Just a Song at Twilight

In which The Author meets another 'exotic' young friend

I have a reputation for finding myself in the company of young ladies of distinctly non-European heritage, purely through random acts of kindess. I met Shanara, the Dippy Bint, because she hadn't made a move to get off the train when we arrived at Aberdare one very hot summer evening about twelve years or so ago. I gave her a little nudge to wake her up when I passed her seat, just to save her the panic of realising she was on the way back to Cardiff. She swore she was just checking her eyelids for holes, but I knew better. We started chatting on the way from the station, and we've been friends ever since. She introduced me to Naj and Tas as well, and more than once I've been spotting walking through Aberdare with one or other of the Bangladeshi Weird Sisters.

I met Jamila in similar circumstances, when we were first-year students at Glamorgan. We were in a forensic science practical session, and the tiny Nigerian girl working behind me had no chance of putting her specimens in the wall-mounted fume cupboard. I offered to help her, she thanked me very shyly, and we went back to what we were doing. A couple of days later I spotted her bringing a tray from the cafeteria, looking for somewhere to sit in the very crowded student union. I waved over to her and invited her to share the small table I was sitting at. From then on, we had lunch together whenever we could, we worked on projects together into the evenings, and she once outraged a fair proportion of Aberdare by travelling here by train on a Saturday morning to meet me. Nearly ten years later, we're still in touch via social media.

The latest random act of kindness happened about two months ago, in Aberdare Library. A very pretty young Asian girl had started popping in now and again to (presumably) do some college work. She was casually dressed, with blonde highlights in her hair, and extremely Westernised. We'd said hello once or twice when she was setting up her laptop on the other side of the table, but that was as far as anything had gone.

Anyway, on this particular afternoon I strolled in and found the mysterious girl sitting on the floor with her phone in one hand, typing one-handed on the laptop perched on her lap.

'Are you comfy down there?' I asked.

She laughed and explained that her mobile charger was faulty, so she was forced to hold the damn thing in while she was working. She was expecting an important call about her university course, so she needed to make sure she had enough juice. I asked her what phone it was, and luckily it was a Samsung, like mine. I had a rummage in my laptop case and found a spare charger.

'Try that one,' I suggested, 'and if it works you can come back up.'

Well, it worked, so she returned to the desk and we carried on working. I had a Wilbur Smith proof – which suggests that this part of the story coincides with the unfortunate Hannah episode – and my student companion had a paper on the composition of blood. (I had a sneaky glance at it when I was fetching another book from the stacks.)

That was intriguing. Was she a medical student? It's not your everyday reading material, after all.

Anyway, at the end of the day I started packing up my stuff and she asked me if I wanted the charger back. I told her I had at least another four at home, as well as a second one in my laptop case, so she was welcome to hang on to it.

See: random acts of kindness.

She thanked me, asked me when I'd be calling in next, and said she'd see me next time. Good start.

On her next visit, my new friend and I started chatting in a bit more detail. It turned out that she's from Manchester, and (by a strange coincidence) she's studying forensic science at Liverpool. Hence the blood composition paper. She showed me the project she's been working on, and I think she was quite pleased that I understood some of the basic principles. I did ask her why she'd just suddenly turned up in Aberdare, and teased her that she was a Dexter-style criminal mastermind on the run.

Anyway, I didn't see her for a while after that, because I guessed she had exams. She did call in very briefly about a fortnight ago and we had a brief chat. I didn't have a book to work on that day, so I was working on the plans for this year's sponsored walk in aid of Anthony Nolan. I showed her some of the photos I'd taken around Waterfall Country, outlined the route briefly, and gave her one of the flyers I'd had printed a couple of days earlier.

'We're really desperate for BAME people to sign up for the Tissue Register,' I told her, and she looked puzzled. 'Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic', I added. 'Have you not come across that before?'

Apparently she either hadn't encountered the abbreviation, or I'd pronounced it entirely wrongly.

'I wasn't implying that you're a bit crazy,' I reassured her, and she laughed.

'I am a bit,' she said.

