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The Girl in the Library

I'm on hour eight of being in the library. I've successfully drank two large coffees, and demolished *cough* some sweets and I think the chair is part of my body now. The particular reason for why I'm here left me at about hour three and the ability to walk or talk said bye-bye at hour four.

Time moves quickly here. People come, go, dash, sit, fester. Twelve o'clock to eight o'clock slipped by me and my accumulative work doesn't feel worthy of those hours, nor does the money spent on food.

Hours one to five I spent alone; alone but in the company of others. How can one be surrounded by people but feel so lonely? (An example of the Philosophical Crisis at hour six.) Plus, I can't quite decide whether the caffeine, the weirdly yellow lighting to the fact I'm studying Ulysses (or a combination of all of the above) are the cause of my brain to have shut down somewhere around hour three.

Over the last week I have spent approximately forty (ish, maths even when fully conscious isn't my forté!) hours here (no word of a lie, I dreamt my bedroom was in the library and woke up at five o'clock in the morning very confused!) for a multiplicity of reasons. Part emotions, part determined to do well, part I just love it. I have always loved libraries but there's something about this place. It's lighting is god-awful but the history here is fascinating; it's the old railway goods warehouse and it's all bricky and metally (metalic, Claire, metalic.) (English student right here!). It has the desirability of ages past and future times to come. This industrial, hardy place where I'm sure plenty of people worked prior to my presence here now is center of learning.

--------- (speaking to my wonderful mum on the phone) -----------------------------

Hour nine has slipped on by and I think I've just about forgotten what fresh air is like. A journey through the library leaves one not only weary but with a slighly tickly throat and your body shouting at you for being too lazy to fill up your water bottle.

Since we've hit 24/7-library-territory, there is caffeine-crazed lull about the place. Bursts of noise ripple around every so often but the largest bout of sound is a giggle, or the click click click of the keyboard, or even the joyful DING of a facebook message. We have now entered the land of the last-minuters, the country of the night-owls. Here stoops a different calliber of people - we are those who fill our bodies with artificial awake-ness only so we can stumble words out of our brains at a pace that is unnatural for this time. (Don't get me started on the 2/3am crowd.)

Where there once was a hive of activity, of bright (ha) eyed students prancing about, remains a sea of sleep-deprived students, working hard (possibly hardly working). And as the next wave of whispers rolls over the first floor, I think upon my bed and how darn cosy it is.

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