Apr 21

2026

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Helen Whitten

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Just in Case: A relationship with suitcases

I am in the process of downsizing and decluttering.  It’s a busy time.  Listening to Radio 4’s Last Word recently I heard about a Swedish author, Margareta Magnusson, who had died. She had written a book called The Swedish Art of Death Cleaning. Ah, I thought to myself, so that is what I am doing.  Actually, not a sad thought. It’s really quite liberating taking things I no longer need to the tip or charity shops.  But I have one problem …

How have I ended up with 6 suitcases in my garage?  All different sizes and shapes? All for myself? As my poem, Packing, describes …

Packing

What made me imagine
that in 90 degrees
I’d need 10 pairs of tights
or 6 shirts with long sleeves?
My suitcase is full
of all colours and hews
and all that I’ve worn
is a bikini and gold shoes.
Others can do it:
take one little case
but for me it’s a trunk
full of options …
“just in case”.

That’s how I think. “What if”…this…”what if” that…” or “just in case…” (what a pun!).  I used to travel so often, for pleasure and work. I had my neat little black carry-on case, oh so professional, that would just hold my laptop and maybe the laptop projector that I often took with me “just in case” my client didn’t have one that worked.

Then when I had my flat in Nice for 10 years, I had another slightly bigger carry-on case as I kept most of my clothes and necessities in the flat but nonetheless always needed to take a few extra clothes and books, and the laptop, inevitably, “just in case”.

And of course, a bigger case or two for those longer holidays somewhere exotic – Zimbabwe, Australia, Guatemala, Brazil, Argentina, Cuba, our road trip across the American South, Memphis, Nashville and on to Savannah and oh so many more places I have been lucky enough to visit. These days I don’t get out enough, yet those suitcases sit there looking at me, “just in case”.

I remember the cases my parents had as they chugged their way back and forth from Lisbon to England.  Brown leather and white leather cases littered with exciting looking labels. The RMS Andes is the ship that took us back and forth.  I don’t remember having a case of my own – not like today’s children with Peppa Pig cases and pretty cases on wheels and now cases with wheels AND a scooter attached.

Then going off to boarding school. My mother packing a trunk that would go ahead of me on the train to Dorset  It was a big old thing. Probably a good 3ft by 2ft?  What on earth did she put in it I wonder.  But I guess I was going to be away for the whole term

Then there was the tuck box. A sturdy wooden box into which I secreted sweets, toys and personal things like my diary and books.  This carried on right through my teenage years, of course, going back and forth to Wiltshire.

What amazes me is how long it took the human race to put together two items that had existed for millennia – the suitcase and the wheel.  They certainly hadn’t managed that moment of invention when I went on my first solo trip to France when I was 14. My parents went through an agency called En Famille where you were basically a paying guest in a French family. I was put on a plane at Gatwick to some tiny airport near Calvados, northern France.  No-one was there to meet me. I sat in the tiny office of one of the airport staff while they tried to contact the family I was staying with. I remember feeling both embarrassed and anxious.

Hours later he eventually came but when it was time for me to return to the airport they sent me off on the local bus. I can still remember it now, having to change twice, once in Caen, and trying to find my way across unknown French city streets on a hot sunny day lugging my big case – with no wheels – across town to find the next bus stop. Thank heaven I got back to the airport in time for the plane. Looking back on it I think that family were irresponsible, just in it for the money. There was no French conversation or education, as mealtimes were spent watching William Tell dubbed into French.

Now that I am decluttering, I shall have to be ruthless.  But which one to throw out? When I look at each case I can see I might still need it because “what if” x happens then I might need that one and “what if” y happens then I might need that other one…so I’d better keep them all hadn’t I, “just in case”?

Feb 04

2026

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Helen Whitten

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Grief

I’ve known some. For my infant son, my parents, sister, grandmother, aunts, cousins, friends, marriage, relationships, pets and most recently my cat, Chico. There was a poignant discussion on Woman’s Hour recently about the depth of grief one feels for a pet and the complex emotions that go with this. After all, it’s only a cat, right? And yet a pet shares one’s daily life, moods, routines and rituals in a way that close friends don’t. Even in a marriage or relationship each one of you relates to that pet in different ways. And when you live alone the intensity of that relationship with your pet is inevitably ramped up.