That was the first time we learned each other's names. Hers is Arabic for 'twilight'. But she uses a different name – Karin – online, so I'll use that name here (even though I call her by her real name). I still hadn't solved the mystery of why she was in Aberdare, and I hadn't been able to identify her accent, so she was an International Woman of Mystery.

Anyway, Karin called in on Monday afternoon to check her emails and we started chatting as usual. I was sorting through old photos I've taken in Waterfall Country over the years, trying to find a nice one to make into a picture postcard. Karin asked me again about the sponsored walk, as she loves fresh air and exercise, but she hasn't done much exploring around here. I borrowed the OS maps from the librarian and showed her the proposed route, from Penderyn to Pontneddfechan. When I told her it was about twelve kilometres, she asked me how many miles were in a kilometre. I said she was far too young to know about Imperial measurements, and she told me that they're still in use in Iraq.

Well, that solved the mystery of her nationality, at least. I kicked myself for not recognising her accent, because I worked with an Iraqi guy named Maz when I worked in Blackwells. Then again, I expect there are as many regional accents in that huge country as there are in the whole of the UK.

We sat in the library for a while, chatting and trying to connect to the Wi-Fi, before I suggested getting some fresh air. I suggested a walk around the Dare Valley Country Park and Karin jumped at the chance. So we packed up our stuff and set off to the Gadlys Pit entrance.

It was shady and cool on the path into the Country Park, and it was nice to be away from traffic noise and the usual library hubbub. On the way I showed Karin some of the old industrial remnants, told her how the Country Park came into existence, and chatted about the Cynon Valley in general. In return, more of her life story came to light. She didn't tell me about her early life in Iraq – probably a traumatic time to say the least – and I didn't ask her about it. But her subsequent adventures were quite revealing.

As I'd guessed, she hadn't just come to Aberdare by chance. (Who does?) While she was in Liverpool she'd met a boyfriend whom her parents didn't approve of. (I'd sort-of seen this coming, to be honest. I told her about the number of times Shanara and I had had to take detours through the back streets to avoid being seen by any of her many cousins.) Anyway, Karin had no choice but to disappear. An organisation which helps vulnerable women to relocate found her a place in Aberdare, which is where she's living now. While she likes it here, she hasn't had chance to make many friends yet. She goes to the gym and the library (obviously), but socially she's been feeling a bit isolated. And I could tell that she was pleased to have someone to talk to about these difficult issues.

It doesn't take long to walk to the Cascade. She took a selfie of us with the waterfall in the background before I showed her the bottom lake. Then we cut up through the woods to the top lake for a sit down and a quick drink of water. While we were there my old school friend John came along and I introduced him to Karin. In fairness, John knows me well enough not to bat an eyelid at a Muslim girl thirty years my junior. We continued around the lake, then followed the river Dare back to the road through the country park. Unfortunately we were too late to catch the Visitors' Centre, as I wanted to show Karin the model of the old Cwm Viaduct. But we have pencilled in another visit when she's back after her graduation ceremony.

We walked back along the Dare–Aman line, and when we got to Aberdare I told Karin that she could continue to Aberaman along the same route. So that was what we did. She wanted to drop her shopping off before heading for her yoga class, so I called into the Rock for a quick glass of Coke before meeting her on the corner. We walked along Cardiff Road, and I showed her the short cut to the Ynys from Violet Street. When we got to the entrance of the sports centre, she thanked me for a fun afternoon and gave me a little hug (which she initiated). That rounded the day off perfectly.

I'm not so naive as to think Karin and I will ever get anywhere further than that little hug. She's already estranged from her family because of her boyfriend; it's more important that she concentrates on trying to build bridges with them, than going even further off their radar. She's going to find her graduation day rather empty without her family to support her. And I've had enough Muslim non-girlfriends to know the reality of the situation myself. I suspect that I'm playing safe (again) by meeting a totally unattainable girl, because then there's no pressure on either of us to be anything more than just good friends. But if I can introduce Karin to some good people, show her some interesting aspects of Valleys life, and help her enjoy her time here, that's the biggest act of kindness I can possibly offer her.

