James and the Giant Lie.

I went into Ashbourne library today. I decided that, with the nights drawing in and there being nothing worth watching on the TV, it was time I started getting one rented DVD a week to break up the monotony. (It’s what happens when you move naturally and irretrievably beyond socialising.)

Well, who should be on the counter but my old chat buddy, James. I’ve mentioned James on the blog before, but I haven’t seen him in years because I stopped going into the library, and he stopped working in Ashbourne on a Wednesday anyway.

‘Hey, look everybody,’ he kept calling to sundry library persons, ‘look who’s here. It’s Mr Beazley, and he hasn’t changed a bit.’

I don’t know which was worse, subduing the sense of embarrassment while saying ‘hello’ to sundry library persons, or being told yet again that I haven’t changed a bit. I might start believing it, you see, and then think of the additional trauma I’ll suffer every time I look in the mirror.

Two things of note accrued from the visit:

1) I told James about my two books, The Gift Horse and Odyssey, and he asked whether I might let the library have a copy of each to place on their shelves. It’ll cost me money, but at least it might mean that one or two people will read them at last. (Or at least a page or two.) And I can think of the cost as a service to the community…

2) The DVD I selected is a copy of The Oxford Murders starring John Hurt. John Hurt has long been one of my favourite actors, and I was pleased to see that he looks older than me. But then I looked him up and discovered that he is older than me. He was older than I am now even when he made The Oxford Murders, so that it explains it.

Oh, and I encountered a dotty woman in the library, who was, if I read her cryptic conversation with James accurately, about the same age as me. And yet she was far dottier than I am, which pleased me no end.