Walking Dead in Blythe Bridge

Such is the fashion among teenagers for zombies and their ilk that this library decided a good way to get them in was by putting up a lurid Walking Dead books display.
It is very different to the displays that were in my library as a child - usually of something like 'women's costume in the seventeenth century' - which seem very dull by comparison...

Incidentally, Blythe Bridge Library is one of those being downgraded in the latest local authority cuts.  Very soon, there will be no librarian or paid staff on-site, though there might be a volunteer or two staffing the desk.

Erotic library

Who'd have thought it???  The library in Leek has this display, on one of its window-sills, of books of erotica for women - under the generic label Shades Of Grey (after the book by EL James, of course).
Actually, I congratulate the curators at the library.  As half the female population (or so it seems) has read EL James, maybe they are just reflecting popular reading habits...

Well!  In my day, the most rousing book one could hope to find in a public library was usually one on anatomy.  We live in changing times.

The library with its own cemetery

Tamworth must be unique surely in having a library which opens out on to an old churchyard.
This photo is of the main entrance, believe it or not, and the graves you see are part of the churchyard of the parish church of St Editha.

What I am still wondering is whether the library (or its 1905 predecessor) was built over the top of some graves...

There must be some great jokes waiting to be told too!


This post was featured on the Cemetery Sunday collection

Shakespeare in Stoke

This lovely mosiac showing William Shakespeare is the highlight of a tour of Stoke town centre. Yet, Stoke has been allowed to run down so much, that it's virtually the only highlight...

It was created as part of the erection of the original library building in Stoke in the 1870s, when Stoke really was an important place.
It is on the exterior wall, so very easy for the passer-by to see.

But look how run-down the old library building is now!
It just looks grubby and uncared for.
It's currently used by Unison, the trades union, and lies opposite the Sainsbury hyper-market.

But having said that about Stoke town, I do have a soft spot for it. It seems lively somehow; it has the definitive Titanic pub, White Star, and a wonderfully chaotic old records shop, Rubber Soul.