Tactical Withdrawal

In which The Author kills off some comedy characters

My Facebook friends already know about the long-running Aberdare-based fly-on-the-wall docucomedy The Library, with its regular cast of characters and voice-over comments from yours truly. I'm sad to announce that after five years of uninterrupted fun, the show is coming to an end. Here's a letter which I'm going to send to the head of Rhondda Cynon Taf CBC Libraries Service as soon as they reopen for business tomorrow morning.

Being of a certain age, I remember when reference libraries were invaluable community resources, as well as being places of pleasant retreat and almost sepulchral tranquillity.

In those halcyon days, the stacks would be crammed full of books on every conceivable subject. Racks of magazines would keep us up to date with the latest developments in our chosen field. Newspapers of all political hues offered their take on home and world events. Comprehensive selections of street maps and guides covering the whole of the UK, and road atlases for this country, Europe and the USA, were available to anyone. Anyone wishing to consult the Dictionary of National Biography or the Encyclopædia Britannica would find every volume on open display.

Experienced and knowledgeable local staff would put the most random queries to bed, often without ever picking up a book. They were libraries in the true sense of the word – repositories of information and scholarship, and facilities for learning. All the while, any sound louder than a fieldmouse breaking wind half a mile away was greeted with a glare of thunderous disapproval from the enquiry desk.

You try telling the young people that, and they won’t believe you.

Over the past ten years, the ‘reference’ section at Aberdare Library has been transformed into a hubbub of conversation and electronic babble. At the same time, its primary role – that of information provider – is being whittled down to a handful of public access computers. These are booked solid most days – although they must on operate a shift system, as we are lucky to see them all working at the same time. The book stock, once the first port of call for anyone working on a school or college project, is thin, outdated, or virtually irrelevant to the needs of modern students.

A few months ago, while copy-editing a novel, I took a number of history books off the shelf. I had failed to find anything on the Crusades or the Hundred Years War in the lending library, so I had to make do with what was on offer upstairs. I suspect, given the excellent condition of some of them, that I was the first person to open them since they arrived some in stock fifty years ago. I recently felt sorry for anyone writing an essay on the EU referendum, who would have learned – from a textbook on the shelves – that there are fifteen member states of the European Community, all of which operate their own national currencies.

Long gone are the DNB and the Britannica, superseded by the all-powerful and flawless (apparently) Wikipedia. I still regret that I missed those books in what I refer to as the Not Closing Down Sale. I would have happily snapped them up at a quid each. (Not a quid per volume, you understand – a quid for the whole book.) The online subscription to the DNB has since been discontinued, naturally.

The space formerly occupied by these multi-volume reference works, and others, was converted into a ‘meeting room’. I dare say this seemed like a good idea at the time. Victoria Hall had closed, and community groups needed a space where they could get together. Where better than the library …?

New reference purchases appear to consist solely of the Stanley Gibbons stamp catalogue, the Sky Sports Football Yearbook, Patrick Moore’s Astronomy Yearbook, the Statesman’s Yearbook, Who’s Who, and Whitaker’s Almanac. I suspect that most of these only slip through because nobody has yet thought to cancel the standing orders. It’s fair to say that I have never consulted the first two, and very rarely look at the third. I do find the last three of occasional use, although having bought outdated editions of each last year, I rarely refer to them on site.

(As an aside: On the most recent occasion when I wanted to look at Whitaker’s Almanac, I had to ask the librarian for it. It is kept behind the counter, along with the very few street maps which are now held in stock. It would have been quicker to jump on a train to Cardiff and buy my own copy than to wait for the librarian to mentally process this simple request.)

The solitary English dictionary published this millennium is on the shelf because, when I upgraded to a later edition a few years ago, I offered it to the library. I needed a reliable up-to-date dictionary on hand when I was working, and it seemed as good a home for it as any. Have we really returned to the 19th century, where libraries were run by charitable bodies and relied on donations from the public? Margaret Thatcher would have been proud of our Victorian values.

Similarly, all magazine purchases have ceased, although it seems that a few subscriptions to obscure left-wing periodicals have yet to expire. However, the online portal which formerly allowed access to academic journals free of charge seems also to have been discontinued.

