More Years than I Care to Remember . . .

Tess offers us a picture which apart from the scaffolding, gives the memory-bank a huge jolt.

Central Library, Manchester, U.K., by Robin Gosnall 

How many years? Before the internet consumed our lives.  Before satnav helped us drive to the wrong branch of IKEA and mobile phones helped us send for help to get home again. Before decimalisation of UK currency. Before Lennon and McCartney took pop by the scruff of the neck and gave it a much-needed shaking - remember David Whitfield and Alma Cogan?  Googleclue: I had just started my 2nd. Year as a student at Manchester University when the Russians launched Sputnik 1.

I studied and slept many an evening and Saturday morning in Manchester's Central Reference Library. It's circular - the picture doesn't show this to good effect - and the main reading hall within was round also.  I remember the leather seated chairs and the wide tables that were arranged to radiate out from the desk where the assistants in white overall coats scurried about fetching and carrying reference works for the students. I remember quite a lot about the heat-treatment of steel; not much about the rare-earth metals. 

The library basement housed a lovely little theatre (about 300 seats) called unsurprisingly "The Library Theatre." There, for not very much if you had a student matriculation card, you could see the work of Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Samuel Beckett, Berthold Brecht, J.B.Priestley the blunt spoken Yorkshire playwright, and many more, performed by - equally unsurprisingly! - the "Library Theatre Company."  Wonderful! Just wonderful!

The Library was about 2 minutes walk from the Free Trade Hall where you could hear the Hallé Orchestra under the late, great Sir John Barbirolli playing - typically - an overture, 2 symphonies and a concerto for a student ticket price of 30 "old" pence, (called "half a crown" or 2 shillings and sixpence in those days) - 12 and a half pence (~20 cents) in today's money. These concerts were given on mid-week evenings. They were called "Industrial" concerts, which Sir John instigated so that just about anyone could afford to hear great classical music played by one of the world's leading orchestras.  Did I say wonderful?

And then it was but a short stroll back to College, to drink beer or play darts, to eventually be examined, pass muster, and graduate, and go forward into life, no longer protected from it, and not  fully understanding what happiness is until we had left it behind.