In this post: a brilliant dream; navagating the "Library of Sheol"

I have spent today operating on anger, adrenalin, chocolate milk and Strauss.

I'm taking an hour off, to blog and catch up on my comic. Then it's back to slog. Honest.

Today has been all kinds of hell. I woke up from quite an impressive dream. The details, naturally, run away from me now. What I do remember is a girl called Jackdaw Flash, on account of her hair. Hands off that name, by the way - Jackdaw Flash is going to be coming to a book near you very soon. We were in grandma's house, choosing a scary movie to watch; only I was too afraid of the house. Which is part true in real life - only, now I appreciate the mix of kitch and terror, the crazy random decorating and all the details and junk. You can't get bored in a house like that, even if part of the "you could find anything!" encompasses everything from an original Dorian Gray to a dead body.

This morning I remembered why we were going around this place - now all I remember is there was a room.

I think Dorian Gray was responsible for the next bit in any case - I found a room which wasn't there before, and it was intense. Naturally, there's no room like this in the house - although I remember dreaming once there was a secret passage there, and while I know that dreams are dreams, I've never quite shaken the feeling that there should be. This house has an Anne Frank style attic which used to be behind a bookshelf, a green library which looks like it's been abducted from another house entirely, and a recently discovered cellar with a wine press which nobody knew about. So maybe there is a secret passage, and this is what is at the end of it.

Unlikely, as the room was intensely Chapter 12 - like something from the Vatican. The high roof was decorated with jewels and gold, marble floor and there were pearls in the walls. What was so remarkable about the room was that I experienced it as sound. I heard the sound of the emptiness and size, and then the rattle of the pure pearls, and then a jangling sensation like tiny bells to represent the gold. I have far more of an intense impression of it than I would have by sight alone.

Finally, we were in a trial room - and I'm not going to describe the circumstances, but like Miss Flash expect them incorporated in a coming story.

It took some crawling to escape that dream - I woke properly at 9, having set my alarm for 11, which was satisfying. I had cereal (I rushed to Sainsburies yesterday, but got distracted by the Watchmen posters and cutouts, and after five minutes of ogling, I was too late. Then I tried Atlanta which is a corner supermarket, and almost bumped into the manager as he was leaving. He asked me if I needed anything, and at that point I just requested cereal and milk. So I've been subsisting on that. The greatest crime the religion has ever perpetrated - no, not the stonings, the martyrs, the bombs or crusades. It's things shutting on Sundays. At the end of a hard week, I only want to veg out on a Saturday. But I'm bored by Sunday - at which point shops, supermarkets and attractions close. Why? No good reason, except ?2000 years of tradition or more. Why not a more convenient day?), and set off for the Maughan Library.

In Ballad of Reading Gaol - in an Oscar Wilde mood at the moment - there's a line about each man going back into his private hell. Mine looks something like the Maughan. Initially I was pretty excited about Chancery Lane - it's a line from Planet of Fire, when Turlough reveals his guardian on Chancery Lane is actually a Trion agent spying on him. There's a tax man on Verdon and an agrarian commissioner on Darveg as well, though obviously I've never visited Verdon and Darveg. In any case, I do get a little leap of love whenever I see the road sign; and the Knights Templar, the nicest pub I've ever been in, is on the corner; and the building is beautiful.

But I want to die as soon as I get inside. It genuinely puts me in a worse mood than the Tube, and I normally start off pretty stressed from being on that. To begin with, you have to swipe in, on that irritating swiper with the wrong direction marked on it. From thereon, it's a warren of despair. The staff are unfriendly and useless. The cafe's always closed. The filing system is incredible - it's the American Library of Congress System which, incidentally, my mother also uses when she rearranges my bookcases at home.

Which is to say - completely bloody random as far as I can tell.

I admit that the good old Dewey Decimal is probably inadequate for an academic library, but understanding the system hurts. P is Language and Literature, but PE is English lit, and so on.
What makes this worse is nowhere in the library is this list actually displayed. There are little leaflets reading PN is room 1.26 and DU 4.32, but it's useless if you don't know what PN and DU actually mean.

