Acksherly, LOL, I am hoping three tales may be told about libraries; if some lazy men I know get their fingers working. On the keyboard, the keyboard! Get writing, that is what I mean. Gah!
(<snerk>). Anyway, anyway. This box at the bottom is my pencil case. For many years now I have kept my pens and pencils - and as we moved into the digital age, my memory sticks - in a Roget & Gallet soap box.
Yah, yah, I am old enough to still write with a pen (a fountain pen, of course). When I was a kitten we wrote all our essays by hand, there was no such thing as the internet (no, we managed fine, dahlinks, we found plenty to amuse ourselves with, believe me - wink) and the idea of storing massive amounts of sensitive data on a tiny passworded piece of metal and plastic was just science fiction.
For my pencil case, I use Roget & Gallet boxes which have three tablets of soap in. For a while they smell faintly deliciously of the soap - and so do I. Excuse me, do you mind not sniffing while I am telling my story?
Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, the boxes. After a while, they get tatty and start to fall apart, because they are only made of cardboard (very superior, expensive cardboard, of course). Then I go and buy some new soap and when I have finished the soap, I use that box.  |
| Roget & Gallet Gingembre |
So-o-o, I have in this slim decorative box pretty much everything of importance in my life: memory sticks with photos of Piglet since she was a tiny toddling piglet, data from my research projects, smutty stories; I have my fountain pen, a spare pen for students to borrow, a pair of scissors, two good sharpened pencils decorated with little animals eating noodles; and I have a pink Disney Princess pencil sharpener, a memorabilia museum coin which I was going to give to one of Swiss Army wife's boys but he already had that one, and the cash till from a Polly Pocket doll's shopping mall.
About a year ago I lost the Roget & Gallet pencil case soap box for the first time in years of carrying Roget & Gallet soap boxes around. At first I didn't realise, as it was an odd period in my life when work was a bit temperamental (there wasn't any) and there was a lot of other stuff going on. Eventually it came to me that I had not seen the box in a while and I began to try to remember where I had had it last. I rang up the library, cuz I am always trotting in there in my top boots to print stuff off, cuz the printer cartridges for the amazing printer that the Baron decided to buy me for my birthday one year (yah, just what I had always wanted - not) proved to be so expensive it was cheaper to go and print out at the library. No no, they said, making noises as of someone rootling through lost property. They had not seen the box.
Well, I had this feeling of surprise. Like I knew really that the box was there. I began to look around my house in a desultory way, thinking it would turn up. I knew it would turn up, cuz it is my life, and I knew I had 'lost' it in that way that is saying to the universe: "things are a-changing round here, y'know".
One day a few months ago the library rang me. "Oh hullo," they said in innocent tones. "Have you lost a pretty box with pencils and that in, cuz we have found one and we opened it, and inside was a label with your name, address and phone number on it." Well, dahlinks, I was terribly pleased that it had turned up, so I let it go that I had already rung them once and they pretended they did not have the box.
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| From blog about design. |
The young male librarian was pretending to be very busy doing something the other side of the issue and returns desk.
I looked in the box, and one of the memory sticks was missing, so I thought I had probably left it in the computer in the library at the time I lost the box. The pretty lady librarian and I looked through the lost property box, while the young male librarian carried on being very busy on the other side of the issue and returns desk. The memory stick was not there. I was very surprised, but so it was. Or rather, so it wasn't.
Then when I had gone home and made a nice cup of tea with a cream sandwich biscuit on the saucer, the library phoned me again. "La la la," they said innocently. "We have just found a memory stick which is like the one you said you lost."
Yah, of course it was mine, and when I went to fetch it, the young male librarian was conspicuous by his being very busy again somewhere else in the library!
But I was still very grateful for the return of my box, and so I bought the librarians that other box of little chocolates. "It's not quite as interesting as the Amelie box," I said, "but I hope you will enjoy it."
Now then, JackLuis and AreaMan. I happen to know (cuz I know things <snerk>), that you are both writing stories about hot librarians. Get on with it! I have written my library story (and edited your story, JackLuis, you big ole pussy cat) and I expect you to write yours. Oh wait a minute ... I am supposed to be writing the next bit of AreaMan's story, tee hee, silly me <snerk>. Well guys, if we can make sure the sex is safe sex, I will even review the stories on my blog - there, that's an offer
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