Clapham Library's cafe remains closed – pity they didn't take some tips from Southwark

It's odd but true that two neighbouring south London boroughs, Lambeth and Southwark, have such different approaches to public libraries, despite having so much else in common.

These and several other thoughts emerged as I sat hunched on the terrible little narrow bench that passes for seating in the public library in Clapham High Street.

Clapham Library, half five on a Friday, the café is shut, and no-one can
use the seating. 

Thought one was: I should sue Lambeth council for doing my back in, as sitting on this bench for 20 minutes trying to find some info had revived long-buried lower back pain.

The bench was one of the only vacant seats in the library late on a Friday afternoon.

There were lots of empty chairs and tables in the café. But the café is closed. It seems no-one can enter what used to be the biggest seating area at ground level in this strange building, and it also seems that this café - which opened less than a year ago - has already shut down, at least temporarily.

No-one could explain why it was closed again last Saturday morning - surely a potential peak time. Have the operators decided to cut their losses? All the equipment is still there.  And why on earth can't we use the seats, whether or not it's selling its pricey hot drinks and snacks?

Absurd or what?

Given that most library users are schoolkids, students, OAPs, or young parents with toddlers attending storytime groups etc, it would seem that the cafe was aiming at the wrong market. The 30-something folk who love to spend their high earnings on small cups of coffee with silly names would not really need to come here - this area is full of twee little coffee shops, not to mention the obligatory Starbucks etc.

If the cafe had sold cheap and cheerful coffees, teas, and some simple grub, it might have worked. No item more than £1.

Mind you the café was well used, particularly in the exam season when there was really nowhere else to sit and study - but probably most of those customers bought one drink and then stayed the whole morning, revising or whatever.

You couldn't really blame the cafe operators - they probably thought Clapham, that's a wealthy area, let's go for the yuppie market. But the yups ain't there, they're all over the road at Cafe Nero. It was surely the fault of the council for agreeing to let this bit of public space for a private business.

They even threw in the toilet as part of the deal - outrageous or what?

Well, I'll check out this café again later in the week. Maybe if they have gone the council will be seeking another taker for this space...who knows. Maybe they should offer it to a food bank?

But then, this new library building was always a bit compromised. We only got it because they let the developers build that clunky edifice of expensive flats above and around it.

This library is rightly popular for its wide range of events and classes, especially for very young kids. The staff are great and someone clearly goes to a lot of trouble to try to maintain an interesting stock of books.

But from the start, it's been clear it's not really a very good space for what should be a core library activity - reading!

Yes there are some "teen" study areas, and a very cramped little general reading area up the top, plus a few small PC rooms. These are nearly always fully occupied. Right at the bottom there are cell-like meeting rooms, which are hidden away; you feel you are not really supposed to be there. The large floor area at the very bottom of the building has several tables and chairs for studying and a couple of sofas - but this is generally considered to be the children's area, and again you feel like you're breaking rules if you go down there to read.

In fact as I sat on my tortuous bench, two women with young kids came down the ramp, one saying in a very loud voice, "Oh I do hate it when grown-ups sit in the kid's area, it's creepy..."

Well I wasn't in the kid's area but halfway down the ramp. Every so often very young children zoom down the ramp on their scooters. Any moment you expected to hear a thump followed by much wailing. Luckily, no such disaster today.

All this made me think again what a wasted opportunity this library was, especially when you compare it with some of the much older libraries Lambeth has been closing or compromising under its heavily criticised scheme.

Lambeth only has to look east towards its much more competent neighbouring borough, Southwark, to see how to run libraries.

I've been working in Borough High Street for a couple of days a week, and have got to know the Harvard Library, close to St Georges Church and the tube station.

Despite its historic origins, explained on a blue plaque, this famously-named library also now occupies a fairly modern building, quite a bland one compared to the over-designed Clapham project.

There's nothing very pretty or exciting about it - it is simply a good, sensible building, which could just as well be offices or shops. But it provides plenty of space for all the activities a modern library has to offer.

So, there are lots of computer workstations for schoolkids and students as well as local workers seeking somewhere to wile away their lunch-breaks when it's cold and wet outdoors.

There's a kids' area of course. And yes, there is a café. It's right at the front of the library, but unlike the Clapham one it does not usurp any reading space. Anyone can sit in that large area, where they have sensibly located the magazine and newspaper racks. Anyone can stay there all day reading and not buy a single coffee.

But every time I've been in there, the café has been busy. It's a lunch destination for local workers, an after work place to relax for a while before meeting up with friends. And a wonderful sanctuary for all the drifters, the lonely, the homeless, the old, freezing construction workers, the young, tired tourists, whoever happens to pass.

That's what a public library should be! And by the way, they had two different complete translations of Proust on the shelves,  and their CD loan collections were amazing - 40p for a week's loan.

Talk about grass being greener over the administrative boundary fence.

The day Brixton came to Clapham (and Clapham tried not to notice)

It was undeniably a moment to relish - the sight of a crowd of chanting people, placards and banners waving, approaching Clapham Common. A big demo, marching on Clapham? When did that last happen?

Well, it happpened for a few hours on Saturday afternoon,when   #standuptolambeth's "Pink Protest" took a whole bundle of Lambeth issues across the streets of the borough, all the way from Windrush Square in Brixton to the statue of Temperance on the north-east corner of the Common.

It was the day the people under threat of eviction from their homes on threatened Lambeth estates such as Cressingham Gardens and Central Hill at Crystal Palace joined forces with the "Defend the Ten anti-Library-cuts campaigners, plus representatives of small businesses kicked out of their premises in central Brixton - as well as a big group opposing the building of the Garden Bridge.

