Thursday 7 July 2011

Wonderful things

It seems that the moment of truth is here. With something between a creak & a protesting squeal from disused hinges, the library door swings wide to reveal a scene of bookish chaos & devastation. Shelf-clad walls are dimly visible, hemming a carpetless floor piled with books & boxes. A flight of ghostly plaster swallows skims across the chimneybreast, framing artwork dully sheened with light from a far window. In the corner, a tall fan of ostrich feathers trembles in a slight draught; from under the table a lion’s head plaster mask roars in silent, gap-toothed rage.


Chairs are heaped with books; a carousel stands immobile, its windows revealing countless leaflets & booklets, its solidity obscuring daylight from the world outside. Poster tubes stand in a thicket; atop a bookcase a cryptically plumaged & be-whiskered parrot peers out from the night shadows of the New Zealand bush. Around the dark maw of the fireplace, mottled tiles & iridescent niches catch fugitive glimmers of sunlight, striking colourful notes in an otherwise sombre scene.

I become aware of Railroad Man quivering gently at my side. He is clearly torn between a husbandly desire to offer support for library restoration & sheer excitement at the potential revealed to his gaze. The familiar mantra: “If we throw this away I could build a railroad layout there” hangs unspoken in the dust mote-filled air between us.

Gentle reader, what is your view?

Should I continue with my plans to retrieve my precious books from the obscurity into which they have fallen? Unpack the boxes, conjure fresh shelf space from nothing, as a rabbit is pulled from a hat? Twitch those ostrich plumes over the serried array of dustjacketed spines? Or should I give this room over to the tresselled baseboard, the workbench, the railroad track & the locomotive steaming at scale speed through a miniature Maine landscape tinted by the vibrant colours of the New England fall?

Hark! I hear that lonesome whistle blow ….