I love these early mornings here in the university library. Getting the bus before the into work and school rush and squash begins. Then into here before it begins filling up for the day. Knowing I’m part of that filling up. Yet still, early on like now, the place feeling like mine. Like I’ve come to inhabit it. An essential moment in your time with any great library. When it becomes your place.
The moment you know roughly how it works. Where things are. Knowing and hoping I’ll never know where everything is. Open to and hoping for surprise. The serendipities of future browsing all around me. In my place.
But knowing my way around well enough to sit here in stillness now. Right now on this early Friday morning. Sat in stillness and expectation, here in this wonderful place, full of things I don’t know and haven’t thought about. Not yet.
Sitting, quietly, thinking, writing.
Press ‘publish’ and read on. There’s always more to read.
Hours, a lecture, reading and much thinking later on, evening begins to arrive.
Another good week.
Read more of my university writing here.
Eric Griffiths, an almost exact contemporary of ours, but educated at Paul McCartney’s alma mater, The Liverpool Institute, has died. There is an obituary of him today, 19 October, in The Telegraph which is worth the price of the paper on its own. By way of a substitute, I attach a link to a recent review of a book of his lectures on poetry and literature which appeared in The Economist. I might buy a copy.
Regards. Nick
I’m jealous! I’ve just started an apprenticeship which combines working at home with training residential courses a few hours drive away. But I also meet with my boss/colleague/mate in Northumbria University Library, which looks like the one in your photos. I love spending time in there. Actually, I’m only a little jealous because I’m getting to spend more time in ‘education’, but I do miss being in a large library with other learners around me!
You’re probably one of the most diligent students! Early mornings? Library? Hope it’s all you wanted it to be…
So far it is Helen, though it’s stretching me!
I’d be proud to think I was interchangeable with Helen of the Venomous Bede ;-)
Oops! Sorry.
That’s OK Fred!