Browsing the Bookshelves

A few days ago I posted a list of what we're currently reading. With the rains coming down in London at the end of week, the lure of the garden subsidied so more time for books! I finished Mitch Albom's The Five People You Meet in Heaven while waiting to have x-rays done in Lewisham Hospital.  The wonderful nurses and doctors their run such an efficient operation that I was in and out within 30 minutes. I have to confess to some disappointment: I was prepared to wait, equipped with a proof copy of Helen Dunmore's Ingo stuffed in my bag and I was hoping to be able to make a start but no sooner had I read the first sentence that I was called to have my mug shots!

I'm not questioning the benefits of greater efficiency in the NHS, but for the avid reader there is a downside. It's not often that one has the opportunity to read in the afternoon without feeling guilty about not doing something else.  Hospitals, doctor's and dentists surgeries, train stations and bus stops  can be golden opportunties to escape for a few minutes and indulge in you passion if you have to wait.  All this efficiency may mean one gets home earlier but it also means that the small lagoon of stillness that used to exist has disappeared.

I was struck by how few others in the waiting area were reading books. Several were reading but were content to flick through the aged and tatty magazines available or browse one of the leaflets on offer.   One lady was studying a bus timetable intently. Books, though, were apparently a rare thing.  Their was a young girl gobbling up Adele Park's latest offering with gusto and an older gentleman with a small volume which I couldn't identify. We three were the only readers in the room.  Most just sat, for the most part staring at their feet, perhaps lost in their own thoughts.