Memories: My first job

I left the Queen Elizabeth grammar school in Penrith, Cumberland, in December 1964, having been offered a place at Queens' college Cambridge for the following September; and for the next six months I worked at the Cumberland county library in Carlisle. I served customers and also went on tours around the villages with the library van, and experience that I have desscribed in an earlier blog entry: 

https://petergshilstonsblog.blogspot.com/search/label/Memories%3A%20Library%20Van

The pay was about ten pounds a week, which sounds impossibly low nowdays, but a set lunch at the local Chinese restaurant cost only three shillings and sixpence (about 17 p.) and I was able to save money.

 I came across some odd people. There was a woman who had used a fish's backbone as a bookmark, and another who had had a book on architecture out for months, which she kept renewing. It transpired that this was because she had a table with a short leg, and the book was exactly thick enough to keep it level when placed underneath. The county librarian ordered her to return it. On the other hand, I could not but envy the son of the Earl of Carlisle who, filling in a membership form, crossed out all the boxes labelled surname, christian name and so forth, and instead wrote "Viscount Morpeth" with a flourish.

Old, unread and battered books were discarded from time to time, but in those days the library was not allowed to sell them, but had to send them for incineration. I thought this was a great shame, and asked if I might keep one or two. My collection soon grew to fill a cardboard box, and became the foundation of my own library.  

When I left, in the summer of 1965, the library staff presented me with a book token, which I used to buy a book about the works of James Gillray, the 18th century political cartoonist. It remains one of my favourite books. By this time, I had saved enough money buy myself a little Raleigh moped, and spent oart of the summer hitch-hiking round northern France witha schoolfriend before departing for Cambridge in September. 

I'm sure that today's students have far more adventurous gap years, but I thoroughly enjoyed my time at the county library.