The Library

There is something about the smell, about walking in to a Library and, bang you are hit by that musty, booky smell.  The one that has stayed with you since childhood.

I often take the minimads to the small library in the village.  They love playing with the books, the stacking plastic chairs and also the jigsaws, which are never complete.  They adore the thrill of having their own plastic library cards and being responsible for taking out their own books and putting them in mummy's book bag.

But the other day I took Mini to the library of my childhood.  The main library on the street where I grew up, the street on which my mum still lives.

So much is the same, but so much has changed in the last 30 off years.  The smell is just the same, it hit me straight between the solar plexus triggering all sorts of happy memories of Meg and Mog, of dancing on graves and of worrying about fines for late returned books.

The children's section is still in the same part of the library, but you have to walk through a theft detection device now and go through a swing gate before you can enter it to the left.  It still has the wooden crates on the floor full of picture and board books.  The red train seats and the blue faux leather adult chairs.  There are still images on the red brick 1960 walls drawn by children who attend the regular reading sessions like I did.

The brick fishpond has gone and in its place a tank with small exotic fish.  No longer can you throw a penny in amongst the water and vegetation and listen to it plop against the bottom.  Gone are the vinyl seat cushions which used to rest on benches made of bricks.

However, all the rest remains the same, apart from the row of 12 PC's which run across the centre of the library where I remember their being microfiche.

The counter is still in the same place made with the same 1960's brick.  The whole library is a glass and steel structure with brick internal fittings and supports.  It must have looked for modern in the 1960's when it was build.

I remember meeting friends at the cafe in the entrance with my mum and baby brother in his buggy.  I loved the Eames metal chairs with their orange seats.  I would be allowed an orange squash and have a biscuit from the packet mum got with her tea.

How sad that these wonderful seats and squash have been replaced by a frothy coffee and bland brown leather sofa's.

A strange place for me it holds so many memories and lies juxtaposed between history, fiction and imagination.

Getting Maxi - Part Three Coming Home

So the story continues....

We were allowed to bring Maxi home 3 days after I had given birth, my mum had gone back to North Yorkshire, so that we could spent some time on our own, just the three of us and the two cats.

So we popped Maxi in to his car seat and left, just like that.  No one came and checked if we were going to be suitable parents, if we knew how to look after him or any such thing.

The first thing we did was make a trip to Waitrose.  I was so sure I would breast feed that we didn't have any supplies, so we needed bottles, formula and a steriliser.  I was unable to breast feed due to the medication I had to take.  It was just so odd walking round the supermarket with the smallest baby, we were stopped all the time being asked about him.

We arrived home to a house filled with cards and flowers and also a nursery.  MadDad had managed to paint the nursery and put together all the furniture whilst I was in hospital.  We hadn't done anything as we were so sure that this pregnancy would end in tears like all the others.  We popped Maxi in to his pram by the window (as he had slight jaundice) and proceeded to spend the whole day just gazing at him with complete wonder.

MadDad had taken a couple of weeks as holiday and we kind of just pottered around, as I was recovering from my section and spent most of the time wondering how we managed to make something so beautiful.

7 days after Maxi was born I was feeding him and MadDad was getting his bottles ready when I sneezed and felt a little damp (TMI Alert - I thought I had wee'd myself), so I asked MadDad to come and finish feeding whilst I got changed. 

If only it had been a wee!  I had split my scar and had to be restitched after a 999 dash to the hospital.  Gosh this parenting lark was eventful.

I took things a lot easier after that, I guess that I was so ill during the pregnancy and I had stopped feeling sick and ill once I gave birth that I had been overdoing things.  We still look at Maxi and think "I made that" and stand in utter amazement at the complexities of a human and think "how it is all possible"?

I look at Maxi complete awe, he is no longer a baby, he turns 5 tomorrow and love him more now than the day he was born, I have been blessed with such a wonderful child and many people wonder how we would have go on to have Mini after such an experience with Maxi.  Well he turns four in June and in the lead up to his birthday, I will be posting a "Getting Mini" series, so you will have to wait for those answers.

But I would do it all again in a heartbeat, even now if it was physically possible.