It's the only sensible building in the world (as opposed to, say, the Empire State Building) where I condone normal, healthy people taking the lift - if I didn't, I'd have to find a staircase; and if I tried that, well, the caretakers would find me emaciated and feral three weeks later after being unable to find my way out. I know that to find film, I go up the lift one level, turn right and walk to the end via the Spanish books; Byzantine history is up lift 4 to floor 2M; to find the Oscar Wilde, you pace floor 2 until you see a pitch black area where the light doesn't work - that's where his shelf is. Lucky that I can identify most editions of most of his books by touch, then.

Oh, and the cafe is down to -2 and straight across. But they don't sell chocolate milk.

If you find the right area, it's impossible to find the actual book you want - I have to check the catalogue four or five times. And often as not, the book's not there when you need it, even when the catalogue says it is. By that point, I'm usually in tears from stress, and I don't physically have the strength to work out whether the book's been taken out, I've got the room wrong, the shelf number wrong, or the catalogue is just lying to me.

And then there are the little niggling things, like the computer rooms being out of the way so it takes 15 minutes to just hop onto Google to check something, not to mention the toilets all being treks away; like the request system not working; like the fact the Classics section is on the divide of the number system, which means half is at one end of the massive corridor which makes up the building, and the other on the other; like not having a copy of the Silmarillion; like the fact Lagaan, a 3+ hour film, is on short-term loan, which means you have to renew it after 2 hours; like the fact it's on no convenient Tubes or buses, and it's a bloody stress to get to. You can't even watch films there in comfort, because the room with the TV booths have the most appalling reflections that you can barely see.

In any case, back to the Library from Hell. I have never once been there, but that it has let me down. I spent half an hour trying to find Photius' Bibliotecha, and after phoning up my lecturer in a state of distress, discovered only the first volume of two was there anyway, meaning I had to write an exam on a source I only had the duller half of. There was not a single book on the Parthenon, Mycenae, and nothing about Greek buildings or architecture, with the result that I got a poor score because I didn't reference enough. How could I? I couldn't find any damn books to reference. I've got one on Greek pots due in a week, and I just know there will be nothing useful on the topic.

To sum up the rant, then - once you've spent 45 minutes on the bus and Tube, you're already stressed, tired and not in the mood to be pissed about. Especially if you're working on a deadline, the fact you're going to lose at least two hours to public transport really stings. Unfortunately, it'll take at least that long in an environment twice as stressful to locate a book. In the unlikely event you find something potentially useful, at that point I am in no fit state to work. Any desire to do well, any interest in the subject or spark of enthusiasm has been wholly crushed. If you go through all that, and then make it back to Hampstead, you're in a state to do one thing and one thing only - sleep.

One day I am going to find a room with no one else in and scream at the top of my voice "I FUCKING HATE THIS LIBRARY". Then walk out. Which is the mantra which keeps pumping around my head as I get more, and more, and more stressed in that evil place. Today I merely picked out one of their useless "maps" which don't help at all, and scrawled words to that effect, in big letters on it, like a PostSecret, and left it in one of the racks for the next person to find. I hope it makes them smile. It certainly made me grin. Screaming, however, is only a matter of time.

That library has only ever been good for one thing. The very last video booth is around a corner on the Mezzanine, so you can see any approaching lecturers long before they see you. Or properly, your screen. I had the most divine afternoon when I took off my shoes and watched 3/4 of Planet of Fire there. But even then, it was the token rebellion against the third worst place in the world which really made it fun. The other two, incidentally, being Bodmin Gaol and the Ellis Island Immigration Centre.

In any case, today was no exception. It got to the point where I had to sit down in the corridor, because I was getting serious stomach cramps and vomit sensations. Not because I'm ill - from stress and anger. When I asked for help, I got directed to people who directed me to other people, who directed me to all sorts of different places to tell me what I'd already worked out - that the "Short Loan" and "Reference Only" system did not function at all correctly, and that people who could have taken the train to London and watched the exam movies at any point over Christmas hadn't - and were obviously happy to sit on the videos, and just pay the crippling fines after the exam.

