Odd objects found at Glasgow Women’s Library during the final days of packing:
A large, yellow unused inflatable chair
Fourteen pairs of unused brown shoelaces
A fourpack of decorative toothpicks
Six bottles of Lambrini
A keyring with the slogan ‘Israel, home of the felafel’
5 huge Legal and General umbrellas
Four pairs of jeans and a leatherette jacket
A garden gnome
70 terrazzo tiles and a large slab of marble
Final day musings.
The photocopy, printer and computer snarl-ups today feel like the last sulky responses of a building that resents our moving on.
Brian offered me his Tuscan bean soup recipe (he has been delivering bowlfuls to the staff these past few days) before taking Sue and I round some sad old empty spaces in his empire of Trongate. We were on the lookout for a large meeting table for Parnie Street but this was a really a melancholy journey of reverie of past haunts with the King of Tontine Lane.
Laine, our lovely volunteer is sitting bubblewrapping knick-knacks from the Tardis that is the cupboard under the sink. This week’s story from the Land of Laine? Laine had met someone who knows me, a lecturer from Caledonian University she bumps into now and then in M and S. This person mentioned she worked with me at the Library and Laine said, ‘I’ve got Adele Patrick’s shoes on’ The back story? Laine’s deck shoes were soaked in last week’s deluge. Although my scruffy old work traniers were two sizes too big, Laine had borrowed them to avoid going home with cold wet shoes. Deadpan, she, a well groomed mature person gave no reason to our mutual friend of why she might be in my trainers. A story that will no doubt come back to haunt me.
I have been interrupted by Laine:
‘Shall I parcel up your big mug?
Unbidden, several women have, out of the blue called the Library to ask if we need volunteers and although contacting a Women’s Library are amazingly up for painting and decorating. Thanks to all those miraculously on our frequency.
The Pilton young women will screen their movies dealing with feminism tomorrow, their ideas were nurtured during the early weeks, at the Library. I will miss their big day because of painting and deliveries but my heart goes out to them.
Laine has interrupted me:
‘What is it? Plog?, Bog?, Plod? [Mugging it now] What is the right? Gen told me, but what is it?’
‘Blog Laine’
The computer glitches are clearly now the day’s theme casting Alison out as far as Gallery of Modern Art to try and simply print out the report. Neighbours the Glasgow Print Studio come to the rescue but we self-medicate on bakewells in the meantime.
The two hundred or so badges are boxed up leaving two hundred curls of sellotape on the firedoor, the postcards are gone from the bathroom leaving three hundred blobs (blogs?) of blutack. The odd objects being left for hopefully the philosophers and poets who will gut this building?
Three crates of smashed crockery (an abandoned mosaic project).
Several plant markers with the words ‘lezzie’, ‘fag’, ‘batty boy’ and ‘puff’ on (the remains of a art installation by an artist using pansies, long dead, as a metaphor to address homophobia.)
Twelve dead computers with a mountain of peripherals illustrating the development of IT. (Ransacked today by Alison in her effort to trouble-shoot the Computer Snarl Up).
Bin bags of ash
A large, woodwormed log
A 5ft woman made out of wickerwork
A la recherche du temps perdu, indeed.
Bye for now, next installment, Parnie Street.
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