Real Men Read... CD cases!

The wind and rain continue so, this being Save Our Libraries day, I was glad to take the opportunity for an indoor blip.

This is Llyfrgell Abergwaun/Fishguard Library, which moved a few years ago from a drab and dingy old building into these new quarters on the first floor of the Town Hall. It's a small library contained in a single space but with distinct areas for children, reference, periodicals, computer terminals and so on, with large windows and a rather attractive raspberry-and-teal colour scheme. A pleasant place to spend an hour or so and I am pleased to say that there were a number of users doing just that. Some of them were men! Perhaps they had been encouraged by the array of posters displayed around the place promoting the suggestion that being seen with a book will not compromise your masculinity. I had to smile when, looking at the image I'd taken, I made out that the hunky guy pictured here is holding, not a book, but a CD by the rock band Weezer.

The Welsh Assembly is responsible for our libraries and so far they have not been directly threatened with closure as have many of those in England. But my reading group recently received a letter reminding us of the valuable services the libraries provide which made us wonder if they were trying to consolidate their position ahead of 'rationalisation'.

Reflecting on my own history as a library user I recall that, when I was a child, my family, by virtue of living close to a county boundary, managed to belong to three separate public libraries, and to use them all. Even so, I was such a voracious reader that I would run out of books before the next visit. So my mother, ever resourceful, invented a sickly cousin, just my age but too delicate to come and make her own choices. With 'her' library card as well this meant I could walk out with 12 books instead of only 6.