So I did the trek to the computer rooms and establish that most of the DVDs I needed were in Swiss Cottage Central Library (15 minutes away from home). Back on the tube. Back on the bus. Back to the TV room.

I walked back under the arch and made a provisional oath. I say provisional, because naturally I don't ever want to be in a position where my sons are Kinslaying, burning Swan Havens, stealing boats or throwing Silmarils into volcanos, and I didn't swear on anything serious like Tanquetil, because I wouldn't want to have to stick to it.

Which is nowhere near as dramatic, nor as satisfying to write, but probably a better idea in the long run. But if I can help it, I am never going to go there ever again. I'll use Camden libraries - there are nine of them - or the British Library, or Senate House. Anywhere else. Even Wikipedia.

I managed to get four films out the library - Comme Une Image, Angst Essen Seele Auf, La Strada, and Marie Antoinette. Total cost - £7.89, but the satisfaction was immense. I staggered back up the road and ensconced myself in the TV room for the rest of the afternoon for a quadruple bill.

In the process, I made a permanent enemy. I've been getting closer to the campus cat for the previous term. He always comes and sits on the floor when I'm in the TV room, which is really comforting, as I'm mostly in there on weekends - when everyone else is at home. He usually comes in for my Doctor Who marathons too, though generally only Jon Pertwee episodes. Not sure why - Cat must be a connoisseur. Today I managed to persuade him onto my lap, where he promptly fell asleep. It was lovely, I felt far calmer. But then I had to turf him off to change the DVD - and he refused to come back, attacking my hand when I tried to tempt him. It upset me more than it should have; mind you, the fact he had a nap on my lap made me happier than it should have, so it all evens out.

As it happened, I only managed two movies before my stomach started complaining. I had only had a bowl of cereal, so I dashed across the road to the place where the guy had let me buy the cereal yesterday (I want them to have my custom, they were nice). Dinner = two sausages, taramasolata on toast (Olympia brand - quite potatoey, but nice texture) and Salt and Vinegar crisps. I don't even like crisps, but Jessie's mum has this theory that when you crave something, it's your bodies way of telling you you have a deficiency. I don't get that much salt, so I always choose to believe it when I fancy some.

Though my body must have a serious calcium deficiency if that's the reason I've been drinking so much milk.


So today has been stressful, but rewarding in a weird way. It's reminded me at least why I came home exhausted. And apologies for the foul language. I'd like to think I'm a skilled enough author to express the horror of the place without resorting to expletives, but sometimes it's the only way to get your point across.



In other news - I had quite forgotten my unkillable plant, Leon, over Christmas. As soon as I got back, I started tidying - I'd left the desk and wardrobe a total mess. And I kept coming across things I'd half forgotten were here - my red shawl, my wonderful copy of Sands of Time, my lemonade bottle I've converted to a permanent drink holder and Leon. Well he was all curled up, so I gave him some water and he's perked up. It's incredible, it's like I've never left. He's all green again. I'm genuinely impressed - it's truly hard to kill!

And I proudly rearranged my MicroUniverse Display Box - only to realise I'd left the three Dalek figures at home! So the collection is still not yet complete...

The plan as I see it is this - now, start researching Marie Antoinette (I had to let Sholay go, mainly because I couldn't find it in Swiss Cottage - despite the massive section of Hindi cinema. Plus, it's three hours when time is running short, I can't appreciate the whole of Indian Cinema in so short a time and I enjoyed it too much. Marie Antoinette I liked but didn't enjoy, so I'm willing to get digging)

Go to bed early, wake up early and watch Comme Une Image, then try and hunt out the other movies for the rest of the day. Missing - Rear Window, I know Where I'm Going. The latter might be tricky - I may ultimately have to skip it.

Finally, and then I'll get back to work honest, I did point out before I left that Estonia, a Marillion song written in typical cheery style about the sole survivor from a boat disaster, was the most divine song ever written - particularly the instrumental break with the dropping guitars. Here it is:



Having listened to it again, some of the magic has worn off - but its lovely, isn't it?

Finally, if you come across a Doctor Who book called Matrix, you will pick one up for me? I've just established that not a single library in London has a copy, see.