Dreary Yorkshire

Today was an immensely dreary day. I began with good intentions and high morale. At the school library I printed my CV, finished and printed a job application, and emailed a request to visit the Philip Larkin collection in Hull on Tuesday. The I headed over to the Career Centre, feeling professional and grown up. The HR individuals didn't know of any library jobs open at present and recommended that I keep searching in the usual manner. They provided me with useful and thorough descriptions of Information Specialist job descriptions etc... Then they informed me that I was completing the wrong course for librarians. Was I aware that I will have to complete an MLS course as well? Of course I was. They also informed me that my CV was nothing more than a list. Well, blah. 

I headed to the city centre and on a whim decided to try the Acropolis Cafe because I have many a time seen it but never ventured inside. The Acropolis Cafe must have been designed to mirror a late night diner in the states, possible a diner in a Stephen King book. The self-service line hosts tiered rows of lethargic triangular desserts slumping on their hard plastic plates. The strawberry jam unceremoniously dumped atop anonymous creamy cakes. The whipped cream lines have lost their wiggles and creases. The baked custard, as I discovered, has the exact consistency of a soft boiled egg, and a similar flavor. A gracefully aging European man, wearing a tie, soft looking dress shoes, and a large rectangular watch mans the counter. The rest of the staff are waitresses. Some of them teenagers with short straight dyed hair and foundation that accentuates their black eye-liner. The other waitresses much older, short white curls raised up on their heads. Outside I see people rushing past, discount shopping at places like Poundland. Not a smile. Needless to say I found the subdued diner with the gray-blue fuzzy seats and Greek-hatted waitresses oddly comforting. In that quirky downbeat setting, I feel that I can write better than in a buzzing well-lighted coffee shop. 

My comfortably dreary day was made wonderfully complete by a visit to the city library. Mixing with immigrants, vagrants and oddly dressed urbanites, I meandered through the fiction rows. They didn't have any of Coetzee or Munro books that were listed available in the the catalogue, but I found two Tim Wintons, a Fred D'Aguiar, a Larkin collection, and Charlotte Bronte's earliest novel The Foundling, complete with its own imaginary world. This is my favorite thing about public libraries: discovering unexpected books. I also discovered in my wanderings that I want to stay in Leeds as long as I can. I like pretending to be a Brit- frowns and all.