Re-living my early memories of Stamford Public Library, with its grand classical frontage, which overawed this small child… it was a veritable treasure-trove to which I was introduced at age seven by my mother, who realised I needed to read, and that the library was the only way of satisfying my thirst for books.
It was frustrating that I only got one ticket, which meant only one book at a time, though the library was open five or six days a week, and when my sisters were of an age to join too, they could sometimes be persuaded to choose books that I could read as well. During holidays I did go pretty nearly everyday, and would start reading my book as I walked home…
There were more books in the children’s section than I could imagine, and the great thing was the series: all the Biggles books (Capt W E Johns), all the William books (Richmal Crompton), all the Jennings books (Anthony Buckeridge), the entire Young Traveller series, the Secret Planet books which introduced me to the world of SF. And I could try out new things, too!
The library was a curious place. The first room was the Reading Room, where the daily newspapers were fixed to the wall by metal rods, and there were exotic periodicals such as The Christian Science Monitor and India News and the Jewish Chronicle – where I first came across the idea that other nations had different calendars from us – and the Daily Worker (shock horror!). This room was inhabited by various down & outs and disreputable types – or so it seemed to me at the time – who offed and blinded as they read the papers. Not sure my mother would have approved of my going in there.
You had to be silent everywhere in the library, which also contained the town museum, with all sorts of curious discoveries and artefacts. The assistants were friendly enough behind the barrier of their counter, with their array of filing trays, tickets and date stamping machines.
Why was the place so magnetic in its attraction? What else did the world have to offer children in those days? Physical sports I have always loathed, so they were out. Television – we didn’t have one, and anyway there was only an hour or children’s programming in those days. I did listen to the wireless quite a lot. That seemed to leave reading, and I was quite happy with that, and seem to have been ever since.
LIT.GAZ. 