Return to the Pork Pie Library

Last May the Leicester Mercury won an award from me for its headline:

Pork pie library may be closing

Now Unmitigated England has visited that library too.

He shares my view that the library - Southfields Library in Leicester -resembles a 1930s London Underground station and gives his memories of working there:

Here I not only rubber-stamped books, but also discovered playwright Joe Orton's old library ticket (with 'default' stamped on it), Len Deighton books and an old man coughing his lungs up in the reading room because he'd been gassed in the First World War. 

I also got to work the wartime siren on the roof for practice alerts (there was a nuclear attack warning device in the cellar), ate a bar of Bournville Chocolate with my morning coffee and read the very first copy of The Sun newspaper. 

All this for £7 a week and the chance to chat up the girl assistants on the evening shift.