So it was a highly diverse group of about 200 people, united in spirit at least by their disgust at the way an elected Labour  council can take such an arrogant stance on so many deeply-felt issues.

As the march rounded the corner of Acre Lane and into Clapham Park Road, you could hear the chanting. "Clapham! Join Brixton! Oppose the Lambeth cuts" or stuff to that effect. The heart skipped a beat - maybe "radical Clapham" would turn out not to be just a topic for local historians?

But as the march began its final descent on what, for many, is now yuppy central, you realised that this bit of Lambeth is really much more interested in shopping at Waitrose, eating and drinking at the chi-chi caffs and posh restaurants lining the common, or pushing its designer sunglasses down and looking away. The very rich cashmere-draped types who have a disporportionate presence in this part of town do not like to be reminded that they share this patch with actual poor people.

I have no idea how many - if any -  Clapham residents joined the march. Some bystanders looked bemused, a few boozers jeered, but most (or so it seemed) did their best to ignore it.

Until, that is, the march reached one of the busiest traffic intersections in the area: the bit where the A24 splits from the A3 and also meets the Clapham Common one-way system.

At this complex junction, about half the marchers got across two roads and into the Common. Then th elights changed and the rest of the march, including the main sound system and the most vocal of the chanters, were stuck at the lights, with a couple of cops looking on.

As we waited, a couple of people sat down, and then one of the guys with a megaphone claled on everyone to sit down, and one by one people did, some sitting on the yellow box juncxtion of two of the busiest roads in Clapham.  The two or three police there made a few polite requests for people to get up and move once the lights had changed, but they didn't.

The great Clapham Common roadblock of October 2016. It lasted for all
of 15 minutes, but it didn't half annoy the local yuppies.

This changed everything. It had been a peaceful, orderly demonstration, marching an agreed route with police escort.

Now it was a different sort of protest: a refusal to move, a blockage of three busy lanes of three busy roads. The police switched from demo-escort to traffic cops, holding traffic, letting one or two through when there was the chance.

We sat and awaited instructions from the de facto leader of this impromptu protest, a youngish guy with a beard and a sound system. He handed the mic around and people started trying to explain what they were doing and why  - and why if others didn't join in, we'd only have ourselves to blame when the cuts got worse.

It was a crystal clear example of that moment when sanctioned "democratic" protest turns into a rebellion, even if only a very small one.

There must've been no more than 30 or 40 people sitting on the road junction, and the police were no longer smiling benignly at the protesters.  Within minutes huge queues of buses and cars had built up in three directions. Peak Saturday afternoon shopping traffic!

The previously cheery toots of car horns egging on the march turned into a blaring cacophony of outrage as dozens of angry drivers lost their rags. Looking at some of the smart occupants of these expsnive vehicles, you got a sense of the ire behind the designer shades: "How dare these oiks disrupt our Saturday afternoon shopping trip!"

This is more like it! Anyone with even one rebellious cell in their bodies could not help feeling that thrill of knowing you are disrupting "normal" goings on in the name of causes you believe are worth the disturbance and possible retribution. Like many other waverers, I sat down, and was offered bread and apples by the sound system crew.  And thinking, if only we had 500 here instead of 50 - then it would perhaps make a real impact. Where is social media when you need it?

But an argument was breaking out. The ones who'd started the sit-down said it was essential to stay put, and not to move until the police physically moved them out of the road. This, they said, was the only way anyone would take any notice: all the democratic routes had been tried many times and had always failed. All that was left was direct action. Disruption. Peaceful resistance. Civil disobedience.

To a great extent what he said was true: just think of all those marches and demos and public meetings and lobbyings we went to as part of the anti-library closure campaign last autumn through to April 2016, and the final sad ending of the Carnegie Library occupation.

Mind you we sat in the street outside Parliament in March 2003, but that didn't stop them voting to go to war. Maybe because not enough of us sat there, and not enough of us had the strength or courage to keep on doing it.

Lambeth Council had certainly shown itself to be an absolutely world class when it came to not listening to public opinion. It seems they took their lessons from their old leader, back in the days of "New" Labour.

The police issued an ultimatum: move or we move you. After five more minutes only the hard core of protesters remained on the road, and they kept up a very loud critique of the ones who were no longer with them.

It was a strange, difficult moment. At a crucial point a flashing blue light of an ambulance stuck on the one way system jolted people into a different sense of priority: there might be someone dying in there! We have to let them through! Of course the cops got the ambulance through with no trouble, no-one was going to stop that. But what about the buses...all those people, maybe their difficult lives were going to be made even worse by our action?

At the end of the day...there's always thiss sad moment at the end of demos in London. What do we do with all the placards?
Being good responsible Lambeth citizens, the answer of course is to recycle them, responsibly - at the next dmeo.

These are thoughts of the guilt-ridden middle-class would be activist, ever the pinko-liberal, the fence-sitting impotent one.

The remaining half or two thirds of the marchers were standing around near the paddling pool, waiting for everyone to arrive. Finally the roadblockers took a vote, and decided to move on. So although the great Clapham sit-down could not match last month's much more prolonged and effective affair in Brixton, it was noticed by a lot of people, and even made a top story on the Evening Standard website.

But for a different view of the events, check out this lovely photo-journalistic report of Saturday's demo on ourcity.london.

There were some stirring impromptu speeches to a crowd that had dwindled to a few dozen.