Those of us wishing to keep up with world events have a vast choice between the Western Mail, the South Wales Echo, and the Daily Express. For my part, I would not touch that poisonous racist rag unless I was wearing full biohazard gear. As for the ‘local’ papers: like many people I know, including one former local newspaper editor, I simply cannot see the point of both titles. When the Echo truly was an evening paper, it might have been worth picking up a copy later in the afternoon. When one can buy both the morning and ‘evening’ papers in Cardiff at 7.30 a.m., and in Aberdare half an hour later, is there any valid reason for stocking both?

My primary grievance, however, is that the fundamental nature of the ‘reference library’ has changed beyond recognition.

Libraries have, of course, always been havens for lonely old men seeking a bit of warmth and comfort – and maybe even a couple of hours’ shut-eye – in the guise of ‘reading the papers’.

However, the daily meetings of Aberdare’s unofficial Debating Society have lately begun to dominate proceedings, to the increasing annoyance of serious students and researchers like myself and others. Our Debating Society is never going to outshine OUDS, though. It’s a loose group of a dozen or so older men who treat the library as a social centre. They used to gather every morning around a table in the magazine section, from where they could pontificate on the Great Matters of the Day in repetitive droning monologues. At first, my regular Facebook updates about Horse Racing Bore, Motorcycle Bore, Robot Man, the Ancient Mariner et al amused my friends and acted as a safety valve. It was only by satirising them that I managed to contain my anger.

But the joke soon wore thin. Once these people realised that they could take an inch – that they would be allowed to chunter on for hours, at full volume, without any member of staff asking them to keep their voices down – they proceeded to take a mile. They staked out their little table every day and bored the rest of us rigid with ill-informed rants about the benefits system, bus timetables, ‘current affairs’, immigration, and all those fascinating topics which are usually the preserve of afternoon drinkers.

Young people saw this as an open invitation to play loud music on the public PCs and use their mobile phones, or else chat loudly about failed relationships, criminal records, drug deals and so forth, using the sort of language which also belongs in the saloon bars.

As an experiment I recently took to bringing headphones to the library. Even with the music on my laptop turned up to levels which would make an audiologist blanch, the background noise still won out.

The library, it seemed, was becoming simply a cheap alternative to the Prince of Wales. The town’s elderly bores could gather every day and loudly put the world to rights without having to stand a round of drinks. At the same time, youngsters used it as a glorified cybercafe, but without having to fork out for coffee every half an hour.

Consequently, those of us who wished to work in (relative) peace retreated into the stacks, away from the daylight and the fresh air, and where there are precious few 240V outlets for laptops.

And then we didn’t even have the stacks to ourselves. Once the new school had opened and the Lower Girls School was sold off, the adult education classes found themselves homeless. Current provision for non-vocational adult education is limited to a couple of language classes, a local history class and a creative writing group. Naturally, the perfect home for these would be the ‘meeting room’ – or so everyone thought.

The problem is that it’s too small for more than about eight people at a time to work comfortably, so they had to invade the stacks instead. There are just two tables: one long table around which a dozen or so people can sit without encroaching on each other’s space; and a smaller table around which three people can work comfortably – maybe four at a squeeze, assuming two of them aren’t using laptops.

It is around this first table that the Spanish, creative writing and local history groups gather for two hours a week apiece. In reality, they start to drift in about half an hour beforehand, to chat about life in the week since they’ve last met. Then they drift away at the end of each session, happily picking up where they left off. This means that for approximately eight hours a week the smaller table is effectively out of commission; there is no way to get any work done when the classes are in full flow.

The final straw was laid last week, when the increasingly misnamed ‘reference’ section was revamped yet again. This was as a direct result of a fall sustained by an elderly gentleman – one of the more pleasant regulars, who fortunately also remembers the reason why libraries were built in the first place. In order to reduce the risk of any future accidents, it was decided that the low partition between the Debating Society’s HQ and the main part of the floor should be removed. It never served any useful purpose anyway, except to house the bound history journals, but it acted as a psychological barrier between them and the rest of us.

(It is to be hoped that some elderly playgoer doesn’t suffer a fall inside the Coliseum one evening. Would RCTCBC employ similar panic measures and rip out a dozen rows of seats? Or would they bite the bullet and close the place entirely?)

