Why I don't like librarians.

It is in her absence I sit in Penny Jones' chair, I sit on it and swing myself childishly as I scan her desk. I get up with a sudden ferocity, and scan the files above her desk, they are stored in old cardboard boxes, in shoe boxes and such other vintage storage systems. I walk around the raised mezzanine, away from the sight of the partners, of the directors and of employers and walk away from the desk towards the boxes of books. I flick through her notebooks and try to picture the woman whose name is written on the stamped unopened mail.

Her desk is fairly untidy, there are books stacked infront of a prehistoric computer, one afternoon I tried to start it up in need to check the office diary, no network, no the computer had only just discovered colour never mind wireless. I imagine Penny to be frustrated at this, to have whined playfully at the partners that she doesn't see any new technology, and that she is shooed away. Although she has a point,  her pristine smile gets her nowhere and so she is left out of touch with the whole office - it's nothing she can't keep up to date with through the gossip in the kitchen.

I look through the library Penny is organising, a true contrast to the order of her desk but I feel that is how Penny opperates, her personal life is untidy with blemishes of a former husband but she is the definition of "good" messy, the type whose organiser is nearly full, her appointments decorated by hand drawn doodles and flowers with the faint smell of Prada caught from the perfume sprayed on her right wrist. The type who artfully plays with decorative items in her home simultaneously running a risk of over cluttering and scaring potential love interests with an overcrowded living room. Her clothes are layered but aesthetically she looks sophisticated.

In this office, she orders everything in ways she could never have the control of doing over herself. The books are alphabetical, sometimes filed in a large box and clearly labelled by company. Labelled with large block capitals, her handwriting is bouncy and slightly scruffy though legible and to a clarity my handwriting could only aspire to. I picture her quietly sitting by her desk, plotting and organising the countless amounts of books as she over hears the echoed conversation of the architects conversing  below her, she sits there with a pen in her mouth and cross legged categorising the books. I walk down the spiral stairs I can imagine Penny to fly down with her black three quarter length trousers and flip flops, as I make a cup of tea.

I sit in a different chair today behind reception, weeks down the line from my days of finding out about Penny. I am picking up phone calls and sorting through the post. The meeting scheduled for 10 minutes time forces me out of my seat in order to prepare the meeting rooms and as I do I politely smile at the person above me near Penny's library. 'Olivia!' 'Did you do this?' The woman glares down at me over the frame of her glasses, she nods ahead of her and lifts up her walking stick in the direction of where I was working. 'er, yes..yes that was me' hesitant and equally curious as to what this stranger was implying. 'Well it shouldn't be there, that is MY space and I had left it there for my BOOKS not for YOUR books which are EXACTLY the same as some of mine!", my manager walked past perfectly timed to spring to my defence, he liases with her while the reception phone kindly relieves me of this sticky confrontation.

I sit down and watch the old lady from my table, I see her taking each step at a time with the help of her walking stick until she moves out of my view. I then see her later on, as she asks me if I could help her to use the fax machine, when she quite simply missed the standby button reasoning that it wasn't flashing before. She is frail with flaccid skin, her age has given her hunchback and she curves fittingly within herself as she hobbles down the spiral stairs. My manager mutters and curses under his breath as he returns to his seat, my colleague shakes her head as I recount the conversation, 'don't listen to her. I can usually get along with old people, but she is beyond me'. She talks to me like she is overworked, and with a look of expectations, lost when she looks at me. She is here for one whole day a month, and sometimes manages to leave early, her one project is the library.

I watch her leave the building after her one day a month draws to an end, she makes slow progress with the walking stick and I watch her, with a sullen expression. I am upset I didn't get to meet this Penny, instead I meet another Penny Jones, she is nothing I thought her to be, and she is everything I didn't want her to be.

I want her to be the reason why you can't judge a person by their possessions, but if Penny were a book, and librarians were a kind of novel, she would be the unfortunate reason why I will always judge a book by it's cover.