Our next door neighbours at 109 have been Klass Leather shop and Mitchells Amusement Arcade. Mitchells are located on the ground floor of the magnificent, crumbling, neoclassical Panopticon Theatre. Stan Laurel debuted here as did Cary Grant but of late its greatest claim to fame was to appear on Scottish TV as a venue for the Psychic Detectives (one of whom was our postman of the time Innes.. but that’s another story).
During our time here we make daily visits to Mitchells (to negotiate the complex choreography of parking and access to our lane by us and all of our car-using neighbours) and to the old stage door that leads to Brain, our caretaker’s bothy where we pick up our mail and occasionally go to be counselled or address thorny questions like ‘Where can we dispose of a 25ft iron pole?’.
I wanted to note before times change how amazing Brian is. Beleaguered by the lack of imagination of his Council bosses (his is a story of criminal underinvestment in potential and latent talents) known by and indispensible to all in the neighbourhood he has been a central character in our life here – one of the band of rare men who have visited regularly, never questioned ‘Why a women’s library?’ or sneered at mail labelled Lesbian Archive, and supplied with weird and wonderful treats and a stream of bad jokes. Recently, for reasons I won’t expand on here, Brian has taken to bhaji making.
A couple of times a week, when strangely enough it has been the one thing we have really needed, Brian has popped up with a bag of home-made bhajis and yogurt raitas.
Monitoring the delivery of the last batch of boxes in the cavernous 81 Parnie Street space recently, Wendy and I had nothing but our clipboards and the ubiquitous video camera to ease the anxiety and occupy us as the delivery men were trapped yet again in the lift, until Brian arrived with a stash of bhajis and we could gratefully but guiltily comfort -eat our way through the process. The delivery boys, releashed and ravenous and now toiling under the weight of a ton and a half of duplicate Spare Ribs managed to signal, ‘So this is the method that women’s librarians have developed to torture the male species.’
Anyway, thanks Brian, for the bhajis, the reproduction postcard of Tom Thumb appearing at the Panopticon in 1890, the clock fashioned like an anchor, for sourcing the 300 feet of dexion shelving with 24 hours notice, offering us the first call on the encyclopaedic Elvis and Roy Orbison collections, the Doris Stokes’ autobiography and the wooden mannequins, for buns, furniture, neighbourhood liaison and working tirelessly and beyond the call of duty on lane hygiene…
