"Are you having a sale," I asked, dead pan. My face was deader than any pan that had ever died before. The man looked at me for a moment, before handing me my books. He looked a bit like Gandalf and was dressed like a lumberjack.
"We are having a sale in the shop downstairs, just by the entrance," he replied. A normal reply in rather un-normal circumstances.
For on this day, this chilly Wednesday, the British Library was humming. Not audibly, but because it had suddenly filled up with young people. Instead of the ageing population I was used to, it seemed to have been invaded by people of roughly twenty years of age, sitting in all the seats I usually liked. The queue to collect pre-ordered books was longer than I had ever seen it.
I cursed myself for my needless levity, and double cursed the way I had so artfully hidden it. I suppose I was a bit surprised and a bit annoyed, in roughly equal measures.
"It's the students," he continued. "They allowed them in a couple of years ago. It'll be like this till the end of May now." Not good news for me, I thought, not getting desk no. 2332 (easy to remember) and having to wait twenty precious minutes to pick up the obscure stuff I needed to read. I had even had to queue to get in to the front entrance that morning. I considered asking him if he wouldn't mind magicking a few of the intruders away with his hidden ring of power, but I reckoned I was in enough trouble already. My only comfort was that none of these students, surely, would be able to afford Leith's prices in the canteen and I wouldn't be queueing there.
Right, in that I didn't have to queue. Wrong, in hoping that I would get a seat, because the academic youth of today were draped all over every chair, table, window sill and horizontal surface, giving the whole place the look of an airport in a snowstorm.
I'm obviously in the grip of middle-aged crabbiness, as I have never resented students before. I was used to people in the BL looking like hippies, and the whole thing was a bit of a shock. Perhaps it was just an aversion to crowds, brought on by far too long sitting at a computer keyboard. What is to become of me?
We are about to go and look at the London Marathon, to have a laugh at the expense of a slow lane's worth of eccentric people.
I hope there aren't any crowds.
Just a short note to thank Peter for his generous name check of today.
I am deeply bogged down in some stuff at the moment and can't really write the sort of thing I would like any new visitor to read. It is 3 p.m. and I am still in my dressing gown, flicking through books and dodging all over the on-line Dictionary of National Biography. What larks!
My daughter is in Italy on a classics trip. My son has gone out to play with a friend, my wife has gone to buy something. I am on-line. Lizzie the cat is staring at the step into the bathroom, or as Jake prefers, she is on her Mice Space site.
Tales to tell? Well, yes, in a moment. For now, just hello.