psmv5: Another library

Following the partially successful visit to the SOAS library noticed at reference 2, I finally got around to the British Library towards the end of last month.

A bright, cool start to the day and out of the house before 09:00, which is early for me these days. Low flying sun, but no trolleys to be seen.

Having misunderstood the timetable, I was lucky to catch the 09:18 to Waterloo, otherwise it would have been the long walk under Victoria Station.

Some play with flashing lights on closed eyes, giving me patterns on this occasion which seemed to be radially organised.

I sometimes complain about the ramp at the side of the shopping centre, visible from trains heading to Waterloo. But on this occasion, against the bright but pale morning sky, it looked OK. Maybe it was just the light that the architect - assuming that there was one - had in mind.

On the train, various young people going to an ExCel gathering. What could that be so early in the morning? My bet is on Fame*Factory, to be found and bought at reference 4. It does not look like my sort of thing at all - maybe an age problem - but it would be interesting to hear from someone who has gone, what it is all about.

Then on the tube, we had a young man with a pretty, grey dog with what seemed to me like extraordinarily slender limbs. Very good at engaging with the ladies. We were told that he was an Italian greyhound and despite his apparent fragility was bred to hunt rabbits, not much smaller than he was. For more, see reference 5.

We also had a very flashily dressed young female in a wheelchair. Dressed up as if for some sort of costume event, possibly involving ghosts and such. Again, it seemed a bit early in the morning.

Euston Square - that is to say the space in front of the station - bright and busy when I got there. Not like it was when I was young at all. The snap at the top of the post.

I had got off at Euston by mistake, but it did not matter, with the library being between the two stations which are no distance apart. And it provided an opportunity to inspect the house which used to be called the Rising Sun, in the late sixties a quiet and dingy sort of place, where we played darts and bar billiards. At the time, I didn't I paid much attention to the grand looking building towering over the back, which leads me to wonder now what the place was built as. A hotel serving the stations? A place better suited to the average punter than the grand hotel outside St. Pancras?

Google's AI assistant knows all about it. Sadly, the interesting story at reference 6 is about the wrong rising sun.

So I still do not know what the upstairs was used for. Function and meeting rooms on the first floor; living accommodation above?

The British Library looked very impressive, even if the outdoor art was tiresome.

I vaguely remembered going to a consciousness conference in some facility at the front, a memory which is confirmed at reference 7, from just about ten years ago. Consciousness - which had then only recently become a respectable subject of study - continues to fascinate me - but it has been a little pushed aside by other matters which have caught my attention.

But continuing which was in evidence just yesterday (Tuesday) in my taking some time on one of my circuits to think about the business of lucid dreams, to which I was introduced by a book by Allan Hobson. A lucid dream being a dream in which you have some control of the action, control which you remember on waking; a sort of sleep state which has an important feature of the awake state. A feature which eats away at any binary divide between the two states.

He writes of this being a gift that some people have, which can be developed and which is apt to fade with increasing age. A gift that I don't have and have never had. While nearly all my dreams involve other people, they rarely involve overt physical action on my part and I am never aware on waking, at least as far as I can recollect, of having made choices.

As I do recollect, some of Hobson's lucid dreams involved flying about, I imagine rather in the way of Superman. This included the ability to fly through walls, but with a strong preference for doing this feet first, rather than head first. From where I associate to the everyday experience of getting into bed, entering the tunnel feet first.

Must look up what Hobson had to say about all this.

Back with the Library, it was very impressive inside too.

Hadn't spared the higher grade carpentry deeper inside either.

And the shop was showcasing something very like the typewriter that I once used to own. Although apart from the fact of once having owned it, I can remember more or less nothing: when I owned it, who paid for it or what I used it for. But I did learn some typing skills which probably helped me later when I moved onto computers, maybe as much as ten years later, even if the action on a manual keyboard is rather different from that on an electric keyboard.

And they offer the use of the very seat which I have at home and did not think to bring on this particular occasion. The seat from Stockholm, which I had to buy from Germany since I only wanted one. Finding which is left as an exercise for the reader. Would Google Images know what it was?

Another view of the atrium, this time from above.

Mission accomplished. I had got myself a reader's ticket, I had found a reading room and I had reserved two items for the Friday following. Staff had all been very helpful.

Sadly, in the event, my two reservations fell apart because of a clerical error on my part and I called off my second visit to the Library, struck down by strike action on the chosen day. I have yet to make the reservations again, in part because what seemed to work on the spot does not seem to work remotely, from Epsom. But I dare say it can be done and I will get there.

All in all a very impressive facility, even if on the day custom mainly appeared to be young people taking advantage of the comfort and the free wifi to do their homework; their private study, not making much use of the many books offered.

I pondered on the role of such a library as a sort of national status symbol. A bit of conspicuous consumption on which you spend a lot of money and do not expect to make a monetary return in the way of an ordinary business, let alone the private equity operations whose only concern appears to be tomorrow's bottom line. Never mind what gets trashed along the way. I associate to the central African chiefs of old who bought status, as it were, by conspicuously chucking torn-up wealth, in the form of the paper money we had introduced them to, into Lake Victoria.

