Books and shortbread

I owe emails to a bunch of people. I will send them all, promise. Just not now, as I'm something of a disorganised wreck at present.

That said, I do love Wednesdays. They're a peaceful interlude in the middle of the week. I invariably get up too late, but Pedar takes me into school as he goes to Liverpool on Wednesdays. It's nice not to have to think about running for trains. Today, however, did not begin well. I got out of bed at five to eight, looked at the clock, swore a bit and stumbled into the bathroom. And then swore a lot. There are certain things that annoy me about my grandmother. Her habit of stating the very very obvious, for one, her constant air of disapproval for another, her refusal to try and pronounce my name right is yet another, but the thing that annoys me the most is the only thing in recent history my mother and I agree on. She - my grandmother, that is - is very dirty. I'll freely admit I'm no neat freak myself. I can cheerfully leave coffee mugs on the windowsill for a month. I can drown in books and papers before it occurs to me to tidy up. But there are certain things that have to be clean. The kitchen, to start with - I mean, people eat there. The world may be crawling with bacteria, but not in the kitchen. And secondly, the bathroom. In a room devoted to cleanliness, things ought to be clean. Not tidy - clean.

Where was I? Yes, I went into the bathroom and swore. A lot.

And ran downstairs with sundry small objects flying out from my pockets and went to school. As I said, I like Wednesdays, and one reason for that is the library committee weekly bonding. Merchants' library is a lovely place. It's weighed down with books and history and it's just... nice. When I first came to the school, I thought it was the most amazing thing ever. A room full of books that you could take out whenever you wanted, and as many as you wanted, and that was before I discovered the existence of the upper library. In primary school, we were only allowed one fiction book a week, and I used to read it that day and wait anxiously for the next... Wednesday, I think it was. How ironic. Anyway, I loved Merchants' library. At the time, there was no computer system and the librarian was Mrs Potter. Mrs Potter had had her job for more than forty years. She was small and mean and she hated thirds. Well, no-one likes thirds, but with her it was personal. She loathed them. And I still thought the library was absolute perfection. I loved the books and the sense of history and the sloping beams and small doors designed for seventeenth century people.

Then, two years on, Mrs Potter retired. The new librarian, Mrs Barry, couldn't be more different. She looked upon the library with horror, and went through it grabbing books off shelves and throwing them away. It was painfully apparent that there were no books published after 1972, so she started to put things right. I met her at that time, when I was in Upper Four, and when she discovered I actually used the library - no one else did, or so it seemed - she took me into account when ordering new books. There had come a point where I had read all the books I liked, and wanted more. For the first time, we had science fiction and fantasy. Harry Potter made an appearance, as did the Hitch Hiker's Guide.

Three years after that, there are so many good books. I happened to mention to Mrs Barry that the library is so much nicer than it was when I was a third, and she got all embarrassed and dropped things. Which was sweet. But she is sweet. Just in the last week, she noticed my latest kick and has got Jingo, Soul Music, Night Watch and Monstrous Regiment. I get them before they're shelved, as she needs a road-tester. She has a "naughty shelf" of books she doesn't want thirds stumbling on by accident.

This morning, the general conversation was about the Big Read. We want to do an assembly on the subject, and each talk about a few of the books. I quite enjoyed the bonding, but I did have to go to Politics in the end. Strangely, there was no one there. I later found out that the sixth form were held back after assembly because of the state of our common room. It's an absolute tip, and they're planning to lock us out of it if we don't tidy it up. Now it has been tidied, it feels like a different room.

I went out for lunch as usual to Sayers with Becca and Emma, got a turkey 'n' stuffing pasty and they gave me a free mince pie. And in addition to that, there was a further blessing in the shape of gingerbread. Seeing as Hallowe'en is over, there are no gingerbread bats, but we are aparently close enough to Christmas to buy gingerbread Rudolphs and Christmas trees. I got a tree, Emma got a reindeer. Gingerbread and lemon goodness. We dropped into Pritchards after that, where I found a book called "The Book of Bunny Suicides." I have to admit I found it absolutely hilarious. Page after page of cartoons depicting bunny rabbits killing themselves in increasingly bizarre ways. Hilarious. Honestly.

I went to the library again when we got back to school, as Becca had gone off to Fourfield (sp?). Nicola, Mrs Barry and I spent a pleasant half an hour looking at the websites of various other independent schools and their libraries. We did look at Birkenhead - didn't like it very much! - but just as things were getting interesting, I had to go with Emma to the Stroke Association. I actually do enjoy myself there nowadays. Today I was working with the youngest person there - her name's Deirdre and she was only in her thirties when she had her stroke. She was very funny and cool to talk to, and I helped her with the raffle and even won a prize myself. It was a box of shortbread, which I don't like but my mother does. It's all good. The association's Christmas Fair (thank god, they don't spell it with a "y") is next week, which Emma and I are going to a bit early. I realised this week that Colin (Generally In Charge Of A Lot Of Things) has signed my record too many times. I'm down as having done sixteen hours of community service when I'm pretty sure it's only twelve. That's all good, too.

And now I am home, eating toast with Philadelphia. Life is currently peaceful.