Following or Being Followed?

It was commented to me last week that libraries appear to follow me around.

There’s a lot in that.

Never quite sure where the borderline between what I consciously seek out, and what inadvertently finds me, actually is though. Perhaps librarians are just dab hands at finding reference to libraries and librarians.  Or, then again, perhaps it is just an inevitable consequence of the fact that libraries permeate all area’s and walks of life.

So we’ll take the last five days in my life and just look at the ‘unintentional’ list – things not actively sought out.

Last Friday – The St Andrew's Day Lecture with Val Mcdermid at The Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh on use of forensics in her writing. 

In which she also talked a lot about libraries and the need to support them and their impact on her and her career, on writers generally, and for the economy through the publishing industry.  Shouldn’t really have surprised me as I know she is a great supporter of libraries, but I’d gone in more in corpses and forensics thinking mode.

Last weekend - I picked up a novel to read (almost finished). One of the Ian Rankin Inspector Rebus books. In which I was not remotely surprised to find central Edinburgh libraries and librarian characters featuring as they often permeate the books.

However, to the normal National Library of Scotland and Central Library and Edinburgh University Library he’d even managed to add in an oil rig library. Which I wasn’t quite expecting. Had a very daft thought that I really wished he’d described it rather than walked the characters through or past. Which triggered an equally daft notion that I’ve never been on an oil rig library.  Any descriptions of oil rig libraries anywhere I wonder? Never read one.

Start of this week - My other half took an urge to watch some Porridge (the classic BBC tv comedy series about prison life starring Ronnie Barker).

I found myself going “ah yes, I’d forgotten this is the episode he manages to land the job as Assistant Librarian through his schemes” as I watched him making somewhat unusual use of one Book Trolley and a copy of Little  Women as he trundled it through the prison hospital. I don’t THINK there’s ever an episode with him actually in Slade Prison Library. But I could be wrong…

[And wrong I was, various episodes in Season 2 feature Fletcher in the Prison Library and going about his related activities. Everything from trying to get through the chitty to buy 'The Great Escape' (denied) to ordering book of precise width to sort the Governor's ricketty bookcase. I was thinking that the whole losing the paint enough times not to have to paint the library isn't exactly something that comes up much in real life, and then I remembered various stories down the years fof ingenious librarian DIY skills to patch ail'ing buildings and changed my mind a bit....]

So, whether libraries find me or I find them… I’m not always very sure. They’re still utterly fascinating though, real or invented.