Fixing Mrs Philpott by Rachel McAlpine

Author:Rachel McAlpine [McAlpine, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rixon
Published: 2016-12-11T05:00:00+00:00

I am now 84. My name is the classical Katherine, which I have always felt suits me splendidly.

I retired some time ago, but for my entire working life I was a librarian. As the eldest daughter I was fortunate that my parents allowed me to go to university, because my younger sisters were obliged to enter the workforce straight from school. Quite rightly I regarded my education as a privilege. My parents passed on to me a great sense of duty.

With this background, I took my responsibilities seriously. One week after completing my BA I began work as assistant librarian in a small country town. (You’re nodding off? More fool you. There is nobody with a more flamboyant sensual life than a provincial librarian. Our souls are painted on black velvet.)

In this modest role I found much of interest. Within a year I had five academic articles published, and I was then persuaded to write a book about library administration. Appointed to a larger city library, I became very interested in library buildings and eventually wrote a book on that topic too. Along the way I became exasperated with the need to train every new recruit, so I wrote the first national librarians’ manual — but enough. You can see I loved my job and I did rather shine in my own professional sphere.

I dare say you imagine all librarians lead a chintzy, bookish, home-based kind of life. Mine was not so. Modesty prevents me from discussing my secondments to Singapore and Sri Lanka under the Colombo Plan or my more commercial work with TIME Magazine in New York—and anyway, my various international appointments are not relevant. That is, until I went to Nigeria in 1963.

This particular job would test to the limit my interpersonal skills as well as my professional knowledge.

I travelled from New York to Lagos by ocean liner, which gave me a short holiday. That was necessary for me to recuperate from my previous assignment and prepare for the new one. My role was to assist a Nigerian team to establish a national library, no less. As Library Adviser to the Federal Government I would help with planning and eventually select and supervise a team of trained librarians. The new national library would be a repository of knowledge, the concrete intellectual memory of this brand new nation. We envisaged a nationwide network of libraries that would be a major force for literacy. My contract was for three years. It was a momentous project and a proud episode in my career.

Never fear, I’m not about to tell you all the details! Suffice to say the task was extraordinarily demanding, fraught with problems I had never previously encountered or for that matter, even imagined. Not least was a military coup, just before I left the country. And along the way, I fell in love.

I met my destiny that very first day. He was six feet six, as black and shiny as obsidian, and although barely 25 years old, every inch the leader in his scarlet and brown robes.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.