Cultured Views

Life is full of little irritations don’t you agree? just lately I have had a run of occasions where I have had letters to post and have yet to be able to just walk into the post office, approach the counter and buy a stamp as easily as that. It just does not work like that any more because the post office no longer functions as merely somewhere to post off a letter. You stand in one queue – one very long queue – behind people holding portfolios, credit cards, bank books, rent books, pension books and electricity bills. They want to register their car, buy a life insurance policy, pay off the mortgage…

I just want to buy a flippin’ stamp and it takes me up to 25 minutes!

Next is the irritating habit that has become endemic among a lot of parents these days: using the local public library as a childminding service. Our local library at Ballyhackamore has become more of an ‘after school club’ during the week nowadays; last Tuesday we saw women leaving some quite young children in the library with the advice “don’t go outside until I come back for you – I’ll be back in an hour.” As a result the library becomes a large creche, the kids spread out all over the place and adults cannot sit down and read a paper or a book because the kids have commandeered the tables and chairs for their homework. I wonder what the librarians think about this because I know of a library in Sydney whose staff got so fed up with women dumping their kids at the library during the day in the school holidays that they put up signs warning them not to do it. They found children as young as six and seven were being left in the children’s library section – some without even any food, water or money – from 9 till 5 when Mum got off work. The librarians were fed up with some kids expecting to be taken to the toilet, some asked about food, others became upset and wanted Mum. As a rule now parents cannot leave children under the age of 14 unattended in the library at any time. That was in Gosford Library north of Sydney.

I like to see kids using and enjoying the library by all means – but a library and it’s staff are not there to provide you parents with a free child-minding service while you shop or have coffee!

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