Last night I returned a book to the ANU library.
I have had the book since 1983, when I somehow managed to take it out of the library without properly borrowing it. I was a borrower in good standing and had no need to pinch it, so I’m reasonably sure that was an accident.
Early in 1984, I moved from Canberra to Sydney. This is surely when I should have returned the book, but somehow I didn’t. From time to time after that I would spot the book on my shelves and think: “I must read that book and then return it.”
With the recent crisis, I finally read it. I checked the ANU library online catalogue. The book wasn’t listed, even as a missing item. I guess they wrote it off as a loss years ago.
I had driven down from Sydney and it was raining and dark by the time I reached Canberra.
The ANU internal road system set me on a circuitous route past massive new residential halls (Bruce and Wright) before I parked somewhere near my target and headed cross country with my phone and google maps as my guide.
The concession area (shops/bars etc) has been massively redeveloped. I could not reconcile it with my memories of the campus at all. Everything is so flash and commercial looking.
Pretty clearly, a lot of this is the outcome of the university’s reinvention of itself as an export earner. Just now that is looking like a tricky proposition.
Students were entering and leaving the library (open 24 hours as a study venue) using their swipe cards. That’s another thing that’s changed.
I found the after-hours return chute. Two books were sitting in the bottom of it which had somehow failed to fall through beyond reach. It was comforting to see their titles on the cloth spines: van Gogh and Plato. Some things have not changed.
I jiggled the chute and sent them through. Then I put my own return in.
I closed the chute. Then I reopened it. The book was still there. At the end of the weekend I guess the waiting trolley on the other side was loaded too high for the books to fall through.
How terrible it would be if someone else purloined the book before it made it home!
I shut the chute again more emphatically and then opened it. The book was gone.
I felt a twinge of sadness and loss. After all these years it seemed so final.
Then I cheered up. Sometimes you have to let go.
Stumbling on melons 