In the background, the church where the Clapham Sect had hatched its schemes to begin the parliamentary abolition of slavery nearly 200 years back. Around the statue, activists and hangers-on (me) discussed what could be done.

It should have been a much, much bigger affair. But the fact that it happened at all is a huge positive. If only a handful of previously unconcerned locals were made to be aware that something is wrong - no, plenty is wrong! - in the state of Lambeth, then it was  a success.

It's there, in the words: Clapham Common. Bring it all back home!

Here are a few more snaps from the demo....

Clapham Library's getting its café - lovely, but where's everyone going to sit?

Just what you always longed for: a bookish café inside
Clapham public library. Well, at least it's not
a...

After a few years of trying, Clapham Library has finally found a taker for the café concession it always wanted in the street-facing ground floor seating area.

It seems the company ukcoffeestop, who run the popular Hill Coffee Stop in Richmond-upon-Thames, will be taking over this strange space, with an opening expected in a week or two.

Well, almost everyone likes coffee, it seems. But taking a look at the Richmond branch's price list, it's clear we're in Costa/Starbucks territory, that is, around £2.40 for a cappuccino or latte.

Having got used to excellent  1€ cafe cortados in Valencia, I can't say I'd be partaking of that. I'm sure it'll be better than the stuff they serve up in the big three coffee chains, but really, the prices…well, they are Clapham prices but perhaps not Clapham Library user prices. Let's hope they adjust them downwards for this new location.

Anyway, the builders are in right now, so roughly 20-30 study spaces are temporarily unavailable in a library which is often packed to the gills with revising school and college students.

And this also at a time when the council is telling people that they don't need the 10  properly staffed libraries they have been used to, and telling them to go to the town centre libraries - including this one.

Well, if this library gets overcrowded in the run up to the big exam season, as it has for as long as I can remember, let's hope the cafe staff don't get sniffy if kids want to sit at their tables without buying anything. I mean, this is a Public Library!

Why do libraries matter so much? Carnegie's occupiers let the poets explain

Amazing scene in SE24 yesterday afternoon: a young woman was reciting, with passion and clarity, a poem about one of London's great lost libraries, the old Whitechapel Library. She was reading this on the steps of another amazing but seriously threatened London library, the Carnegie Library, Herne Hill.

The poem, Whitechapel Library, Aldgate East, by Bernard Kops, described how this library gave him - as a drifting East End street urchin during the early years of the blitz - everything he needed to get going as a writer and to become the great playwright and poet we know today.

It includes these lines:

I emerged out of childhood with nowhere to hide
when a door called my name
and pulled me inside.

And being so hungry I fell on the feast.
Whitechapel Library, Aldgate East.

And my brain explodes when I suddenly find,
an orchard within for the heart and the mind.

Plenty of other great poems were read out by people  both inside and outside the occupied Herne Hill

library.

Ted Hughe's late poem, Hear It Again, is another amazing work. Hughes had no doubt that libraries were not merely important, but a crucial factor in the development of civilisation.

He pulls no punches. In the first verse, he announces that the destruction of the library in Alexandria 14 centuries back "brain-damaged the human race".

Then these terribly prophetic lines, later in the poem:
And it's plain
Decay of libraries is like 
Alzheimer's in the nation's brain.. 


The traffic on Herne Hill Road at that time was busy. But whether coming up from Loughborough Junction or down from the leafy heights of Herne Hill, almost every vehicle slowed down and beeped its  support for the occupiers.

In fact, I counted twenty, in the space of about 3 minutes, and 17 of them beeped. They even made it difficult for some of the poetry readers to make themselves heard!

And it was not just private cars. The biggest beeps came from white vans, trucks laden with building debris and scaffolding, taxi cabs, scooters, minibuses, oh yes and Range Rovers and the occasional Audi. Even the police car that had been parked round the corner gave a  little peep as it drove off, and then a couple of growls from its siren.

There's no doubt whatsoever how deeply loved this library is. Nor how much respect there is for the people who are doing their best to save it from this strange Lambeth Council plan to instal some sort of gymnasium.

Attached to the locked metal gates outside the Carnegie Library,
Herne Hill, here's a message those wishing to gut this building need to
understand

We now know, thanks to the Brixton Buzz website,  that Lambeth has issued a possession order to evict the occupiers and get on with its ludicrous scheme of turning part of this dignified building into a gym.

I've read stuff from Labour councillors saying we shouldn't worry, that the library will re-open with the same books, etc etc. Well, I wonder about that.

The real, absolute killer in the Lambeth plan, which they freely admit, is that there will be no trained, paid library staff in the new "healthy living centre". So however many books they have there - and you do wonder who will be looking after them, replenishing stock, etc - there won't be anyone there to help you with informed, expert advice on where to look, or what to try.

And, while Bernard Kops' beloved Whitechapel Library has now closed (it is now part of the art gallery), at least that council (Tower Hamlets) provided a proper library building to replace it, staffed with real, paid librarians.

All strength to the Carnegie Library occupiers - and shame on cloth-eared Lambeth council

No, sadly it wasn't an April Fool's joke, but thanks to the brave and brilliant 80 or so people who locked themselves inside Herne Hill's Carnegie Library last night, Lambeth council's dismal scheme to turn this and other libraries into gyms is once again under  close media scrutiny.

A London borough council is supposed to be responsive to the views of its electorate, and to do its best to protect their interests.

For the past year or two, on the subject of libraries (not to mention housing estate regeneration)  Lambeth is doing precisely the opposite of this,  the opposite of serving its public.

