Work for me this morning. I was ten minutes late as Julie was late to me – a road had been closed and then she’d had a narrow miss with a car so was all overcome and breathless when she arrived and I felt I couldn’t just dash off. It was fine though, work are amazingly laid back about my constantly diving through the doors five minutes late looking harrassed and have assured me it’s not an issue (I always make sure I work into a tea break or lunch break to make up the time though, even though I doubt they even notice). I was staggered today to realise just how much Julie is showing though. She is in maternity clothes now and only 16 weeks away but suddenly looks good and properly pregnant 🙂 Very exciting!
There were three class visits today hosted by the children’s librarian, Cara, who is everything you would expect a children’s librarian to be. She is lovely, very sweet, holds all her conversations with everyone in the same sing song voice she uses when reading The Gruffalo to a class of 6 year olds and would say something like ‘whoopsadaisy’ if she shut her fingers in her car door! 😆 In the middle of all these class visits was Baby Rhyme time though so with precision timing we whipped everyone in and out of where they should be with children being swept away upstairs to learn about reference books while I did Rhyme time and then me hustling the attendees out while the school children were brought back down again.
I had over 30 babies attending and as some of them had two or even three adults accompanying them we were pretty much at capacity really. I had to struggle to find floor space to plonk myself down in the midst of them and spent most of the session with a small girl resting her hand on my shoulder and grinning adoringly at me. Surprisingly I was okay about this and didn’t feel the constant need to brush her hand away and say ‘eeewwww babies, yuk!’ like I thought I might. I had a full programme and due to being aware of the school visits waiting I actually cut out my last two songs (Jelly on a plate and If you’re happy and you know it) but other than that it was a great success. I have found my stride with it now, realised that I’m in charge and am customising it to suit me rather than trying to be like the other people who have done it before. And it must be working because numbers are growing every week and everyone is very effusive in their thanks at the end of it. My only error this week was in singing ten green bottles – do you have any idea how bloody long that song is? 😆
The rest of the day passed fairly quickly. There was a man waiting outside long before we opened this morning who spent the entire day coming in and then wandering back out for 15 minutes or so before coming back in again. I would guess him at roughly my age, somewhere in his 30s, dressed in a heavy black coat, filthy jeans and big boots that appeared way too big for him, he was smothered in tattoos and absolutely stank of that unwashed smell that meant we had to have all the windows open in the library because the stench filled the whole place. He sat and read a bit, spent lots of time wandering the place like some sort of restless spirit and talked and laughed to someone that wasn’t there almost constantly. But, he was absolutely gorgeous, one of the most beautiful people I think I have ever seen outside of films. None of us had ever seen him before, he was clearly either high on drugs or suffering mental health hallucinations so quite how he got to Lancing and found the library at 830 this morning is rather a mystery but I spent the whole day haunted by how this was someone’s son, wandering where the wind had blown him from and who cared about where he was. People like that fascinate me, I want to know their story. Working at the library has really opened my eyes to just how many faceless nobodies there are drifting among us without most of us ever noticing. The library is a warm, dry, comfortable place where people do collect to sit and read, while away the hours and often find someone to chat to and I am constantly amazed at just how many people there are with nowhere else to be.
Davies’ display continues to attract attention and compliments and the librarians have asked for some pictures of Davies with it with the intention of doing a press release to the local papers about it. It is execptional in that he is so young and it is a library related and inspired display but also (naturally) it will be free press for the library, advertise our free display space and remind people of libraries role in the community. I’ve booked the space again for Davies in April and will try and book space at Worthing and Shoreham too so his display can travel around a bit – I think it probably does deserve more than one week up before being stored away :).
So Julie, Jack and Maisie were here this morning. They had a trip to the park apparently. Dad was here in the afternoon and did some reading and some board games with Davies and Scarlett, they say they have had a nice day. 🙂 I got home and did a speedy tea for Scarlett, sat and had cuddles with Davies and then Ady arrived home in time for Scarlett and I to go to Rainbows. She took two soft toys with her for the show and tell bit at the end, was prepared to say ‘Rainbow Scarlett’ before sitting down at the beginning and joined in with singing Old Macdonald but still refused to do the Rainbows song at the beginning and end of the session! She was slightly disappointed that they didn’t make anything this week – they played with a load of dressing up stuff and then had to do a fashion show catwalk thing wearing the costumes – she didn’t fully participate in that, just draping a scarf round her instead of the tiaras, boas and fairy wings the others were going for. They played a few games, she got involved in a minor altercation with the girl who was mean to her on her first visit who was telling her not to sit on the table next to her while Scarlett told her she could if she wanted to :lol:. She told the group about her pink teddy who she calls Pinky ‘because it’s pink!’ and her white cat who she calls Malice :). I had recognised one of the girls from Rainbows at one of the class visits this morning and sure enough she mentioned in her show and tell that she’d been to the library today :). They were handing out leaflets for a disco tomorrow night but Scarlett isn’t keen so we won’t bother with that.
They chose Simpsons instead of stories tonight so they watched that before bed. It’s felt a long week this week but we don’t have anything particularly planned this weekend so I’m hoping the weather holds and we can have a nice relaxing weekend with sunny days.