I am a Library Officer.
Often I’m on the enquiry desk,
which I personally enjoy a lot.
You get every type of person in,
a five-year-old might want story books,
or someone doing a PhD.
You don’t have to know the answer but
you have to know where to find it though.
Occasionally I‘m on the counter.
I job share so I am not full time.
Some days we work nine in the morning
to seven at night, quite a long day.
Other days I do a shorter day.
I have worked here for twelve years in all.
I’m not from Leigh, I am from Essex.
At first, I had a southern accent
but I think a lot has rubbed off now,
working with local people and all.
I like to get out for some fresh air.
We have CCTV cameras now.
We had a spell a year or two back,
people’s purses were being stolen.
Videos were sent to the police.
It’s today’s modern society.
Now we have security people,
they have stopped the main trouble makers.
We have security barriers.
We still have a problem with stealing.
When I was a child you didn’t speak,
It’s not like that now in libraries.
Libraries like ours are open plan
and impossible to keep quiet.
It is quite a busy library,
we‘ve 800 people in a day
on average but sometimes even more.
We open some days at ten o’clock,
we open some days at half past nine.
Four nights we’re open until seven,
and then one night a week until five.
We are open Saturdays as well,
under pressure to open Sundays,
but that has so far been resisted.
There’s the same people waiting outside
at opening time every morning,
they come in to read the newspapers.
They can be noisier than the kids.
Monday we get the crossword people.
After doing the Sunday crosswords.
They want to know answers to questions
preventing them getting the big prize,
they always offer to share the prize
but it never happens. I don’t mind,
helping people with crosswords is fine,
but I like to know it’s a crossword.
You think it’s a reference enquiry,
sometimes you can end up spending a
disproportionate amount of time,
so I am always appreciative
if they tell me it’s for a crossword.
The other day a student came in,
they always want the book as of now,
sending for it is not good enough!
We have people who are quite lonely,
it’s a free place, its warm and it’s dry,
people come to meet other people.
The elderly who can’t sleep at night,
they’ll want several books and read them all
by the next day, which is a bit sad,
but it’s nice to think we’re there for them.
We had one elderly gentleman,
he actually died just recently,
he would want true stories of the War
which we then used to order for him.
We get quite a few people like him,
real regulars, we get to know them.
This gentleman died and he’ll be missed,
staff sent a card to his family.
Sometimes you see particular books
as you’re going ‘round the library,
and you know that someone might like that.
I’ve worked here for thirteen years or so, it feels longer than that sometimes when they call you up from downstairs for something, but it’s a nice place. My job description’s “caretaker-driver” but you very rarely see a driver coming in here doing caretaking duties… always the caretakers going out doing the driving. At the moment we’ve got Terry who’s just come in, he’s been doing a job, Fred’s on at two, Jack’s doing this job, they’re all caretakers, Chris who’s the caretaker at Wigan, he would be on a van, but he’s just had a car accident so he’s off at the moment, and Mick, the lad who would normally be on that if Chris weren’t on it, he’s on holiday, so we’re a bit low at the moment. We work it between ourselves where normally two of us are around… The job’s got easier since the alcohol ban came on the front because we used to get drunks and drug addicts on the front. Chairs… we’ve been after new chairs for years… they’re all falling to pieces. Wigan have got a conference room or something, film projectors going onto walls and all that, we’ve no real up to date equipment. They could really make a lot of use of this as a facility for conferences but they won’t pay the money out so we just make do as best we can. We used to have our own council. There’s me and Fred who do the shift work with the function room, this week, I’m on 7.30 - 3.15, it is the normal shift. At the beginning of the week, we’ll do an extra half hour on the Monday to make our hours up for the week and you have Friday off. You’ll come in 7.30, open the doors to the upper levels because the cleaners don’t have the keys to the gallery and everything, I’ll come in, do my jobs, just come in and open the doors up, go across to the local paper shop, get the morning papers. We have a reading area for the library and we get the old blokes in first thing in the morning for a couple of hours reading all the papers, stamp them and book them all in and there’s the magazines. The same magazines every month, the staff actually book them in and put special security tags in ‘cos they do go missing. Just the watering of any plants, checking round the building. After that, that any windows are okay, there’s none been broken, check the fire exits every morning, just that they’ll open and shut and everything. Once a week, a couple of fire points are tested, normally on a Wednesday morning. It’s just like a wailing, siren sound. We normally have a drill once every month, we’ll do one with staff. We’ve got two fire exits.
I’m the local history
officer. I’m based here, but
I am not actually a part
of the Leigh library staff,
as they took local history
out of libraries and put it
with the heritage sector.
And I am not from the area.
I’ve done a canal-side walk
every year, nine years or so.
I’ve done a cemetery walk,
I go around the cemeteries
telling people all about them,
some of the funeral customs,
tell people who’s buried there.
Names on gravestones don’t mean anything.
Flesh on the bones as it were.
Cemeteries are really a
kind of social history
of the local area.
Not everyone is buried there,
some have been cremated and
their remains are not there, but
the majority are buried there.
As usual, Kirby manipulates various interwar records to fit a cavalcade of emotional states: blissful (B1, E8), tragic (D2, D5), frantic (E1, E6), and just plain horrifying (F3, G1, H1, K1). gjoe52
At the moment "I am Grimaldi" is my favourite track, although that could change. A stupendous album.
"I can't seem to stop this melancholy'
What it means to me can only be expressed by the phrase" Diddy Wah Diddy" Séamus Duggan
A work of considerable power and subtlety. Certainly a grower but I was hooked on first listen and it seems to improve on subsequent plays. Well done to everyone involved and good luck for the future, hopefully a long and successful future. simon1956smith
If you've been craving something dark and gritty yet stylish and dancefloor-ready, this hard-edged industrial synth opus might fit the bill. Bandcamp New & Notable Apr 16, 2024
The enigmatic Frank Ene's solo record lives in a magical world where Serge Gainsbourg fronts Yellow Magic Orchestra. Bandcamp New & Notable Nov 17, 2022