This is a council that is planning to turn two of its best loved libraries - the Carnegie and the Minet at Myatt's Fields, both of which were donated by philanthropists to the people of this borough over a century ago - into gyms, so-called "healthy living centres" where you'll pay to get a bit of physical exercise. And to close another two.

That is to take away four of the 10 libraries that  are currently struggling to cope with demand of the borough's library users.

The anger this "culture 2020" policy has provoked can hardly have surprised the council. We've all been  marching and shouting and petitioning everyone possible about it for  the past year or so.

Each time they turn that big deaf ear to the protests they raise everyone's  determination to resist and overturn the bonkers gym idea.

So when, at 6pm, March 31 2016,  the Carnegie Library in Herne Hill was supposed to have closed its doors for good, and instead, dozens of users of this amazing library staged an occupation, what did they do? They called in the cops , of course.

Thing is, even the police only need to take one look at the beautiful Carnegie Library building to understand that the gym idea is not only absurd, but also immoral. As soon as you entered this library you realised it was a well-loved place. I mean, how many public libraries in London have their own "Reading and Wildlife Garden"?

The Carnegie is a beautiful place, designed  for a specific purpose, to be a place where people of all ages and backgrounds can  read, study, and learn in peace;  where people can share their love for books and literature and storytelling and information-giving. It has always offered more in the way of extra, volunteer-led activities for a huge range of interest groups, from toddlers to yoga freaks to chess players, than  almost any other library I have visited.

It even had a large exhibition space, which helped launched the careers of many local artists and photographers.

And what does the council say?

"Changes to Carnegie Library"

So, they suggest Carnegie Herne Hill users should try Brixton Central or West Norwood libraries instead. Good advice? Maybe not.

The clue is in the word, "Hill". The Herne Hill library is up on high, it serves a large area of residential streets, young families with young children in pushchairs,  also lots of elderly local residents.

 Lambeth tells them to get down to Brixton centre, then back up again? And when they get there, where will they sit?

Or all the way down, then up again, to West Norwood Library, which is itself in temporary accommodation? Is Lambeth going to offer free bus passes to this displaced group of library users, or a taxi service?

It's all worse than insulting! (And I am not even a regular Carnegie Library user, can't you tell? But I am a Lambeth council tax payer, and I am disgusted by the way they treat so many of their electorate as though they were naughty children, and then carry on perfecting their vanity projects).

Now the council has even admitted it doesn't have a detailed plan on how it will convert this building into a gym. Look at those beautiful parquet floors, then imagine how they will bolt down those absurd stationary bicycles you see in gyms. There's now talk of using the cellar, involving as lot of excavation and possibly the destruction of the garden. Just think of the costs.

It's all very well saying this. I'd be saying it even if the Carnegie were an ordinary public library. Thing is it's a very special place, but the tragedy is you won't be able to experience its magic again unless…unless the brave action of yesterday evening's occupiers finally makes this cloth-eared council listen, just for once!

The following pics, I hope,  show a bit of the passion of those defending this wonderful place, and a bit  of what you and me and all of us will lose if the council's plans for converting this place into a "bookish gym" actually go through.

The wildlife and reading garden at the Herne Hill Carnegie Library

Carnegie's staff and friends ensured that the library, if it had to close, would close with a bang or two, and not a whimper…and predicted that the closure would not be  permanent

From memories of Bowie at the Brixton Book Jam to tales of Cuba in ice-cold Clapham…a good week for literary luvvies in this part of town

Two literary events in the space of five days: what's going on? Next stop Hay-on-Wye?

Well, probably not. But what, on these dead, cold March evenings could be better than a dash to a local shop or a pub, and get a free evening's entertainment from a bunch of talented and fascinating writers?

Well, for a cheapskate old blagger like me, the answer is: not very much. Which is why on Monday evening people queuing for buses around Clapham Common and Acre Lane glimpsed a mad old scarecrow, woolly-hatted, two scarves, two pairs of everything - cycling madly towards Tulse Hill.

Going as fast as possible, against the biting wind, just trying to keep warm. And thus arriving unfashionably early at the Hootananny, Brixton, for the 13th quarterly Brixton Book Jam.

I remember writing these events up during a very short stint on doing listings for the Brixton Blog, and yet I never actually went to one - until this week. And realised immediately what a very fine thing it was that I'd been missing.

The Hootananny is one of those huge old roadhouse pubs that London used to have loads of. Now, they've fallen out of favour, and who knows how long it will be before we're signing petitions to save this one, à la Half Moon in Herne Hill?

No, perish that thought. This place is crazy but it's usually busy, there's music or comedy or something on every night,  there are pool tables, food outdoors in the summer, and it has a little hotel too. The spaces are gloriously old school. For Monday's event, which had tipped its hat to late local boy David Bowie, there were rows of school-hall style chairs arranged across the dance floor.

Some of the anecdotes were memorable, notably those from the legendary photographer of  the Manchester music scene (and Man City), Kevin Cummins.

Instead of plugging any of his books in particular, Kevin ad-libbed a bit about his times shooting David Bowie. The first time when he was still a student and devoted Bowie fan and thus too much in awe of the man to get the shot he wanted (He did get the shot a day or two later on the next stage of the tour, in Leeds).

He told the best story about Bowie I've heard since the man died. It involved Bjork. He also showed a pic taken at an early Smiths gig in Manchester, with two punkish girl fans, and then announced that both these girls were in tonight's audience. "See if you can spot them!" Cringe. But everyone could spot them (especially as he waved the mike at their table).