And so if I have been rather quiet on the blog front it is because my cat Chico had to be put to sleep recently and I have been knocked for six by this. He was the second cat I have held in my arms while he went peacefully to sleep and each time I hoped that the Assisted Dying Bill would be passed for we humans, who may be put through far worse traumas than an animal at our death. I’m not optimistic that the Bill will go through.

The distinction with Chico is that he has been a part of my life after retirement. A period when one is less busy, less preoccupied with work or colleagues or family, as one’s family are now happy independent units to themselves – which is what one would wish for them.  And so the fact that your cat bothers to greet you at the door when you come in, sits with you as you watch Slow Horses and insists on wrapping itself around you as you try to sleep takes on a greater significance than it would if one was busy with children or work.

A friend commented that she was perplexed when people express surprise at how grief impacts them and yet each loss is so unique that it is inevitable that each grief hits you in an equally unique way. One hasn’t lost a mother before, then a father, or vice versa. Each friend represents a unique relationship that has brought out aspects of oneself one may not have shared with other friends. And at my time of life losing friends happens horribly often.

People imagine that death was more commonplace emotionally in times when half one’s children would have died from illness and yet letters and diaries suggest that each loss was deeply felt. It’s human. Where there was love there will be grief when there is loss. I am aware that I witnessed my mother losing friends in old age and perhaps had a similarly misconceived assumption that it was easier as you got older because it is surely inevitable. But, of course, it isn’t easier. Your friends are immensely important at any stage of life but perhaps particularly as you age, for they know and understand you well and they also understand the challenges of ageing.

Another type of grief is experienced with illness or dementia, where I am witnessing friends losing the person they love – spouses, parents, friends – before they actually die.  Stages of grief slipping into daily life as an illness chips away at a loved one.

I’m not sure one ever fully recovers from the death of a child. Nearly fifty years on it is still important to visit my son’s grave and keep the memory of his nine short weeks of life alive for myself and the family. And all those whom one has lost live on inside us. I’m not alone in thinking of my parents, sister and grandmother every day, and of missing the conversations I would have been having with them and with the friends who have died before me.

I was with both my parents, my son, and my sister as they left this life. And my two cats. Each one a precious being in this world, leaving this world. Perhaps I shouldn’t feel so surprised that Chico’s death has hit me this hard. The house feels echoingly empty without him. But this makes me think of other friends who have recently lost partners with whom they have shared the whole of their adult life. How can it possibly be comparable? In most ways it can’t and yet I still remember the day my father returned from the vet having had to put our golden labrador down and seeing him cry for the first time. I was probably around 10. These creatures certainly find their way deep into our hearts.

Although it is sad and uncomfortable, at the same time to grieve is to live, to feel, to appreciate what one has been lucky enough to enjoy and experience as part of one’s life: the love of a parent, sibling, spouse, friend, or pet. As Khalil Gibran wrote “You are weeping for that which has been your delight.” How lucky are we to have experienced that love and delight. To grieve is to be human and to be thankful.

Poems on https://www.babyboomerpoetry.com/poems/goodbye-chico/

Dec 19

2025

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Helen Whitten

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How Might Leaders Unite a Diverse Country?

Politicians often tell us that “diversity is our strength”. It sounds reassuring, but it raises an important and, in my view, rarely explored question: diversity of what, exactly? Perspectives, values, behaviours, customs, languages, ethnic backgrounds, religions – or all of the above? The answer matters, because different kinds of difference are not equally easy to weave into a socially cohesive whole.  If diversity is genuinely to become a strength, leaders must articulate far more clearly to us what they mean by it and how they intend to make it work.

Some forms of diversity sit comfortably alongside one another. People from varied ethnic backgrounds may share a religion, a political outlook, or a commitment to common laws and customs. Others may hold very different beliefs yet still agree on basic civic norms. The challenge for leadership, whether of a country, community, congregation or organisation, is not simply to celebrate difference but to be clearer how a population with diverse histories, beliefs and practices can be united sufficiently to function as a stable, cooperative society. Recent surveys have suggested that Gen Z are experiencing loneliness and isolation and also that few feel proud of this country, nor would fight for it.  A leader needs to provide a goal, vision and strategy that people of diverse ages and backgrounds can buy into and then inspire them to unite and go on that journey with them.

