Dear Jack & Clare,
I had to go to the National Library in Kildare Street the other day to do a little research. On the surface the system of security and admission looked impressive. There was a security desk at the stairs up to the library proper and you had to fill out a form stating your purpose for using the library and get your photograph taken for an identity card.
Having said that, for all of the notice that the library attendant took, I could have filled out "research into the domestic manufacture of Semtex and to get a look at any nudie pics in the books" and I would still have gotten a reader's card.
When I went in, I stood for a moment by the Card Index area, just looking around. I was impressed by the great domed ceiling and the long wooden desks with their lovely green reader's lamps. It all looked so right. So perfectly in the vein of what a library reading room should look like. Like all of the films I've ever seen. There were the habitues in one area, whispering earnestly to each other. There, one or two terribly focussed legal types. There, two slick boyos in blazers, cravats and well coiffed hair, probably doing the research prior to some elegant stroke they were about to pull. And there was the obligatory nubile young female student trotting up and down to the Librarian's desk in her symbiotically attached leggings, on an interestingly circuitous route that took her past a rather large, handsome, young guy in a rugby shirt who was totally immersed in what looked like a diatribe on the feeding habits of the immature fluke worm. Funny how there's always a gorgeous girl in every Library I've been in, usually minding her own business, getting on with it and oblivious to the havoc she's wreaking on the concentration of most of the males in sight.
Dublin became a happy hunting ground for motorcycle policemen last week. They had great fun. Stopping the traffic whenever they felt like it. Breaking the speed limit. Stopping for a chat in the middle of the busiest intersection they could find. If these talks ever result in a referendum I hope that they put in an option for us to vote upon a preferred location for the next round. I know which way most of the harrassed motorists of Dublin will lean. I have visions of angry members of the Capital's Traffic Army grunting "let's see 'em race around shaggin' Sceilig Mhicil," as they fill in their voting forms.
As the umpteenth wailing convoy raced past I overheard one old lady say to another "it really is like a Banana Republic, Maire. That Bob Golden had it right y'know".
"Who dear?" says Maire.
"Bob Golden, Maire. From the Booterstown Rats, " pleased to be one up and in the know. Then, "I think he's a cousin of Paul Golden."
Now that I come to think of it, Jack, by the time that you and Clare are old enough to have any interest in reading these letters, you'll probably regard the Boomtown Rats (a.k.a. Booterstown Rats) in much the same way as I regard Rudy Valee.
Rudy Who?
No comments:
Post a Comment