Monday 14 January 2013

The British Library is a spaceracket


I am sitting at the big BL (British Library) and it is deserted! I can see about three other people up here on the second floor of Humanities. I have never, in all my years of BL flight (of fancy, imagination; but also because sitting in the big BL is like sitting inside a spaceship – do you not think?). With this in mind, all the other students have been sucked out through a tube and are now floating around in space making bizarre hand (and general limb gestures – more elasticity in space you know?) because they cannot hear each other whispering to each other, or slamming books, or banging chairs. As there is no sense of proportion out there in space – and they have been trained in here – their gesturing becomes more and more grotesque as they orbit the planet…their books and notes and laptops and mobiles forming auras around them…but I have spoken too soon. It is 10.15 and the spaces around me are rapidly filling up. With rusty, bangy, whispery folk! And in inner writing space, I can hear a pin drop…Let’s try these headphones.

Now for proportion: I am so happy to be here, in this me zone, having walked here on my own and having taken snowy photos on my phone…sorry it takes a while to get the battiness out of my system.

And so to becoming a Welsh man again in the book that I am currently writing.