The second memorable Bowie anecdote came from local artist Nathalie Dubruel, who had been an extra in a shoot for one of Bowie's videos. It was in the early 1980s and the location was the famous Wag Club in Soho (a place I already knew I was too old and dull to get into in 1984 even though I was desperate to be there, having read all about it in The Face).

She told the story with all the enthusiasm of her teenage self, down to the bit where she sees the video for the first time, and see herself dancing directly in from of the (frankly, overdressed) star-man "wearing my Woolworths t-shirt".

It was again instant transportation back to those strange days, when they started making videos for MTV even though we couldn't get it here at the time.

 There were also some good poetic imaginings about, or inspired by, Bowie. Bowie on a cold night in desert in Sudan, watching the tracer shells from some rebel encampment. It was mind-blowing stuff. I think that was Richard Skinner - but there was so much good stuff. That's the thing about a jam. It's a confiture…an embarrassment, almost, of riches, richness.

Another great memory from the Jam will be seeing Marcia Robinson talking about her dad:  Sledge - The Soul of Notting Hill.

She'd written this beautifully-illustrated memoir of her father, Gladstone "Sledge" Robinson, partly to keep his name alive, and because she'd promised him she would. Sledge died back in 2008, tragically, in a house fire which also destroyed most of belongings. By then he was know well beyond his London W11 manor as London's first Rasta Man, one who put up with no end of aggravation from police and others through the 60s and 70s and 80s for the dreadlocks he grew a full decade before anyone here had heard of Bob Marley.

Sledge was one the elders of London's West Indian community, famed for his dreadlocks, and  his bongo drumming on Aswad and Bob Marley tracks.  What was less well known outside the Notting Hill black community was his generosity, his strength as a community leader, and his role as a human rights activist.

He inspired people to stand up for their rights,  Marcia said, and she conveyed very clearly that he was a great man who left an important legacy. And which other pioneer fighter for the UK's law centres and legal aid movement has also been - in his later years - a fashion model and cover star  for GQ magazine?

You could tell, he had taught his daughter well, Marcia was a kind but powerful presence in the room, with a great voice and a great laugh.

One of the writers who attracted me to this event was Martin Millar, who I always thought of as Brixton's own punk novelist, with an early novel, Lux the Poet, set at the time of the 1981 Brixton riots and squatting punks.

But of course Martin Millar is Scottish, and it may not be fanciful nonsense to imagine a bit of a link between his early writing and that of a slightly older Glaswegian surrealist writer Alasdair Gray.

These days he's a successful writer of fantasy fiction, but there's an echo of Lux in his latest  novel, Goddess of Buttercups and Daisies , which is his first historical novel. Alas, I was called away as he started to read, but the bit I picked up made me think he was in a way going back to the good old bad old surreal punk fiction of the 80s….so, he's another one to go check out again.

Debut novelist C D Ross completely changed the mood in the room with a reading from her book, Gangland, as a young mother encounters a gang fight on bonfire night in Clapton, and ends up comforting a stabbed teenager who is probably dying. Powerful, chilling stuff.

So, how do you top all that at a literary event?

Well, you don't need to, there's no topping anyone in this world. Well actually there is, as the final author made very clear. This was the poet Stefan Clark who has just written his first novel, which is "a prequel to Shakespeare's Hamlet set in modern times" called  Love and Blood and the State of Grace.

It was another firework display, a pyrotechnic reading; he put so much energy and malice into the character of the murderous Claud as he sets about humiliating and killing his brother (Harry) that at times you felt like taking cover. Great stuff in the mode of a Brendan Behan, but on who'd  swallowed plenty of Bukowski , a spot of Henry Miller even, with just a hint of an Alexi Sayle style sense of black humour.

So, that was what a book jam is like. If I'd been sceptical, I am now a complete convert. It was jam of the choicest variety, a veritable confiture, Tesco's finest. On bread. With butter.

Oh, and by the way, this being the Brixton Book Jam, in Lambeth,  meant that it also gave time and space to a librarian called Stevie ("luckily for me I work in Southwark") who explained what is happening to the 10 libraries in the borough, and encouraged everyone to sign the Don't Steal Our Libraries petition and  come along to Thursday evening's meeting at Brixton Library. She received such a warm round of applause and cheering that you imagine most of the audience had already signed - but those who hadn't, will have now.

Thank god!

(PS: next Brixton Book Jam is on June 6)

And so, wind back the clock to last Thursday…

… and a five minute walk to the bijou Clapham Books to listen to author Leila Segal reading from Breathe, her collection of nine short stories about Cuba.

She had lived there for several years, first  in Havana, then out west in what sounds like the idyllic province of Pinar del Rio.

Leila read fragments from the stories in a quiet but powerfully expressive way. You immediately got the flavour: it was careful, a tentative approach through which you got these glimpses of a vividly different world.  She really brought the words to life. The small audience - ten people at most, sipping at their free glasses of red wine in the children's books room, were rapt. We nearly all had questions for her. She answered every one, fully. She clearly loves Cuba and loves talking about it, her enthusiasm was infectious and her knowledge deep.

There's a story of a British girl experiencing the sheer sensual pleasure of being at night-club, dancing with Cubans to West Coast rap music.

Another is seen from the pod of an Italian business man.

She's got a good, tough writing style, she doesn't waste words, but she does conjure up places and people with  the flick of literary wrist…a perfect phrase here, a couple of words of dialogue there.

She made me want to go back to Cuba, though from all as he said things are actually a bit harder there now than when we went. All that expectation of the coming "thaw" in US-Cuban relations, it seems, is bringing out a different side, and maybe some of the old insects are going to be scuttling out from underneath the cupboard they've been hiding under for so long.