Then some bright spark decided to remove the table from the former magazine section.

‘It looks more modern like this,’ I was told when I commented on the change last week.

Yes, it does.

In fact, it now looks like the lounge of a day centre for the elderly – which, I fear, is what the ‘reference’ library is rapidly becoming. At the current rate of change, I half-expect to walk in there after the Whitsun bank holiday and find two dozen pensioners gathered around a widescreen TV with the volume turned up to 11, watching Bargain Hunt and sipping cups of lukewarm tea.

Robbed of a table around which they can gather, the Debating Society have now made their way into the stacks. Here they can spread out their papers and drone on relentlessly about their limited areas of interest, while the few of us attempting to use the library for its intended purpose give up any attempt at study and head for the exits.

On Friday afternoon, in fact, I had to ask two elderly gentlemen if they wouldn’t mind wrapping up. A mature student and I were trying to work at the next table, while they discoursed loud and long about supermarket prices, glasses and rugby teams. After an hour, I decided it was time to intervene. I kept my tone reasonable but firm; anyone would have sworn I’d asked them each to give me one of their kidneys. Next time, I won’t be so polite. I know a fair number of young people, and they’ve taught me a word or two which might come in handy.

I freely admit that I no longer talk in a whisper when I’m in the library. After all, it seems hardly worth trying to conceal a fart in the teeth of a stiff gale. But if one of my friends calls in, we at least have the common courtesy to leave and continue our conversation over a cup of coffee or a pint. I seriously doubt, however, that I shall hitherto be visiting the library as often (at least three days out of five most weeks) following this latest development.

When the magazines dried up, there was a public consultation in which many library users (myself included) took part. There was a more recent public consultation about which daily ‘news’paper should be propped up with public money. I submitted my views to that one as well.

I must have missed the public consultation which asked whether library users would be happy to see the entire first floor turned into an overspill area for St Mair’s Day Centre.

In future I shall probably spend more time at the University of South Wales, where they still remember old-fashioned concepts like Books, Reference Materials and Silent Study Areas.

It is to be hoped that when the new library at Pontypridd opens at least one of these quaint traditions can be revived. Having said that, if trends continue, RCTCBC Libraries will consist of a couple of dozen obsolescent PCs, the complete works of James Patterson, and three corpses sitting around the previous day’s Daily Express while the staff wonder why they’ve gone so quiet.

Faintheart

In which The Author experiences another mere coincidence

The book I'm currently working on is the third instalment in Christian Cameron's 'Age of Chivalry' series, which began with The Ill-Made Knight and continued in The Long Sword. I’d worked with Christian back in the spring, on the latest part of the 'The Long War' saga, so I was quite flattered when Orion approached me and asked me if I'd like to copy-edit his latest novel. (I won't reveal the title here, because I don't know whether it's been officially announced yet.) I'd like to think I did such a good job on The Rage of Ares that Christian himself asked if I was available. I haven't asked him directly, though. I'm not that conceited, after all.

Since I'm familiar with his style, and I'd had such a great time – buried under a mountain of books in Aberdare Library, some of which had probably been untouched since they arrived on the shelves – I jumped at the chance.

Well, I have to say that it’s been a bit like battling the Hydra. You put one query to bed, only for another two to spring up. I haven’t attempted to draw up a query sheet this time. Instead, I’ve been using the ‘Comment’ feature in LibreOffice Writer (the cheapskate’s Open Source equivalent of MS Word) to insert my Notes and Queries directly into the margin of the document.

Most of them are pretty short – 'Please see my Names Checklist', that sort of thing. A few point out homophones which have crept into the text. It happens to everyone, after all (see The Death of Rhydwen Williams in my other blog). A few of them – concerning points of historical accuracy or linguistic variations – are almost as long as the page they're pinned to.

Needless to say, I've been taking advantage of Aberdare Library's half-decent Reference section to deal with most of the obstacles I've come up against. On Thursday afternoon I took a photo of the collection of books I'd accumulated through the day, and sent it to Christian on Twitter.

