posted on 03 March 2009 17:45
by
Peter Stockwell
Breakthrough
Amazingly the Cambridge City Council is giving an opening date for the Central Library (no longer, imaginatively, to be called Library Central). It is May of this year, having slipped from February after slipping a year already. I would order the champagne for July myself - we'll see. The reason for the delays - unacceptable in government speak - were unsatisfactory building work, unforeseen delays and the discovery of asbestos. A translation would be, they picked the wrong builder, should have had a really good asbestos survey in an older building, may have got unlucky with a few items. I hope they can afford some books in these hard times for Local Government.
I have nearly finished volume four of A Dance to the Music of Time. So far I have found no discernible plot. I considered reading the book in reverse, starting at chapter twelve and meeting my ongoing progress at about chapter six, just to cheer things up a bit. Sadly there is a time line. There are also enough new characters to cause confusion in any direction. Anthony Powell seems dimly aware of this as he is now introducing characters we already know about, presumably in case we have forgotten them. It is possible that he has forgotten them himself.