I bought the book, and scuttled home for more red wine.

Buy these books!

Save Lambeth Libraries march defies lousy weather and crazy policies: ALL TEN libraries must be defended!

Can you hear us, Lambeth Council? Can you read? Save Lambeth Libraries marchers outside Tate South Lambeth Library, Saturday March 5 2016.

"No ifs!  No buts!  No Lambeth Library Cuts!"

It was the same chant, on a march with many of the same people, but also plenty of new people, on the same route - from the Central Brixton Tate Library in Windrush Square, to the Tate South Lambeth Library in Vauxhall - for the same cause - as the first Save Lambeth Libraries march back in November.

The weather was even worse today - just as wet and even colder than on that autumn day - but the emotional climate was different. We're less than a month away from the proposed closure of two of the

Best banner of the day? Says it all, really.

borough's best-loved libraries, and despite an 11th hour U-turn on the plans for Tate South Lambeth and Upper Norwood Libraries, the "bookish gym" madness is still very much what Lambeth intends to push through at Herne Hill's Carnegie and the Minet Library on the Brixton-Camberwell border.

We've had four months of protests and action in between, in an imaginative and well orchestrated campaign, but a campaign which for a lot of the time seemed to be meeting a solid grey wall of indifference at the level of Lambeth council.

At some of the meetings, you actually got the feeling they were sniggering at us for our audacity in using time-honoured democratic protest techniques in response to their newish-Labourish cost-cutting Culture 2020 policy and its follow-up, the proposal to turn three branch libraries into fitness or "Healthy Living" centres with a few books, PCs and wi-fi but no trained library staff.

That is, until yesterday, when (somewhat coincidentally? oh surely not!) a partial climbdown, a semi-U-turn was allowed to slip out. As reported so swiftly on the always excellent Brixton Buzz site, Councillor Jane Edbrooke has decided to spare Tate South Lambeth library from the immediate indignity of having its books and staff replaced by gym equipment.

However, the plan to do just this at the wonderful Carnegie and Minet libraries remains - which was why today's protest was so moving. It was all about solidarity, and the overwhelming message was that Lambeth has 10 libraries - that's not enough perhaps, but we have 10 and we're not going to lose even one of those – particularly not to what has now been described as one of the most crackpot schemes in British local government this century.

Yes, a very good point, libraries do need trained staff. Under Lambeth's
plan, there'd be no full-time professional  librarians at the proposed
'bookish-gyms' to be run by Greenwich Leisure Ltd at the Minet and
Carnegie Libraries

It was great that people from the semi-reprieved Tate South Lambeth and Upper Norwood libraries were there on the march to make clear that they were still part of the campaign.

It was great that, again, there were people from Lewisham, Barnet and Wandsworth libraries voicing their support, and calling for a London-wide or nation-wide save libraries campaign to grow out this grassroots movement.

It was good to see local author Will Self (and his dog) telling us not to get too hung up on the nostalgic joy of books , but to protect the spaces that libraries occupy and the access to information that they offer. He made the obvious link between library closures and gentrification, too - though I think the people who will be snapping up those £1m + flats in the Oval Quarter, Brixton, and Vauxhall will be going to much snazzier gyms than those likely to be offered by GLL.

The real point of the whole events was best made by two people - Laura Swaffield, who has been the lynchpin of this whole campaign since it started (well, in truth that's years ago, as Lambeth has often tried to chip away th eLibrary service when budgets are not balancing, it's easy meat).

She made the point, one that cannot be repeated often enough, that these libraries are - morally speaking at least - not the council's to muck around with. They were all given to the community, not the council, by their various benefactors (yes, see how an earlier generation of corporate monsters gained immortality, the Tates and Carnegies).

That's the truth behind the slogan: "Don't steal our libraries!"

Of course Lambeth's lawyers have had no trouble in dealing with that little inconvenience.

The other great speaker was the chair of the Friends of the Carnegie Library in Herne Hill, Jeffery Doorn. He spoke with passion but also  great precision about what this library does for its community.

The notion of this incredibly popular place (busiest children's library in the borough) being turned into a sort of third-rate gym is shocking. It seems amazing that the very people whose well-paid job it is to protect and improve local amenities are blind to this. The whole building screams, Library! Books! Reading! Scholarship! Learning! Stories! Imagination! Soul!

(To get a really good taste of the place, please check out the short video Save Carnegie Library by Kaatje Jones on YouTube).

It really does look like people are going to have to take direct action to stop this place being ransacked or desecrated on April 1.

That was again the shocking realisation - that the ultimate nonsense everyone has been so energetically trying to avoid - not just by protesting but by offering sensible, worked-though alternatives - is now very unlikely to be stopped. It's not actually the money any more. It's more that too many political careers are at stake.

It was a foul day but a beautiful event, and thanks again to all the brilliant people of the Save Lambeth Libraries and Defend the Ten campaign.

Local author Will Self explains why he opposes plans to turn two of Lambeth's public libraries into gyms
with a few books on the side.

Don't steal our libraries! Please….

Loving Lambeth's libraries, part 4: rising above it all at the Upper Norwood Joint Library

On the edge of the abyss:  Upper Norwood Joint Library enjoys a suitably lofty view of the vanity-towers and money-pots of the City of London

Let's pull the plug on another non-series of blog entries by visiting a library that is definitely in Lambeth  - and very much part of the Save Lambeth Libraries campaign - but which is not entirely of Lambeth.

