You wouldn’t believe it. Our local library actually fell down in that wet weather we had in Sydney a couple of months ago.

It was a street library – 470mm x 420mm, two shelves – and now it’s sitting on my front veranda, awaiting repairs. It needs a new plyboard backing and then refixing, somewhere. It can’t go back onto the wall it fell from, under the weight of all those wet words, because the owners of that wall have since SOLD and moved to North Annandale. Bastards.

The new owners haven’t moved in yet so maybe if I fix it quickly I can put it back where it was. That way they can brag to their friends that their new home has a library.

But I’ve never been good at doing things quickly.

It’s amazing how many good books we got out of that little library over the past couple of years. One time our book club choice was Ishiguro’s ‘An Artist Of The Floating World’ (1986) and right there when we needed it was a used copy in our own little floating world, before it crashed to earth.

That street library proves we live in a right place. There’s bound to be plenty of those over a lifetime but it’s good to know we’re in one of them now.

It’s been so resourceful that our actual library membership has lapsed. We used to go to the Glebe library down and up the Wigram Road hills all the time. We loved it. We will again.

Relying on me to fix the street library before we can do something as fundamental as read a book is risky, and so we agreed to tackle the Wigram hills and rejoin the Glebe library. In the interim. Until. Etc. It was actually very exciting. Two libraries! A land of lovely plenty.

Loaded with local ID we approached the auto-opening Glebe library door. Nothing happened. Perhaps we’d lost our bookish aura? I stepped back and stepped up again. Nothing happened. Perhaps I didn’t exist? It could happen. It will happen.

Robinson saw the sign. CLOSED FOR RENOVATIONS UNTIL SEPTEMBER.

Once again, you wouldn’t believe it. On the bright side, I might still exist.

We bought a Banh mi roll in Glebe Point Road and shared it sitting on the library lawns in the sun, so our trip wasn’t wasted.

We don’t have a wall to attach a street library to. My plan is to repair and attach it lightly to a communal paling fence in the garden cul-de-sac at the end of our Road. It will be a library at the end of the road.

I’ll drop a note into the letterboxes of all our neighbours declaring that the floating world is back. Bring your books and share once more. We all used to use it.

In September we’re going to join the big library anyway. After renovations it’s less likely to fall down.