My suggestion would be to start with what we have in common. Across cultures we live in families, seek meaning, have dreams and aspirations for ourselves and others. Peace, economic stability, functioning institutions, good health and educational systems benefit us all. In an era of intense focus on multiculturalism, it is easy to lose sight of our common humanity, yet it is precisely here that social cohesion begins.

Respect for difference is often presented as a central requirement of living together, and being open to listening to alternative views is indeed essential. However, respect cannot mean the suspension of hard-won legal and moral principles. Politicians who appear willing, in the name of change or multiculturalism, to tolerate practices that undermine women’s rights, equality before the law, or protection from violence risk alienating large sections of the population. Even those who disagree with a leader politically tend to respect clarity of principle and the willingness to defend social and legal advances.  After all, this is how civilisations are created – by building, generation upon generation, on what is learnt and developed over history, in the form of knowledge, science, medicine, technology, culture, music, art and wisdom.

These achievements were not inevitable and they remain fragile. Protecting them requires leaders who are prepared to state plainly that while beliefs and customs may differ, the legal framework and basic rights within a society are non-negotiable. However, many politicians appear reluctant to speak up on this. Freedom of speech itself feels increasingly constrained even for those in government, and difficult subjects are often avoided for fear of causing offence. Yet no problem can be addressed if it is not examined honestly, put under the laboratory lamp, investigated, analysed and subjected to a multitude of potential solutions. If a problem is pushed under the table and not discussed objectively it will never be solved. Open, evidence-based debate is not an act of hostility towards any group but a prerequisite for maintaining public trust. Without trust, and some sense of belonging to a land we value, we lose the sense of our shared humanity and too easily divide into factions.

In a short, myopic and complacent moment, we thought we had come to the end of history and that liberal democracy would be the future. Yet from the erosion of women’s rights in parts of the Middle East and Afghanistan, to religious violence in Africa and the rise of authoritarianism more broadly, we are reminded that we cannot take democracy for granted. The huge demographic change that has taken place in many countries over my lifetime has altered the assumptions that once underpinned everyday social interaction. The values, norms, customs, relationships and perspectives of individuals differ significantly from whether they were born in London or Delhi, Jeddah or Lagos, New York or Beijing. As the psychologist Professor Steven Pinker has observed, societies rely on a degree of shared “common knowledge” – unspoken understandings about norms, laws and customs, including humour. When those assumptions fragment, cooperation becomes harder.

It is time for political and religious leaders alike – across all faiths and none – to help us shape this evolving society. We need more leadership as to how we now think about ourselves, in order to collaborate for the good of the individual and the community as a whole. We can’t let diversity tear us apart so it is time for leaders to demonstrate, in practice and not just in rhetoric, how that strength of which they speak can be achieved. How, if we disagree about politics, theology or culture, we can still commit to a shared life in a social community, that is grounded in mutual responsibility and where the benefits of diversity are transparent and can flourish.

Diversity can be a strength when one is problem-solving. I have witnessed in jury service and in business environments, times when different perspectives, drawn together openly in a creative process, such as Edward de Bono’s Six Hat Thinking or as described in Matthew Syed’s book Rebel Ideas: The Power of Thinking Differently, can produce insightful results. However, there must be sufficient common ground and understanding to ensure that in that process people are indeed on the same side and have the same goals and intentions. This takes care, sensitivity and leadership.

To unite a whole country or community who have diverse beliefs, cultures, customs and histories a leader needs first to remind us of our common humanity, then motivate us to unite in shared goals. I have not seen this kind of leadership anywhere in the world so far. I truly hope I shall witness more of it in 2026.

Nov 19

2025

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Helen Whitten

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Our politicians are limiting growth through fear

Lisa Nandy suggested the other day that people were just getting on with their daily lives and not speculating about the budget.  How arrogant this is and how disconnected from the fact that most people are very much concerned about the budget because it impacts their livelihoods.

The country is in paralysis, overwhelmed by the endless confusing messages coming from No.11 about the future budget.  One day it’s income tax rises, the next it’s pensions, the next it’s a ‘mansion’ tax (although most ‘mansions’ in London and the South East are actually simply Victorian terraced or semi-detached houses that are far from being a mansion), the next it’s inheritance tax. Everyone is in the firing line.

