Books, books and more books

We spent a lovely day in West Yorkshire yesterday catching up with family - The Sunshines and The Cahooties - and the Golden Child and her family. We met for lunch at Salts Mill, and to get to the diner you have to go through the bookshop. If you're a books sort of person you know that 'going through the bookshop' is like walking down a giant sweetie counter, only much better. The Salts Mill bookshop is particularly varied and gorgeous.

Salts Mill, by the way, used to be one of the many Yorkshire mills from the days when cotton was king. It was an exemplary mill of its time, with a model village built around it. It's now art galleries, a diner, and shops, including the completely mesmerising one I just told you about. And if there's one thing better than a good bookshop, it's a good library.

When I was a kid the library was a tiny, dark little place hiding among the shops at the end of the street. Children could take out one book at a time. At the age of six I got my first ticket, chose a book, took it home, and read it in minutes. And read it again. And again. And was sick of it, and couldn't get another one, because you couldn't change your book the same day. By the time I was eleven I'd read everything in the junior section and was desperate to get into the adults.

All change. The local library here is a vast space, with tables and chairs and a friendly child sized corner, almost unlimited access to books and a coffee shop and theatre in the same building. There's a children's book group and holiday activities run by the brilliant staff team. These days libraries also have computers. There's always somebody using them for a timed session, with somebody else ready for the next slot. It's not easy to apply for a job these days without a computer and, contrary to what the government seems to think, unemployed people living in poverty don't all have a PC at home. They use the library. The book stock could be bigger, but that's because all public services are being cut these days and libraries are an easy target. Who needs a place where you can browse around, read for pleasure, or even learn stuff, for free? When my kids were small money was tighter than a whalebone corset, but we could always go to the library for nothing, sit around sharing books, and take an armful of them home. We loved those times, those books, those new things learned.

My cousin worked for twenty-five years for a local Schools Library Service, building it up from one woman with a wee van to a flagship service for schools. Then the council needed to economise. Oops, that was that, then.

So I was a bit concerned when another author, Cavan Scott, said that there's a campaign going on to save the library in Hanham, South Gloucestershire, from closure. This matters. Every library under threat matters, because once we lose them, we won't get them back. Cavan is working up all the support he can for this library - look him up on Facebook or Twitter. Where a library is under threat, fight for it. Fight for books, books and more books, and a place to read them.