Working Class Fantastic Spaces Orford Library
Published on August 16, 2023 by Lucy Morris
Here is one of our directors, Lucy Morris's story about her fantastic space, Orford library.
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I remember vividly always going to the library when it was Halloween to get the same face painting book, we had gotten every year. The last year I remember doing this was when we were around six or seven, me, my twin brother, and my mum would walk 15 minutes to our local library every year to get this small hardback book filled with fancy dress and Halloween face paint ideas. The library was further into Orford than we lived and had the classic smell of a library, recently equipped with about three old computers that were dated even for 2005. The desk of the library was circle shaped and placed in the middle, the adult section to the left, and the children’s to the right. We would spend hours in there, pretty much every weekend, sometimes not even taking books out, we visited that library as religiously as going to church. The Halloween book remains the clearest in my memory, maybe because that was the book we took out the most, even thinking now nearly twenty years later, I can still remember the design for the vampire and the dog as clearly as if it was in front of me. As a child I had always been consumed with reading, as I still am today, and I have my mum to thank for reinforcing this obsession, the expanse of the stories available in a library overwhelmed me and still in bookshops today I get the same feeling, a dizzying excitement of thousands of people’s words and stories condensed into a few pages. Words can not describe how important free libraries are, those books always felt like mine, and that library felt like a second home, it was comforting and safe, whether this was because I was a child and continually attached my mum’s hip or whether it was the accessibility that is the nature of public libraries I don’t know but, I know that that feeling is no longer apparent in today’s world. The library has since been knocked down and a Betfred has taken its place. I do not need to use similes and metaphors for anyone to understand the irony of this. The library however will always stay in mine and my family’s memory as a special place.