It occurred to me that all those Conservatives who bang on about making Britain great and about cutting government waste - stuff like food regulations and fussing about the ecology of our farms - do not make the connection between the two. One part of being great is being able to chuck money down the drain, as it were.

Having found my minder, we were a little early for the Gymnasium and decided that a visit to the Rising Sun, as was, was in order, taking in this fine display of pot plants on the way.

The Rising Sun was somewhat changed from what I remembered, even though there was still a lot of brown wood and cut glass, as is proper in the public house which is also a listed building. A lot more chairs and tables, including a lot of the high chairs and high tables which are all the thing but which I do not much care for, and a lot more people - this despite the absence of same from the snaps. A lot of them from up north somewhere and down for the football. Including one cheerful lady who was dressed very high for the time of day.

We managed to procure two low chairs and, in the course of taking down our drinks, were very pleased to find that we could work the contraption which happened to be next to us to recharge one of our mobile phones. We flashed the plastic and managed to work out how to drive the thing. Not bad, considering that both of us were well past retirement age.

I think my entirely satisfactory bitter came from a proper beer pump, but I was impressed by the fakery of the taps for fizzy. I did not think to tap one of them with a coin or a key to see if they really were the iron pipe work that they appeared to be. Were they actually just injection moulded plastic? In which case, it would have been proper to score them as fakes, in the way, for example, of reference 8.

And so back past the library to the Gymnasium, flanked by the huge Google building, where they do not have appeared to let all the retail space down below - if that is what the developers have in mind.

Initially, contrary to my rule that one got a decent table if one booked, we were shown a rather small and uncomfortable table, but the staff soon worked out that my minder was not going to stand for that and gave us a much better table, not far, as it happened, from the one which BH and I had been given when we first visited the place.

The same wine as last time, which did very well. They presumably sold a lot of the stuff as the glass fronted wine store had a lot of it. Assuming, of course, that the bottles we could see in the wine store actually contained wine. I believe that often they are empties with a bit of paint inside to make them look full. Decorative collateral supplied by the wholesalers.

A hearty and filling soup to start. Pretty good for a restaurant soup.

Followed by a couple of sausages; also good. I didn't touch the little pot of yellow sauce, but the dainty supply of vegetables on the side, visible behind, went down fast enough.

I wondered how regular a customer one would have to be before one could pull off the stunt of bringing in one's own cabbage and asking them to cook it? A stunt I once pulled off, very successfully, at the Beachcroft Hotel which, as the name suggests, is right on the beach at Bognor Regis. Maybe I will check up on this later.

In the meantime, we went as far as to take strudel with my Calvados.

There were some rather steep stairs up to the mezzanine level, stairs which our waitress told us that some of her colleagues had to get up and down with various oddments which the dumb waiters did not deal with. Not her, however.

I associated to a large Beefeater on the northern edge of Plymouth which had similar stairs to keep the young waiters busy and exercised.

The Gymnasium was a good place this Saturday lunchtime. Busy and cheerful, plenty of helpful staff. And some heritage ironwork, snapped above.

At which point, my minder retired to Kings Cross and I headed back down Euston Road,admiring this heritage brickwork on the way. Including, I think, at least one indigent. Or perhaps just evidence of one having been there overnight. Including the heritage drinking fountain left, not restored to operation.

One of the many women's hospitals which used to be dotted about central London, some of them still operational in the 1960s. With this one being named for Elizabeth Garrett Anderson of reference 9.

And so to visit the impressive church of St. Pancras, already noticed at reference 10. Statues of Greek ladies outside, right and left, which a helpful young lady in attendance told me were in much better condition than the originals from which they had been moulded.

Another 19th century church on which a lot of money had been spent - both then and now.

They also do lunchtime concerts, usually on Tuesdays or Thursdays, which I may get to one day, despite the church being a little off-piste for me these days. Plus, I prefer to know what I am going to. See reference 11.

One half of the ladies outside.

From where I hopped on a No.68 bus to take me back to Waterloo, where I was handily in time for a train to Epsom. With time to snap the roughly contemporary church there: not as ornamental inside, as I recall. A while since we were inside the place.

From which train I was able to admire the gas holders at Motspur Park, gas holders which I now know marked the site of what was once the local town gas works.

PS: a little later.

For lucid dreams see, for example, page 40 of reference 12.

Google Images was a bit off-colour this morning about folding chairs. But he got the idea when I told him that the one snapped was from inside the British Library (and, by implication, nowhere near any bicycles that there might have been outside), even if he did not completely abandon the bicycle idea.

The Bognor cabbage is to be found at reference 13.

References

Reference 1: https://www.bl.uk/.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/09/another-library.html.

Reference 3: https://germangymnasium.com/.

Reference 4: https://fame-factory.com/?mode=presale-signup.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Greyhound.

Reference 6: https://www.patrickcomerford.com/2025/06/the-rising-suns-stucco-gothic-work-in.html?m=0.

Reference 7: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2015/09/new-scientist.html.

Reference 8: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/03/fake-175.html.

Reference 9: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Garrett_Anderson.

Reference 10: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/10/piano-111.html.