Re: Wonderland

Harry wrote:
The noise is often officially sanctioned. In a library near me, I was
amazed to realise that a group of people around a table chatting away
vacuously at full volume were actually a book group. The same open-
plan library actually hosts some kind of toddlers' play group. "The
wheels on the bus" and "If you're happy and you know it" are annoying
enough when you're trying to read the paper, let alone concentrate on
something important. Another library I frequent is as much a cafe as
a library, with all the attendant banging of trays, crashing of
crockery, hissing of coffee machines, etc etc. Is there nowhere that
doesn't serve coffee these days? I certainly wouldn't want to go back
to the days of sepulchral silence, but a peaceful atmosphere with only
necessary quiet conversation doesn't seem much to ask. Along the
lines of the Quiet Carriage on a train perhaps.

I don't travel by train very often but every time I've been in a Quiet Carriage I've had to go into Grumpy Old Woman mode and point out the notices to ask some noisy person to stop using their phone. I find it interesting that on the bus from Oxford to London, which I use very frequently, passengers are generally very much quieter. As an experiment, they once had a poet on the bus, reciting her work during the journey: most passengers were horrified at this intrusion.

--
Laura
(emulate St. George for email)



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