These messages are generating fear and fear is the last thing people need, considering the government’s main message when they came into power was to promote growth.  You can’t start a business, grow a business, or innovate if you are in fear.  You need optimism.  Without it no one would start any new venture.

But the attitude of Reeves and Nandy suggesting people aren’t taking notice of the budget reflects the unhealthy relationship we have to money in this country, as if money is a dirty word and those who make it become the “filthy” rich. But of course all of us are interested in how tax decisions will impact our ability to pay our bills. Wouldn’t we all like a little more money than we currently have? To pay off a mortgage? Feel secure on the rent? Take a few days’ holiday? Buy something for your child, parent or partner? Mend the leak in the roof? Most of us would.

A recent Times survey showed that almost no one feels they are rich because we all feel we are just struggling to pay our bills. The consequence is little growth because we can’t go to the shops and support the businesses on our high street, let alone other luxuries.  The number of true millionaires or billionaires is miniscule – but if they, and other wealth creators, leave the country we shall be the worse off as they employ people, spend money and – which few people give them credit for – give large amounts to charity.  Without those charitable donations much good work will be lost, and the State can’t afford to support the work these charities provide.

In a similar survey, the majority of people seemed to think that if you were reasonably wealthy it was down to ‘luck’.  What an extraordinarily short-sighted perspective.  Do people not realize how much time and effort is put into creating and running a business?  If you set up your own company, however small, you spend 24/7 thinking about it, taking responsibility for the salaries and mortgages of your staff, watching competitors and the markets, and have often mortgaged your home to get it started.  Whilst luck plays a part, it is the very unusual company or wealth that has been created other than through hard graft.

I think of Mark Knopfler’s song The Scaffolder’s Wife

“…don’t begrudge her the Merc
It’s been nothing but work and a hard life,
losing her looks over company books …”

Those who have gone into politics or the civil service straight from school or university have no experience of what it takes to keep a business going, to pay the bills and provide a good service. The reality is that if we chastise those who build businesses, employ people, make a success of it, then this country is going to go bust. The average salary is around £38,000 per year so if we lose those who earn more surely there is going to be very little tax to pay for the NHS or potholes, education, infrastructure, police, benefits or defending our country from hostile states. 

We need aspiration.  We have a major problem of several million adults out of work and high youth unemployment.  To have growth we need to encourage these young people to believe that work is fulfilling, that making money and taking responsibility for your life gives you confidence and a sense of purpose. We need to encourage people to have ideas, to work hard, to put their all into work for themselves and the country. But when those who reach success are then denigrated, it puts young people off, how can it not? If we say wealth is a bad thing because “we don’t want those rich people anyway” then we are telling young people not to put their head above the parapets to try something new, to push through the challenges and make money, pay taxes but get a just reward.

We also need to recognise that not all human beings are the same and do not have the same motivations. Every country seeking growth needs to nurture that percentage of the population who have ideas, who can see a need that others haven’t seen, who can spot the way the world is going, the way science is developing or the economy is shaping up. 

The history of the human race is punctuated by those people who have had a good idea and made it happen – in science, medicine, technology, manufacturing and more. We need the wealth creators, the business creators, the employers and innovators.  You can bet that many of them may have had ADHD, busy minds that came up with ideas ten to the dozen. And, of course, those innovators need teams with diverse skills and temperaments to help them make it work.

We need to be encouraged to work, to save for a rainy day and save for our pensions rather than being threatened with having our savings or pension pots raided when we have done the sensible thing with our money. Businesses need to be encouraged to employ people rather than be taxed too highly or burdened with over-complicated regulation for doing so.

If those who are in power don’t understand that we have so many people in this country who have built small businesses and are working hard to make them profitable and are therefore very much preoccupied with what Rachel Reeves is saying, and is about to say, then they don’t understand their voters. These endless statements about the budget are limiting creativity and innovation, demotivating the solution-providers. We risk becoming, in Hayek’s words, “serfs” where the State takes over and our freedoms are reduced through being ground down by fear and lack of resource. It is the road to authoritarianism if we aren’t careful.