The destination is Upper Norwood Joint Library, 'joint' because it is, uniquely in the UK, funded by two local authorities, Lambeth and Croydon Boroughs, but independent of both.

It has been this way for all 115 years of its existence, and the proud spirit of independence and difference is palpable as soon as you enter the Victorian red-brick building, with that great panoramic view of London as a backdrop.

It's at the far southern boundary of  the borough, the point where Lambeth meets the similarly extended fingers of Southwark, Lewisham, Bromley and Croydon.


To get here we have to trek across the foothills of  Brixton, Streatham, Tulse and Herne Hills, then rise again above West Norwood and onward again to the greater slope of Gipsy Hill, and still ascending, up Westow Hill  to the edge of plateau, with its dizzying views across south London and the towers of the City. Apparently we are only 380 feet above sea level but it feels a great deal more.

From across the street, the library seems to be perched on the edge of an abyss, and it's true we're not far from the edge of the known world here. You find  the last stop for London bus routes 322 and 137, and then this drop away into the blue hills of Surrey and Kent….a different world.

An old poster by the entrance explains it all:

"Upper Norwood and Crystal Palace
Exceptionally healthy because of the prevailing wind from the coast
380 feet above Thames therefore out of the valley of fogs..."

You get the feeling people up here are a bit hardier, hill-folk with bigger lungs and sturdier legs…but they are very friendly….

This area has a romantic name, in memory of the palace of glass which once stood here, until one evening in 1936 it caught fire and burned so bright it lit up London, pre-empting the Blitz by four years. The great Paxton building continued burning so fiercely that it singed the sky. The footprint of that building is still there to this day, a massive patch of windswept grass with a few damaged statues, low walls and wide flights of steps remaining as the only solid evidence of what was once there.

If you want to know more about the Crystal Palace, there's no better place to do so than this library, which holds a unique collection of books, documents and cuttings on the subject.

But it also has specialist collections on various other aspects of local history, including the Victorian-era   poet, Chartist and spiritualist Gerald Massey (born in Tring, Herts, died South Norwood Hill, 1907).

It's a truly delightful building, with the bustling lending library downstairs and light, airy, quiet reading room and reference library on the first floor. The basement used to house a reserve collection of classic literature: it's not entirely clear if that's still there, as the library now rents out part of that space as a meeting room and event space.

It almost goes without saying that this library runs an incredibly full programme of activities for the whole range of community groups. It's also - perhaps sadly - true that it has been fighting plans for its abolition much longer than most. Because of its unusual constitution, the library has been at the receiving end of cuts programmes from both Croydon and Lambeth councils for much of the past decade. And as a result of this a strong and active campaign group has developed to protect what is clearly an invaluable and irreplaceable community resource.

In 2012 this group of supporters decided to create a charity with the aim of taking the library into the control of its community. As you can read on its website, the resulting Upper Norwood Library Trust is still working energetically towards this aim, as well as playing a big role in the wider campaign to fight library cuts nationally and locally.

At this point on the long haul up Gipsy Hill, you turn and look back and there's the beating heart of global capitalism.

As with so many threatened public libraries, one of the biggest problems is to secure long-term funding to pay the salaries of professional library staff. Isn't it odd. can you imagine the uproar if someone tried to run a gym without properly qualified trainers, physios and so on?

Meanwhile, the harsh reality is that Lambeth's plans to close or re-purpose half of the borough's 10 libraries are still on track. The massive protests of the past year, reaching some sort of climax in November, have not deflected the clique of councillors who seem to be staking their professional reputations on the plans to convert libraries into gyms run by GLL (Greenwich Leisure Limited).

On Christmas Eve,  a tweet from Zezi Ifore reminded us that there were just 100 days left to change their minds…

And now, with only 91 days left, anyone who likes using their local libraries in Lambeth needs to go to the Defend the 10 website for advice on how to resist this bad idea.

Love letters to Lambeth's Threatened Libraries part 3: The Minet Library and Archive

Solid, functional, built to last: the Minet Library is not the sort of place that looks likely to take kindly to fashionable
notions of pop-up gyms and unstaffed libraries-lite….it's an archive, for heaven's sake!

However you arrive there, the Minet Library is always a surprise. Coming from the traffic-snarled grime of the A23 and Loughborough Road, it seems like an oasis of tranquillity, keeping an eye on the massive housing developments of past (Angell Town) and present decades (Oval Quarter) to either side.

Sat there in the middle of leafy Knatchbull Road, a street of fairly grand Victorian, Edwardian and later houses,  it has a strange crouching presence, with the outward appearance of a low-lying suburban redoubt. There's even what at a first looks like a drawbridge leading up to the entrance, which is in fact  a wheelchair access ramp.

That impression is perhaps not entirely misleading. The original Minet Library, built in the 1890s, was destroyed during aerial bombardment in 1940. This building, judging from old photos, was a neo-gothic affair with an octagonal reading room.

It was built at the expense of William Minet, the great-great-grandson of Huguenot immigrants to London who became major landowners in the Camberwell and Lambeth areas in the late 18th century.

At this point, I will quote from the wonderfully detailed  Myatt's Fields Park website:

"Minet Free Library and a parochial hall opposite St. James’ were…[William Minet's] bequests to the neighbourhood. William Minet was interested in the Co-operative Movement and the library was built by a company which he formed on co-operative lines.

"Myatt’s Fields Park was an integral part of the philanthropic projects undertaken by the Minet family for the estate. As Sir John Betjeman, who found the area ‘a strangely beautiful place’, put it in 1978, ‘Thank God for the Minet family’."

