Crossword Help Forum
Forum Rules

An opening paragraph by one of my favorite British writers:

Two spirits lived in the door, both invisible. One was friendly, leading you, soon after sunrise, into the brightness of street, water, sky. The other was gloomy, shutting the house when Apollo reddened the sea and light collapsed.

Peter Vansittart, A Choice of Murder

That certainly sys something about the book, aristo. I'm going to the library (under threat as much else) this afternoon.

Hi rosalind
We already have had library closures and a couple of them are now run by volunteers,the one I volunteer at has lost most of its professional staff and we no longer run mobile libraries .Having been a librarian all my working life it is very sad to see banks of computers and fewer books

Hi Doglet
I agree. The trouble is, knowledge stored electronically can so easily be lost - I have photos on those small "floppies" we used to have which I can't access.
Local libraries do so much more than lend books (I'm thinking socially here), but that's their core function. I don't want a kindle and, although I buy a lot of books I want to be able to visit my local library. Am planning to volunteer, taking books to the housebound if nothing else. My fingers hurt too much to do shelving, which is all the current volunteers seem to do.
I bet universities are still churning out graduate librarians. Hope they can find jobs.
I belong to several family history societies and some are making noises about electronic publication of their journals. That's me out.

hi rosalind
I enjoy my volunteering I run the Just Write group and we have always had a room for free now we have to pay for it even though the room we used is empty,we also run groups for the partially sighted and the hard of hearing,we are starting a group for victims of strokes in the new year.Our library is now a "Discovery Centre" which means we have a cafe,you can use your mobile phone, and there are40 toddlers reorganising the chairs.My childhood library was a Carnegie one and no one made a noise and the Librarian was a tyrant,happy days

Ignore this post. Just testing for admin.(it may be deleted later)

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

test successful
Back to where you were .......

Hi everyone,


Anybody there today ?

Just had a look at La Vuelta and saw that C. Froome had to retire of the race because a fracture to his foot - apparently after a crash at start of race yesterday.

I know there are always crashes in cycling, but I must say that there are rather a lot in this race !

hi pigale
Perhaps the riders are tired after the tour and that is why there are more accidents.Really Autumn weather today so I decided that Saturday will be getting warmer clothing out of storage,and trying to put some of them in the charity bag

Hi, Doglet and Pigale!
I've just this minute come on the forum ! - I've been out all day!
Haven't had a chance to catch up with anything yet.
I don't know about putting your winter clothing in the charity bag, Doglet - I'd be wearing it!! It's decidedly chilly here - especially early mornings! ( and darkish!)
Pigale, what happened to the rider who was in the induced coma? is he recovering?