home ... unless, to paraphrase old Bill Shakespeare - "methinks he protests too much" - you frequent the library because you yourself are an 'old fiddler'. Just saying.
Yours in the spirit of helpfulness and edification
The Curmudgeon's Agony Aunt.
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I agree with Agony Aunt. It's like Church. In our day we would enter, bless ourselves and adopt a position with the hands together like a cathedral pointing to God. Now people, not everyone I should add, sit and chat. Comments are even maybe passed about the other people in the church!
ReplyDeleteThere is laughter, chuckles.
Are there many 'old fiddlers' there? Other than the ones up at the altar that is.
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