Have to agree with Sir John there…though Lambeth residents already knew the areas between those brutal trunk routes, the A3, A23, and A2, were beautiful, nothing strange about it.

Pre-war, the library was run jointly by Lambeth and Southwark boroughs. It also, then as now, had a dual function, being both a public lending library and the home of the local council archives.

Open door policy: the public are welcomed into the Lambeth Archive, and
have access to the same expert advice form staff as any academic
researchers

These, fortunately, were stored safely in a deep basement and survived the blitz.  The new library, built by Lambeth in the early 1950s, has that austere, brick-built solidity of the post-war era: functional rather than decorative, but admirable in its functionality.

It's saying, this time, we're here for everyone, and we're here to stay. As you enter, there's a large vestibule full of interesting things - and two big glazed entrance doors. One leads straight into the library, the other into the archive. Both are equally accessible to all. This is 1950s democracy in solid brick, wood and glass.

Strong, permanent: the library sits there, challenging by its presence the shiny architecture of the new Oval Quarter being thrown up a bit to the north. But we're entering a new age of austerity (for some)  and wealth (for others) and conflict, and the Minet's going to need all the help to can get, so it would seem - just at a time when it could in fact act as a hub for an even bigger community.

But, as we know the Minet is one of three libraries Lambeth is threatening to turn into gyms. Lambeth say the archive will stay in the Minet "for the time being".

Like all the other threatened libraries, the Minet has an active Friends group which has been keeping everyone informed on the council's moves, representing local interests at meetings, and which is now organising campaigns to challenge the threats to this institution, which remain, after months of protest, pretty much unchanged.

Yes, look how much goes on here:  is all this to be
be squeezed out to house some running
machines?

Friends of Minet Library are part of the Minet Hub which also represents the nearby Myatt's Fields Park and the Longfield Hall, a well-used community space which house a dance academy and much more, just two door up the road.

Lambeth made the Minet its official archive. Everything that has been documented in the government of this borough is there. There's an excellent account of the way this archive is run, and its value, by Ruth Waters on the Brixton Blog.

As we've already reported, the longer-term future for the building is far from safe. 

It's not a re-development prospect right now because of surrounding residential property, but that can change very quickly.

Meanwhile, I am stuck in the vestibule, looking at the amazing balsa-wood model of the future of Brixton, as seen by town planners in 1967. This table-top model is all that remains of the grandest, most radical redevelopment scheme in the borough's history, and it reminds us of that time, just before the Six Days War and the ensuing oil crises, when the car was king and every city was going to be modelled on Detroit or Birmingham.

Brixton as it might have been -  in 1967 the whole of central Brixton
was to be redeveloped as part of the inner-London orbital motorway
 scheme, and now this model in the Minet LIbrary is (nearly) all that's
left of it….

A six-lane inner South London orbital motorway flys over central Brixton, lands somewhere on Acre Lane and ploughs off through Clapham Common to the A3/South circular interchange near Wandsworth Bridge. That little stretch down to the river at Wandsworth Bridge was the only bit that was actually built in south west London, apart from the Coldharbour Lane barrier block, which was designed to insulate its residents from the worse impact of traffic speeding past their kitchen windows.

There are two groupings of slightly wonky 50-sotrey residential towers (eat your heart out, Nine Elms), built on the stacked threepenny bit model you can still see in a more modest form above East Croydon station.

And can just about see the notional aerial recreation centre, suspended on a gantry bridge above the motorway, just like one of those early service stations on the M1, such as Watford Gap. Just think, Brixton might have had the first glass-bottomed swimming pool in the UK, 50 years earlier than the one planned for the well-heeled residents of the future Battersea Power Station.

Poignant exhibits in the miniature Brixton Museum,
showing until December 8th in the foyer of the Minet Library

Just think…and then thank god for OPEC and the quick binning of all those road-building schemes. As a result we still have Brixton, rather than a zone 2 version of Croydon on this stretch of the Brighton road.

All this and I haven't even got into the library yet. Ok, but hang on over to the left there's another exhibit: the Brixton Museum, an art installation by Anchor&Magnet,  a space for "dialogue, reflection and exchange". It's only there for a few more days so get along to see it and contribute if you can.

Into the main library, and again it's a light, welcoming space, and it is being used by all age groups. Just like Tate SOuth Lambeth and Carnegie, this is a popular, busy public library, serving the community with print and digital media, advice and information, and maintaining spaces that used by so many community groups.

If you're feeling like you need some exercise after your
visit to the Minet Library and Archive, why not go for a
stroll in beautiful Myatt's Fields, two minute's walk
 down Knatchbull Road?

Check the various noticeboards to see just how much goes on here - it really is an amazing variety of activities. You only have to glance at the news pages and twitter feeds of the Friends of  Minet library to realise how important this library is to local residents, and how deeply felt the affection for this place is. You can't help feeling Lambeth council has taken on a bit more than it reckoned with, when you visit this  marvellous place.

And, if you're in need of a healthy workout after your visit, walk the 100 yards or so to Myatt's Fields, a park very carefully and sensitively restored by the council a few years ago. Here surely is the true healthy living centre of this part of Lambeth.

Why ruin a cherished library so that a few hundred of the thousands of local residents can build their muscles up to a point which will probably be difficult to sustain into their late middle age?

Was that a fair question to ask you, Lambeth Co-operative Council? Was it? Was it?

Is this a busy library, or what? Just where are all these activities going to go if - as proposed - Lambeth decides to install a GLL-run keep fit centre into this building…?