So let’s take our hats off to the scaffolder and his wife, and others who work hard and get both fulfilment and wealth from doing so because that wealth pays our taxes and funds our charities. And may Reeves, Starmer, Nandy and others respect the fact that those of us who vote do take a very real interest in the budget because it impacts our lives in fundamental ways.

Nov 10

2025

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Helen Whitten

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What Books got you Reading?

As part of The Times’ project to Get Britain Reading Andrew O’Hagan wrote a piece in last Sunday’s edition about the books that got him reading.  It took my mind rolling back through the years.  So many authors have come to my mind and I would love to know what books you enjoyed?

It started, of course, by being read to, but once I was reading I loved the Little Grey Rabbit stories by Alison Uttley.  In fact my older sister, Sarah, and I would read them to one another every Christmas, even when we were adult. We also both adored the Mary Poppins books and Babar the Elephant. Such magic.

Then there were all those other books about animals. Yes, Peter Rabbit and Beatrix Potter but Black Beauty made such an impression and Moorland Mousie even more so. B.B was one of my favourite writers as a child and I remember having a tantrum in a bookshop in Chester when my mother wouldn’t buy me his book Mr Bumstead, about a dog.  She quite sensibly refused to do it at the time of my screaming fit, but softened later and I still remember the joy of losing myself in its pages. His Wizard of Boland Forest was magical, a pre-cursor to Harry Potter maybe. My father used to read Kipling’s Just So Stories and the Greek Myths to me when he got back from the office.

Struwwelpeter by Dr Heinrich Hoffman gave me nightmares. The terrifying illustrations are referred to on the cover as “funny pictures” for little children, which I found anything but funny. Characters with huge scissors aimed to cut off the thumbs of little Suck-a-Thumb. My goodness one would have needed a few trigger warnings on that book!

C S Lewis’ Narnia books took me into all those other worlds of imagination and I remember my friends and I creating games in the woods pretending we were in Narnia. Enid Blyton taught us a lot about friendship as well as adventure and what children could get up to when there weren’t adults endlessly supervising them, as sadly has to happen these days.  That freedom was heady and my generation was lucky enough to experience it, allowed to go off on bicycle rides or pony rides for hours on end with no one knowing precisely where we were or when we would return.

As teenagers in the 60s there was no such thing as ‘young adult’ or other marketing categories when I was immersed in other worlds of reading. We read adult books way before we had lived any life of our own.  We knew nothing of the world, of relationships, love, lust, marriage but Pasternak and all the Russians opened up my life and I wolfed my way through War and Peace in about 3 days I loved it so much. Georgette Heyer and D K Broster also whisked me off into imagined scenes of other places and romance. Then Colette, de Beauvoir and Sartre took me to Paris and Alberto Moravia to Italy.

It was the period of the angry young men writers and I thoroughly enjoyed John Wain’s books Strike the Father Dead and The Young Visitors. Iris Murdoch was another of my favourites, always stirring up thought, and I loved Elizabeth Jane Howard’s early books.

JP Donleavy The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B is another I remember and the Tom Sharpe books had me laughing out loud on the tube.

Later in life I discovered Elizabeth von Arnim and her German Garden and more witty subtle novels.

These days I think John Boyne is one of my favourite writers and his The Heart’s Invisible Furies was both witty, poignant and insightful about other lives.

We have recently read Mother’s Milk by Edward St Aubyn for our book club and I found it a brilliant read.

All this led to me writing No Lemons in Moscow – now coming up to two years since publication! So happy to receive good reviews such as

“What a beautiful read. I couldn’t put it down! The tenderness in the ending is really special. A good insight into 1990s Russia and London. Highly recommend!”

And that make me think that my publisher would suggest it might make a good Christmas present for someone you know …?

Anyway, happy reading. I hope these memories have triggered some of your own and I would love to know the books that set your mind alight – and the books that keep you reading in the midst of this overwhelming world of distraction.

Oct 26

2025

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Get Britain Reading: Parents and Adults as Role Models

As a child my Sundays were thoroughly boring. Our parents bought every newspaper there was to read and sat behind broadsheets for much of the day. It was a very visual experience as they literally disappeared behind the headlines. And yet we could sense their pleasure in this pastime, as they shared between them news or opinions about what they were reading and discussed the events of the day.  A friend of my older sister’s remembers it as a scary time when my parents would expect them to have read the papers and be ready to share comments at the lunch table!