(Incidentally, The Chambers Dictionary is the one I donated myself, as I told you in The Gift of Words. The Oxford Spelling Dictionary was also from my own personal stash, but when I upgraded to the latest edition I didn't need them both at home. I figured that Aberdare Library might take it off my hands, simply so they could say they had two dictionaries published after 1992.)

Anyway, I stayed there until closing time on Thursday, and didn’t bother reshelving them. Instead, I left a note on top of the pile, saying I’d be back in the morning, so they might as well stay there overnight. And on Friday morning I returned, along with five books from my own collection. I had the three Oxford University Press ‘Black Books’ -- essential parts of every proofreader’s and copy-editor’s toolkit. I also had John Julius Norwich’s book on the Popes, and a book on the Knights Templar, both of which I’d picked up in The Works in recent weeks.

I checked my emails and Christian had replied to my Tweet. Since he lives in Toronto, it came in overnight: Are all those for TGC? I replied, They're just the ones I was using yesterday. In the afternoon, I took another photo and Tweeted it to Christian, with the caption We're gonna need a bigger table.

As a matter of fact, we're gonna need a bigger library.

I had a quick look in the history section of the Lending department on Thursday afternoon. This might sound shocking, but as far as the reading public of Aberdare are aware, absolutely nothing happened in the world between the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of Napoleon. That extends the so-called 'Dark Ages' to nearly fourteen centuries: there's nothing on the Carolingian Renaissance, the Norman Conquest, the Crusades, the Hundred Years War, the Renaissance, the Wars of the Roses, the Age of Exploration, the Reformation, the Counter-Reformation, the English Civil War, the Restoration, the American War of Independence, the Industrial Revolution, the French Revolution …

Even the one book which Rhondda Cynon Taf CBC Libraries do have in stock – a historical account by Judith Barker – covers the second half of the Hundred Years War. I only found that out after I'd requested a transfer. Christian's book is set during the first half. Go figure …

Anyway, the coincidence came about last night, in the Prince of Wales, of all places. Karen and I were chatting about our latest romantic disappointments: mine with Clare; hers with a chap she's keen on, but who – yeah, you've got it in one – 'just likes her as a friend'.

Karen said, 'Your trouble is that you're too much of a gentleman. Girls take advantage of you, because you're kind and good. You've got …' She hesitated for a few moments, searching for the right word. '… chivalry.'

Well, what do you make of that? Karen knew I was working on a book, but she had no idea of the content, or even the historical setting. Why on earth would she have chosen that particular word at this point in my life?

But I thought about it afterwards. As I said in The Return of the King?, I've always been a fan of King Arthur, going back to when I first encountered some of the stories in junior school. In particular, the Grail cycle is a long-standing fascination of mine. And I'm sure everybody knows the bare bones of the Grail myth, even if they haven't read the stories in much detail.

We all know that Lancelot let the side down because he couldn't keep it in his britches. Gawain was a worthy knight and a brave soul, but he failed to find the Grail. Only Galahad – pure of heart and mind and body – was vouchsafed the sight of the Grail, but even he was defeated by his own self-doubt, and the vision faded.

It's still an odd thing for Karen to say, isn't it? I certainly don't fit the description of 'chivalrous' as lived by Sir William Gold in Christian's novels, or as defined by Ramón Llull, who literally wrote the book on the subject. For one thing, with my back and shoulders, I'd be absolutely no bloody use in a fight. I'm hardly a staunch servant of our lord Jesus Christ, either. (We never did heal the schism between the early Church and the Discordian Heresy, after all.) Roistering and wenching aren't really my thing – chance would be a fine thing, as I found out last week.

But, like Sir William, I do like to meet people from different places and cultures, who've had different experiences and hold differing beliefs. My life is certainly richer as a result. In fact, just this morning I was chatting to Jamila on Facebook. I wanted to pick her brains about an aspect of Islam which crops up in the book, and which I wanted to double-check before I finalise the edit. I teased her that, throughout all her time studying Forensic Science, she probably never expected she'd be asked to act as an expert witness in a historical novel.

Anyway, that's this week's mere coincidence. Just thought you'd like to know.