The Book they Couldn't Lend

I’m a book entitled ‘The Social History of Margarine’ and no-one ever checks me out of this blasted library. I’m four-hundred and thirty-seven pages of pure educational gold and no-one wants me.

My title, though, attracts attention. Browsers pick me up with a wry look on their faces. They call their friends over ‘Look at this; they say ‘A Social History of Margarine’. What a boring book!’ And off they go seeking a John Grisham.

Well, how would they know that? Have they read me? Do they know that the very idea of me came from an Emperor of France?

It gets boring just resting here on this shelf. I’m stuck between ‘Bread Making: An Idiot’s Guide’ and ‘Eating for Victory: Original Second World War Ration Recipes’ and even they get borrowed from time to time. At least then I get a new neighbour or two. Last week it was ‘Fifty Shades of Chicken: A History of Erotic Food’. That was quite a thrill, but now old ‘Idiot’s Bread making’ is back so things are back to frump-mode.

I look across to the Science Fiction section from time to time to see if there’s any action. Plenty of Asimov, Philip K Dick, Iain M Banks and the rest. We had a reader in last week who’d written a book called ‘Do Glaswegians Dream of Enamelled Teeth?’

Right now we have one of the library staff doing the ‘entertain the kiddie’s bit’: ‘The Wheel’s On the Bus’ and all that shite. Four mornings a week I have to put up with this. At least if someone would borrow me I’d get a change of environs: maybe a nice wee bungalow down in Joppa, a nice polished coffee table to elegantly rest on. Never once have I been out of this library in the eleven years since I was brought here.

Portobello Public Library! Hardly the Bodleian is it?

So much knowledge to give that no-one wants.

Did you know that in the United States they call me ‘oleo’?  I’m not going to even explain why; you’ll have to read me to find out.