Repressed Librarians

When I* came over for dinner prior to the gay amateur strip night (which I was, of course, gravely sorry to miss and which, as it transpired, I wouldn’t have been allowed to attend anyway, as women were denied entry) he told me about a blog by a repressed New Zealand librarian, the writer of which was actually a man. Naturally I found this very interesting, but I haven’t been able to locate it yet. I found repressedlibrarian.com but it didn’t really light my fire.

Instead I found a very entertaining website titled Spectacles: How Pop Culture Views Librarians, which has a You Tube link to a song called ‘Librarian’ by the NZ band Haunted Love.

Here are the lyrics:

I want to be a librarian
I want to check out your books
Please give them to me
With the bar code facing up
Please don't bring them back too late
or I'll have to charge you fifty cents a day
(and you won't like that)

I want to be a librarian
Wearing glasses every single day
Don't you find me appealing
in a nerdy sort of way?
Please don't talk so loudly
Please
Please
Sshhhhhhhhhhhhh......

Meet me in the closed reserve
I'll let you read all the new magazines
I'll let you touch the first editions
If you promise me
If you promise me
If you promise me your hands are clean

I’m pretty sure I could do a better poem than that, and H may even be inclined to write some music to go with it. So watch this space.

I then mentioned (to the pre-stripclub gathering) that I was quite taken with the idea of stepping up very tall ladders in very short skirts and stilettos but there was never anyone in the library who I’d want to be beneath the ladder. P. offered to step in, but admitted that he wouldn’t be much use as my predilections tend not to lie in the direction of men who are fond of other men. And for the life of me, I can’t think where the eroticism of librarians comes from (aside from the obvious dominatrix thing). I wish it were erotic to work in a library; my day would be so much more exciting. Instead it’s a case of being pleasant and helpful, of stamping things, mending broken books and wasting far too much time on the internet.

Also in the course of my bibliophilic cyberspatial peregrinations, I came across the blog of an Australian girl who was in England on exchange, and who had a theory that the reason why the English conquered the world was because of their terrible germs. She had been incredibly sick with a flu, twice in quick succession, and this is what happened to me soon after I arrived, and to A- as well. A-‘s theory is that in Australia, there are less travellers and so less chances of nasty bugs, but an English colleague thought it was more a case of one’s immune system not having encountered those bugs before.

I also found (but not while looking for repressed librarians) the blog of a fellow disgruntled Londoner, who utterly won my heart with his phrase ‘The over-indulged Tom … [had] the sneer of a fox caught doing a shit on your rockery.’ You may read his blog here if, like me, you have too much time to waste and not enough students to stir by stepping neatly up ladders.