No library for crying babies

A child is screaming. The shrieks appear to be striding up a musical scale, stepping determinedly from Do to Re and hastening on to Te. Someone will hear eventually: the screaming toddler's motto. Stay on note, don't give up.

In this case everyone can hear but not many seem perturbed. Not an eyebrow raised in indignant inquiry. Indeed two ladies nearby are discussing the weather.

It is raining. The shower arrived finally announced by a blinding flash of light that not only lit up the sky but the room inside, followed by a giant thunderclap that rumbled for long after it was heard. People in the room looked up momentarily, some watching the heat of the last week rise hissing from the street before being beaten down by the force of the raindrops.

A beeping starts up — the kind you hear at a supermarket checkout when someone has slipped by without paying. An elderly man with a book under his arm looks about worriedly, left and right then attempts to get past the barrier once more. The beeper goes off again. An attendant walks up and takes him back to the main desk.

"It's the book, my friend, sorry about that," says the attendant. "It hasn't got a barcode. It's one of those new ones that haven't yet been itemised."

The senior man's reply indicates relief. The child, meanwhile, is not letting up.

Finally someone cracks. It is a young man, perhaps in his late twenties.

"For goodness sake, will someone attend to that brat? This is a library. There's meant to be silence here, for crying out loud."

Even his anger dissipates at the pun he's unwittingly uttered and he laughs along with a few others nearby.

The child ceases its screeching almost on cue. As though it was waiting to get under someone's skin before sitting back triumphant in victory. Or maybe because it wanted to see some smiling adult visages — admittedly, a rare sight these days.

The man's arms are overloaded. With DVDs. Twenty in all.

"It's the maximum one is allowed to borrow at one time," he tells me, after we are done smiling briefly.

Generous act

I am in the library trying to get my hands on Stealing A Nation — a film by John Pilger about the plight of the Chagossians of Diego Garcia.

Unfortunately, the young man's hands have reached out ahead of mine and plucked the said DVD from the shelf. I tell him, unabashedly, I had come in to borrow this particular film. He sets the pile of movies on the table, picks the one I want out of the lot and holds it out.

"Take it," he says, "I've seen it three times already. It's very well done. Take any of the others as well if you like. I hate to admit it but I'm a bit like that kid. I've got to have my feast of DVDs for the week otherwise I'd be screaming as well. From sheer bloody loneliness. But I've just realised I could put my time to even better use. I'm going to visit the council and start a campaign to have this creche moved somewhere else. There's no way a library can function as a library if it has a creche attached."

So saying, he picks up his load of movies and leaves. The moment he departs the screaming starts up once again.

I think it might be a capital idea to join the young man in his endeavours.

Whose brainwave was it that a library could possibly co-exist peacefully with a creche?

Reminds me of an old song by the band Sparks: This town ain't big enough for the both of us.

If the lyric had added ‘baby' it would have been perfect.

Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.