Nonetheless, my parents’ pleasure was tangible and so, as I open up my newspapers at weekends now, I think of them and take delight in sitting on the sofa with countless bits of paper around me, taking in news and opinion.  I realize we are supposed to read online for environmental reasons but the problem with this is that, unlike our own childhood or that of my sons, children are not seeing what their parents are doing.  The parents may well be reading the newspaper, or a book, but if it is on screen the child has no visual clue as to what the parent is looking at.

Children watch adults and learn from them. If you play music in the home they are likely to do so in their own homes. If they see you read, they are more likely to do so themselves. And so it is important that children see adults reading books and newspapers if we want them to get off their screens and into books.  But what do they see around them? More-or-less every adult on a tube train is on their screen. Almost zero physical newspapers are being read in front of them and very few physical books.

It is therefore very important that parents and adults share what they are doing, talk about what they are reading, explain their interest and pleasure, or the emotions that are being stirred by it.  Paint the pictures, conjure up the characters.

Graphic novels can get children and adults reading but they don’t stimulate the imagination in the way a book does.  Our brains have to work quite hard – though it doesn’t feel like work – to imagine what a landscape might look like, what a character might look like, their clothes, hair, height.  They have to imagine scenes, emotions, expressions, looks exchanged between characters. They also develop empathy – feel fearful for what might happen to someone, sad about a tragedy, or angry at unfairness or cruelty (I’ll never forget Black Beauty).  Often then when you go to a movie of the book it does not match one’s imagination.  But that’s ok because one’s imagination has already been awoken and stimulated and taken into many different worlds beyond one’s own.

Children who watch movies and TV series are stimulated and drawn into stories but the director and producer have done the creative work of imagining, taking the words off a page and bringing them to life. When we read a book, we do this for ourselves.

The Times and Sunday Times have a project on at the moment to “Get Britain Reading” and are encouraging people to volunteer to read in schools and donate books.  I’ve written about the subject of reading before, back in 2017, in relation to a lack of literacy in prisoners “Reading wakes us shakes us and shapes us: which books woke you?” You can read it on that link if you choose to do so. Having recently attended both the Cheltenham Literary Festival and the Wimbledon Book Festival I have been reassured, by the huge numbers of people crowding the talks, that there are still adults reading books.  Now we have to encourage the kids, teenagers and young adults to adopt it instead of scrolling.

Reading is a habit.  It’s easy to lose the habit and, like any change of behaviour, can feel awkward for a period of time as you try to re-engage but then becomes easy because losing yourself in a book is exciting. But we all know how addictive scrolling on one’s mobile is and this is what children are facing.  We know it as adults and must show them the way, and when I say show, I mean visually show them that we are reading a book or paper even if it is on screen, but preferably, at least occasionally, on paper.  Take them to a bookshop or library, make it a fun outing. As a child, one of the favourite events of my week was to go to the public library.  I can picture it now, all those years ago, the quiet, the smell of books, the feel of the pages, the little red ticket, the sound of the stamp, then the delight in returning home and losing myself in those scenes.

Here’s the poem I wrote about that memory:

Saturday at the Public Library

Entering the silence,
a stillness of concentration,
quiet shuffling of pages turning,
a scrape of chair leg,
the ‘tut’ or ‘sssh’
of tetchy adults
waiting to be disturbed.

Then the tiptoed walk
in short white socks, Start-Rite sandals,
squeaking rubber soles of embarrassment
sweaty hand on the brass-handled door
to the Children’s Section,
a never-never land of exploration
as exciting an adventure as the North Pole.

Sacrosanct hours of mind and page,
I’d settle in to touch and scent
of red, green and blue bound books,
musty paper of patchwork worlds
and transporting words.
The prize clasped carefully,
anticipation heightened by the thud of the date stamp.

Today’s libraries open to a different quiet:
a bright screen, door to the world,
feasts of libraries, blogs, museums, news,
too much to take in or digest.
A few books hold on to their shelves
but paper becomes obsolete in the cold world
of a tapping keyboard.

Let’s hold onto the magic of books we hold in our hands as well as being awe-inspired by what our tapping keyboard can bring.  We don’t have to lose one for the addictive demands of the other. We can enjoy both – and talk about it.