This thread is very entertaining today, but is moving so fast I can't keep up!
I've never watched or read Nigel; clearly it's an important part of British culture I've missed out on 😮
That was a lovely story about the young man in your library, @FortunaMajor . Properly heartwarming. I love the public library in my city so much. Unlike the uni libraries which bring mixed associations of anxiety and joy, the public library brings me nothing but pleasure. As soon as I walk in, I feel happy. You see people of all walks of life there and the staff are fantastic.
Sympathy to @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie and all the other people who have had unpleasant encounters, book-related, man-related or otherwise.
Hope this isn't outing but there has been a bit of minor drama at my work this week, relating to books and spatial boundaries. The colleague whose office is next to mine has gradually moved more and more of his books and files and boxes into the common kitchen on our floor (shared by him, myself and a third colleague). All we really use the kitchen for is to make hot drinks, so in theory it's not a big deal if someone wants to store a bit of stuff there, but the thing is, this is more than a bit of stuff. This is high, teetering piles of books and heaps of boxes (most of them empty?!) on every countertop. The communal cupboards are also crammed with his possessions. At the start of term he moved a whole new load in. Last week for some reason I'd finally had enough. He is a very eminent professor and I'm the opposite of eminent, but I've watched him take over the kitchen for the past decade or so (yes, I know!), and with the newest incursion of books, I finally cracked. I had the temerity to send an email to housekeeping with photos of the messy piles, with him and Colleague Three copied in. It was a very polite message and I didn't indicate that I knew WHO had hijacked our kitchen, but I observed that it was a safety hazard and that it also made the kitchen a less comfortable space. (Colleague Three is fully supportive of my initiative by the way; she says she never uses the kitchen because it's so crammed with stuff.) No one bothered to reply to the email, sigh, but when I arrived at work the next day, most of the boxes were gone (though the books remain). Professor X has been avoiding me assiduously ever since (we normally exchange greetings a couple of times per day).
Sorry this story has turned out to be so long, but honestly, who takes a common space and turns it into their own personal storage area? I'm tempted to passive aggressively move a few hundred of my own tomes in and place them in front of his. Or accidentally soak everything with tea.😂I mean, we're all academics with mountains of books and not enough shelf space! His office is much bigger than mine to begin with! Sheer entitlement if you ask me. Academic manspreading.
My wrath is still not fully assuaged and I am planning to go in this weekend and see whether I can throw some old stuff out of the cupboards and move his remaining favourite boxes (eg a box full of copies of his latest published book) off OUR SHARED countertops.
Prof X is a mild-mannered type who looks like he wouldn't say boo to a goose, but he has some form for CF behaviour, apparently.
If my corpse is unexpectedly found in the kitchen next week, please let it be known that Prof X will have been the perpetrator.